Translator: Denise RQ Reviewer: Feike Laffeber
I've been working with women, burlesque, and femininity
for the last 8 years.
Today I would like to share with you
my experience of working with over 4,500 women,
and how this has led me to believe
that embracing, respecting, and celebrating femininity
on a global scale
could change the world.
To do that I'd like to look at illusions that empower us,
and some that don't.
To start with, I'd like to look at an illusion
that's possibly in this room right now.
If I told you I was a doctor, you'd have a really clear idea about what I do.
But when I say I teach and perform burlesque,
there are probably as many different interpretations of my profession
as there are people in this room.
For example, my goddaughter thinks I am a glamorous fairy queen.
(Laughter)
My neighbour, however, thinks I am an escort.
(Laughter)
Ant and Dec proudly announced on Britain's Got Talent
that burlesque is 'posh stripping',
and one of my weirdest experiences
is when I had to go and pick up a package from the post office.
The post clerk returns with my package and a wry smile.
I can see the label of my business is clearly marked on the package.
He beckons me to come a little bit closer to the window,
and then tapping the word 'burlesque' with his finger he said:
'Nothing wrong with a blue movie or two, quite partial to one myself.
Enjoy your kinky boots.'
(Laughter)
I have to admit I was so taken back that I was unable to inform him
that one: I am not a pornstar
and two: unfortunately there were no kinky boots in that package.
It was an inflatable gym ball for Pilates.
(Laughter)
So the illusions I'd like to officially ruin for you right now,
before we go any further, are:
Burlesque is not as glamorous as you think;
it's not sex work;
and, Ant and Dec, it's got a lot more than stripping.
The word 'burlesque' means 'to make a mockery or a satire',
and originally it had far more to do with sending up
sexuality, gender, stereotypes.
Burlesque in our days incorporates many styles of performance,
from the classic striptease
with the emphasis on the style and the tease,
to theatrical mini-dramas, to modern dance, to comedy.
We have boylesque, burlesque,
queerlesque, nerdesque,
and we continue to explore ideas around gender, sexuality, stereotypes,
and how we can present these dramatically.
So now I've ruined a few illusions for you,
I'd like to invite you to take a sneak peek into my burlesque class,
where I'm hoping we can create some more empowered ones together.
So, in my experience, women come to learn burlesque
for one of three reasons:
They want to be performers, they want to have more fun,
or they want to work on body confidence and self-esteem.
And it's in this area that I'm mostly going to be sharing from.
More often than not, a woman comes into my studio
with an illusion she wants to create.
She wants to be the woman in the magazine,
she wants to be the woman we're told we'll be
once you bought the skin cream, or the new bag, or the new boobs.
She thinks there is something wrong with her,
and she wants to get it fixed.
But I already know what's going to happen,
because I've seen it thousands of times.
If you give a woman a safe place to play,
express and revel in her femininity,
it's magical, it's transformative, and it's revealing.
But we often start with this stressful thought
about needing to be more of something - for example, more sexy.
Anybody ever had that thought?
Not that you're admitting it.
So, maybe you want to impress a certain someone,
or you just want to feel sexier for yourself,
but often there's a lot of trying going on.
Perhaps you've invested in some stockings,
you've manage to squeeze yourself into the corset -
it's already going wrong, because now you can't breathe,
you can only fit a third of one boob into the balconette bra,
laddered your stockings trying to get the garter belt on,
which now has pinged across the room,
but yes, I'm doing sexy, and it feels really...
...uncomfortable.
(Laughter)
Yes, doing sexy is stressful
for the very fact that we're doing it, which is masculine,
as opposed to being, which is feminine.
And feeling sexy, the kind that's effortless and self-fulfilling,
comes from a creative feminine space.
And I think femininity had a really bad rap,
because it's often perceived as passive, weak,
a vulnerability to be hidden or even ashamed of.
Whereas I see femininity
as this courageous, fun,
sexy, creative, magic essence.
It feels like an essential source of nourishment and power,
a power that we've been disconnected from.
I think we've become so used to the idea
that equality means we can have what a man has,
if we act like a man,
that we've had to sacrifice a lot of our feminine expression
to get ahead, to survive.
And it's been necessary, but we're in a new time now.
