Fat Bottom Cabaret

Edit:  My time with Fat Bottom has come and gone.  I wrote about it here.  I wish them the best of luck in the future.

I got an e-mail from Nikki M.  telling me that she is putting together a new cabaret act in Austin. Real singers, dancers and variety acts –  jugglers, hoopers (wait -are they called hoopers, hoopists, they who hoop?  Somebody tell me what’s correct!)  etc.  All size 14+.  It was perfect timing and I was totally excited about it.

I went to the first audition and the women I met were absolutely awesome. Fun, self-assured and talented. I got even more excited.

Nikki and I started talking about choreography and it was decided that I would be the choreographer for the group (woo freaking hoo!!!!).  Our first gig is in February and believe me when I tell you that I’ll be letting my blog readers know as soon as I have more details.

I’m so excited about this and of course I’ve been telling my friends.  Who am I kidding, I’ve been telling everyone I’ve ever met.  A couple people asked in some form or another if we were hoping  for fat fetishists as an audience and if I was excited about finding fetishists.

Um, no.

I’ve blogged about it before – of course I find it frustrating when people tell me that I’m the “perfect woman” except that they aren’t attracted to fat bodies, but  I find it creepy as shit when someone only wants me for the size of my body and doesn’t care about anything else.

So if I’m not hoping to find fat fetishists with this experience, what do I hope for?

First, I love performing (OH LOOK, IT’S A BIG FLAMING SACK OF DUH!)

There is so much lore out there about groups of women dancers cat-fighting and pushing each other down stairs, I’m really excited about the possibility of having camaraderie among a group of really cool women.

Third,  I hear a lot from other fat women that they don’t know many other fat women who love their bodies and think they’re sexy. Hell,  I don’t know many other fat women who love their bodies and think they’re sexy.  In fact, I don’t know many women of ANY size who love their bodies and think they’re sexy. I have a hard time c0ming up with women of ANY size who don’t tell me how they need to lose at least 10 pounds.

I think that what most people perceive as sexiness is actually confidence, and I wonder if the reason that we don’t see more women who love their bodies and  feel sexy is that our culture doesn’t tend to build up women’s confidence because marketers learned that if they could make us fear that we are too fat, look too old, are too short etc they could sell us more stuff.  And we bought into it.  When it comes to fat women, we live in a world where on top of the usual marketing BS, we’re told multiple times every day that we are unhealthy, unattractive, a drain on society, blah blah blah. Confidence isn’t just useful in being perceived as sexy, confidence is an asset in every part of your life.  So the idea of standing up with a group of fat women, dancing well, and being unapologetically confident and sexy is super exciting to me.

I guess that I feel that this Cabaret is an opportunity entertain and to offer another option.   An option for fat women to actually see women who look like them on stage NOT making self-deprecating  fat jokes and NOT talking about how they are struggling with their weight.  An option where  we could live in a culture where bodies, talent and sexiness come in different shapes and sizes.  I can’t wait!