Solo Mother

What would you do to reclaim your femininity?

by christina on July 20th, 2008

There’s an article in the Washington Post today that made me chuckle. A Va Va Voom BOOM! Burlesque is back, baybee. And it’s hetting up significant portions of my home town.

I took a walk on Friday night with a friend, not following the historic tour of the U Street corridor, persay, but glad enough to stop and read the signs, gawk at Duke Ellington’s childhood home, at the hep cat clubs where all the most amazing people used to play; marvel at the sites of once-elegant hotels and businesses that had catered to the folks who lived in that part of town during the segregated years. I love the history of the U Street corridor, though I don’t know as I’d ever be able to imagine what it must have been like then, running on the border between black and white, mingling on that sliver of a strip, in a common love of music or a thrill of the forbidden. I try. I just can’t imagine it. And now, in the ‘Aughts Part Deux’, in this first decade beyond Y2K, we have a revival of a dance that scandalized the world nearly 100 years ago…

I wait, cynically, for someone in my home town to cry foul! at the revival of burlesque, though I confess I’ve been to one of the places mentioned in the article, and witnessed a burlesque show, there.

It seemed in good, clean fun. I know! How could I say such a thing! But the women on stage were fully in control of their bodies, their space, and their sense of humor. Nothing was lewd–if anything, the acts were a wink and a nod to what seems to have been lost in this age of in your face sexuality. There’s a sense of timing, of savoring what’s worth waiting for. A sense of not giving away the good stuff on the cheap. A sense of beauty in a woman’s body, however it comes… slim or stretch marked or rolling with an abundance of flesh. If you read the article, you’ll hear a familiar thread running through these womens’ motivations. They have claimed something for their own, made it powerful, made it fresh, made it wonderful. What’s wrong with that?

I would never take a burlesque class. I’m too self-conscious in public to withstand such a shedding of perceived dignity. But perhaps I get a bit of that sense of value, of myself as a beautiful, joyful, worthy human being, when I dance… especially belly dancing, as I do it just for me, or in the company of women, and don’t need a man to validate my worth.

What do you do, single mothers, to keep yourselves alive and glorious in this too-serious age?

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