So in my class we reclaim some of this magic,
and we go on our own feminine adventure,
down the rabbit hole into the depths of who we are,
and create from the inside out.
And it's going to be a lot of fun, going to be cheeky,
it's definitely going to get mucky,
because to get to sexy we have to go through silly first.
And I mean throw your head back, giggletastic,
laugh like Alice in Wonderland laughed,
and declared it's all just a pack of cards.
Everything that you've been told about what you should and shouldn't be,
let it go, it's all been a joke on you.
So now we've got this clear slate,
and we're in the game with fun and freedom.
It's time to ask yourself what inspires you -
about yourself, about the world,
colours, stories, songs.
This is where you're going to create your avatar,
your alter-ego of transformation.
You might want to give this new heroin or hero a name,
like Luna Peach or Evelyn Carnate
or Belle de Coco Noir,
and then, of course, you're going to fall in love with her,
believing - and sometimes you have to fake it to make it -
that every part of you is exquisite
- exquisite -
and yours to present to the world as you wish.
And then you learn to be adored,
not as an object to be sexualized,
but as a full-blooded, heart, body, mind, soul woman.
What's not to love?
And finally, with a ton of glitter,
we are going to celebrate your creation,
by unveiling it to yourself
or to an audience
or to the world.
And you might just notice
that this beautiful illusion you've created
reflects the reality of who you are far more
than the disempowering one you came in with.
Would you like to see some?
This is Rara Avis in 'Rainbows',
and Itsy Ditsy transforming herself,
from a downtrodden secretary to a stationery fairy.
Evelyn Carnate discovering her inner wolf,
with her 'gorlesque' version of Red Riding Hood.
Viola Paník literally channeling a Venezuelan goddess.
And once you've released your inner goddess,
you tend to look a little bit like this.
So this is what happens in my class.
However, the idea of women doing anything to do with their sexuality
does tend to make people go a little crazy.
I used to hire the basement in a pub,
and every week myself and 18 ladies
would make our way through the bar to our class,
past the men with their pints and their knowing looks.
The poor lambs were under the illusion
that our burlesque class had something to do with them.
This particular week -
(Laughter)
This particular week was striptease week,
and we teach the wondrous art of nipple tassel twirling.
(Laughter)
Once you get the technique it's easier than you think,
and soon the room is filled
with ecstatic squeals and raucous laughter.
Never was there a better time for a little joke to take place.
Filled with Dutch courage, one of the men from the upstairs bar
burst into the studio pretending to be looking for the bathroom.
Now I'm sure he was expecting his own orgy of lady-loving,
but what he actually got was 18 women so excited with their achievement
that they literally ran at him,
arms in the air cheering, boobs twirling, as if Joan of Arc had shouted 'charge'.
(Laughter)
The poor man - his face, the shock, the horror.
(Laughter)
Scooby-Doo style, he tried to make a swift exit,
stumbling backwards up the stairs, never to be seen again.
(Laughter)
You see, when a woman is enjoying her sexuality,
as opposed to being sexualized,
it doesn't look like the women in the magazine,
it looks a little bit more like this.
(Laughter)
And funnily enough, the majority of burlesque audiences
tend to be women, everyday women,
who come to see a woman just like you or just like a woman you know,
doing her thing and loving it.
Celebrating femininity on a physical and energetic level
without fear or shame,
it is magical, it's transformative, and it's revealing.
When a woman relaxes into her feminine energy,
she reveals something much more interesting than nipple tassels,
she reveals her true self.
And I would love for every woman to have this experience
regardless of whether she ever steps into a burlesque class or not.
Because when we can truly respect
the feminine and the masculine in ourselves,
that's when things are going to get interesting,
but we're not there yet.
We've been handing out masculine energy for a really long time,
and this isn't about battle of the sexes,
masculinity is gorgeous, it's wonderful and we need it.
But dining out on it alone is not enough anymore,
we are starving and we are out of balance.
And, of course, we're out of balance,
because we're under the illusion that one is more important than the other.
All the conversations
about what a woman should or should not be doing with her body,
all those disempowering opinions
come from a much bigger illusion,
the illusion that we're all under right now.
This illusion dictates to the majority of the world
that masculinity is strong and powerful and important,
whereas femininity is weak and passive,
and worth less than.
