The power of filth
Pushing back against body shaming and assaults on sexual freedom
‘Filth is humanizing, nutritious,” writes Brooklyn-based burlesque performer Fancy Feast in her bracingly honest and timely book of essays “Naked.” As someone who has held a range of jobs in the sex industry, from selling sex toys to answering phone sex lines, Feast is an authority on filth and argues persuasively that sex work has become vital in a time when sexual freedom is under attack in America by legislators, and sex education is woefully inadequate.
In “The Assorted Nudities,” Feast writes, “In my lifetime so far, the dominant cultural pendulum has swung away from freedom of sexual expression.” The facts appear to back up the author’s assertion. Numerous studies have shown that millennials and Gen Z are having less sex. With the recent book-banning fervor in red states, some can’t even read books in which queer and trans people exist. Feast points out that over half of states require that abstinence be the focus of sex education curriculum, despite studies that find teens who don’t get comprehensive sex ed have higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.
Then there are the absurdities of harsh indecency statutes, which Feast details in “Pasties.” Tennessee requires dancers to cover “everything from the nipple down to the lower crease of the breast … as well as an area on the body Johnny Law calls the ‘vortex,’ a teardrop shape that starts from the top of the butt crack and connects down to the bottom of each butt cheek.” A slipped pasty during a show can cost a performer thousands of dollars in fines.
In her behind-the-scenes look into the burlesque scene of the past decade in New York, Feast doesn’t glamorize. Anyone who’s performed stand-up, improv, or music will empathize with her descriptions of shows in front of tiny audiences of three or four people. So why does Feast persist? The good nights, of course.
“[W]hen you look up from your final pose of your act and your pupils shrink to adjust to the stage light, you can see that everyone in the room, the two hundred strangers who just saw you take off your clothes, people who don’t owe you [expletive], are all standing up to applaud you because what happened on stage shook the room, made them all feel something. … [I]t is worth every second of the work.”
The essays in which readers learn more about the author outside burlesque provide insight as to why she chose to pursue this particular art form. In “Doing Yourself,” she relives being diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a condition in which the ovaries produce an abnormal amount of male sex hormones, causing symptoms ranging from weight gain to infertility. “I told my parents that I never wanted to hear their input about my diet or my body ever again,” Feast writes. “This was proof that I was fat for reasons other than my sloth or my indulgence.” Later in the essay, she describes her work as an act of resistance against the body dysphoria she experienced as a result of PCOS symptoms:
“Whatever it means to glorify obesity, that’s what I’m doing for a living. Whatever that thing is that people are desperately afraid will happen if women do not put in the diligent work of hating themselves, that’s probably something I’m getting paid for this weekend.”
The most powerful essay in the book deals with Feast’s sexual assault while studying abroad in Prague during film school. Her fellow students were predominantly male, all the professors were men, and “20 percent of the student body elected to write and stage rape scenes for a completely content-neutral directing exercise.” When Feast brings up her concerns to the administrator, he replies that the school “was not in the business of censorship.” Sure enough, Feast is placed into an otherwise allmale group assigned to direct a film, during which she’s cast as the victim of a home invasion that leaves her bruised and shaken after the director asks for take after take of the violent encounter.
The male penchant for violence against women becomes a throughline that binds the essays, as she encounters numerous men who mistreat her on and off the job.
About her early sexual experiences, Feast writes, “Quickly, I learned … first base is a test, second base is going straight to his place when he’s sure no one else is around, and third base is whatever he’s been meaning to do to someone since seeing it on a tube site…” The threat of male violence underscores the importance of Feast’s work as sex educator, a therapist, and a social worker in countering societal acceptance of the abuse of women.
Feast’s journey might sound dark, but not all hope is lost. In the times when Feast experiences love, readers will likely experience relief. In one instance, a man she’s dating performs the simple act of washing Feast’s hair. “His touch transfixed me,” she writes. “I sewed the memory into me, a patch over a threadbare place.”
Such lovely writing makes “Naked” more than a book trying to destigmatize sex work and normalize all forms of sexual expression; it’s also a deeply human story of survivorship.