By: Maggie Freleng, NYC, USA, SSH Correspondent
Sunday night at Murray Hill’s annual Miss Lez Pageant, an alternative beauty pageant for queer womyn, something caught my attention. It wasn’t the contestant with a vintage vagina puppet or the plethora of boob tassels or even the contestant in the Winnie the Pooh outfit doing a strip tease pouring honey on her body. No, it was the one contestant in a bondage harness whose pageant platform was on a serious topic — street harassment.
“In my personal life it is something that I am very deeply and seriously passionate about. I am very concerned about it,” Fancy Feast, a burlesque dancer, told me.
Fancy Feast caught my attention when she took the stage with her extravagant beehive wig, kitten heels and form-fitting mini dress and told the audience that in her daily life every time she is street harassed she puts a nickel aside to be donated to shelters and abuse programs for women and LGBTQ folk.
“My performance is sexual and big and public,” Fancy Feast told me, who explained that people tell her she should expect to be harassed because she has such a sexualized performance. “But there are a different set of expectations when I’m in control of my image when I’m performing and presenting sexuality than when I am trying to get to work and get a smoothie.”
“Some people feel like every contact should be a level playing field and I should expect the same attention doing burlesque and taking the subway. To me its one of those ludicrous things…there is a separation.”
She said the differentiation comes when she is wearing no makeup and going home sick from work and minding her own business to when she is wearing makeup and a wig on stage where she is intending to be in control and powerful.
“When people are harassed on the street they have a lack of control. Someone is dictating how you should feel about your body walking down the street.”
“I tend to get harassed a lot when I have my stage makeup on when I am coming home after my gigs. It doesn’t matter if the makeup is really over the top or grotesque, or if I have fake bruises (I have a fake black eye for one of my acts) — I get harassed way, way more, especially if I look disheveled. It sometimes feels like I’m getting attention more for the performance of femininity, the artifice, as well as a perceived weakness,” she told me in a follow up email.
“It’s in those moments when people take advantage of perceived weakness that does not show up in my performances.”
Burlesque allows her to dictate how she feels about herself and her body, and she says the reaction is always positive.
Fancy Feast, who is also a sex educator in her day job, says she has never gotten harassed during one of her performances. She has found the burlesque scene to be very body positive and accepting.
While she does not always make her performances about her personal politics, Fancy Feast was excited she had the space to do at Miss Lez.
“My job to make sure people are having a good time and being entertained and taken care of,” she told me. “I don’t always intend to use that space to talk about personal politics. Often times it is not the right atmosphere.”
However, if she does have a moment with the mic she will try to make jokes and add satire to the serious issue, to aware people and get the message out while also keeping the audience entertained. For example, at a performance she told the audience her leather harness was made from the last guy who told her to smile on the subway.
When I asked Fancy Feast about her nickel idea that initially caught my attention she told me, “The nickel thing came from being in SoHo a few months ago and this guy started making comments about my body, his son was 8 or 9 and he encouraged his son to yell things too. I got so upset thinking about how many times I get harassed a year. These experiences happen so quickly and then they just pass.”
The nickel idea was a way for her to mark these fleeting occasions and make sure something good can come from these horrible moments that happen far too frequently and make a difference in something so many of us feel powerless against.
This piece is a part one of two on Fancy Feast. Burlesque dancers reactions to sexual harassment and the rest of the nickel story (which made its way into a letter for NPR) to come in part two.
Maggie is a Brooklyn based freelance writer and photographer focusing on social justice and women’s issues. She currently writes for Vitamin W. Maggie graduated with a B.A in Journalism and English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2011, concentrating on dystopian literature. You can read more of her writing on her blog or follow her on Twitter, @dixiy89.