Buying into this illusion
results in disempowering and exploiting women and girls, and men
that are deemed to be too feminine,
our sexuality being distorted and owned,
our contribution to world-changing decisions
discredited or unheard,
and often if we want to get heard on a world-changing level,
we must become more masculine,
which robs the world further of what it needs.
When femininity is considered 'less than',
we have situations where women and girls
are being denied their humanity
from lack of education to forced marriages
to honour-based crimes to sex trafficking,
to name but a very few.
And one a lot in the press recently,
and that I'm very passionate about, is female genital cutting.
For those of you who don't know,
that involves cutting off parts or all of the clitoris,
and sewing up part or all of the vagina.
This is done at a very young age, and it's done to preserve virginity,
to prevent pleasure, which is feared would lead to promiscuity.
According to the UN,
at least 125 million women and girls have been mutilated in this way
in Africa and the Middle East since 1989.
So, maybe we should feel pleased of how evolved we are in the West.
However, all these things happen in the UK,
and we also engage in the same disempowering illusion
of women not being good enough.
Not being good enough looks like:
Being bombarded with images of size 0, photoshopped women,
endless diet blogs and fitness articles about how to fix ourselves,
pornography that promotes a totally unrealistic view of women,
what we should be doing, and allowing others to do to our bodies.
And according to a recent survey,
the average age a child now watches pornography in the UK is 11,
damaging images which shape how they feel about themselves,
and what's expected of them.
So, on the one hand we are campaigning to end FGM,
and on the other hand we have young girls as young as 13
asking for plastic surgery on their own vaginas,
because they don't think they're pretty enough.
This type of surgery has risen five-fold in the last ten years,
and is most popular of 18 to 24-year-olds in the UK.
So if ever there was a way to disempower a woman,
start young and attack the very thing that defines her womanhood.
So clearly buying into an illusion
that masculinity is more important than femininity
just doesn't work.
And the crazy thing is
we are all feminine, and we are all masculine.
To oppress one is to oppress us all.
So what if we were under a different illusion.
Once upon a time, according to myth and legend,
we reveled in our goddestry and our divine feminine.
I love the idea of goddesses,
because it blows the whole idea of what a woman is supposed to be like
out the window.
I mean there's even a goddess for metalwork.
And the divine feminine is the goddess in all of us,
symbolizing balance, healing, renewable, restoration.
Those are things we could really do with right now.
So, if we were celebrating, embracing, respecting femininity on a global scale,
what would it look like?
And this isn't a conversation about emasculating or dominating men,
this is a conversation about balance.
For me personally, when I'm in my masculine energy,
I benefit from focus, action, productivity,
but if I don't incorporate the listening, the intuition, the wisdom,
and the being of my feminine,
then I find quite often I'm achieving,
but achieving goals that don't necessarily serve me
or serve those around me.
My hunch is, if we were just to acknowledge our personal power,
in the masculine and the feminine,
it would make a huge difference in how we feel about ourselves,
and our future.
And I think the exciting thing is that it's already happening.
I'm not suggesting a burlesque class will save the world.
(Laughter)
Although if we all put on the sparkly nipple tassels,
I reckon we can give it a flipping good go.
(Laughter)
And men are good at nipple tasseling too
so don't knock it till you've tried it
(Laughter)
Yeah, it will actually seem weird for me
to even be talking about such serious topics with burlesque,
but we have to start with ourselves.
And the way to shatter a disempowering world illusion
is to the start with our personal ones.
In burlesque we get the opportunity to play with gender,
to have fun with those stereotypes, to re-explore sexuality,
and create illusions that empower us.
So for myself and the 4,500 women I've taught,
burlesque has been a really joyous way
to reconnect with our feminine power.
And I'm willing to bet,
the more proud, unashamed, self-expressed women there are in the world,
the better.
When a woman is empowered, she will empower all those around her.
And as the writer Rosemary Mahoney said,
if you can empower a woman, you can change the world.
So I would like to invite you to engage in a conversation
of what femininity is for you.
Redefine it for yourself.
And how embracing, respecting, and celebrating it,
in yourself and in others,
could make a difference in your life, in your community, and in the world.
At my school we say, 'Bring the glitter',
because femininity isn't frightening; it's fabulous.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)