Dea Birkett: Skilled artistes proud to express their femininity

Published on Wednesday 18 August 2010 15:19

Their tassels are twittering, their feathers quivering and their false eyelashes are all of a flutter. The burlesque performers of the Fringe are up in long-gloved arms about comments made in yesterday's Scotsman comparing them to strippers, inflatable sex dolls and even porn stars.

My tassels are twittering too. I hung up my fishnets several years ago, but I was once a showgirl and know what it's like to perform wearing little more than a sequined g-string and pasties (the small round glittery circles used to hide your nipples). It's nothing like pole dancing in a seedy bar in a darkened close. It's about being subversive and having fun. It's the most feminist art form a woman can engage in.

Before graduating to become a showgirl in the 1980s, I was studying at Edinburgh University parading through town in support of women's rights on a regular basis. I believe burlesque performers today are fighting many of the same prejudices I did back then as a student. Except while I wore dungarees, they sparkle splendidly in beaded bikini tops. The women who perform every night at the Assembly Rooms are an antidote to our sanitised size-zero culture. Flesh is a feminist issue and in burlesque there's no body tyranny; burlesque artistes come in all shapes and sizes. They can be very, very big and still considered very, very beautiful. My favourite performer is Dirty Martini. She struts her ample stuff on stage, revealing her stomach rolls, batwings and cellulite. She's all real woman. She's the sort of woman the peevish, puritanical anti-burlesque lobby would probably like to see hidden away under wraps and put on an obesity programme.

A burlesque show's purpose isn't to trick sad punters into paying a few pounds to see a semi-naked girl. Take a look around the audience at any burlesque show, not only on the Fringe. You wont find a single dirty old man with a newspaper on his lap. You'll see other women, enjoying seeing bodies like their own flawed, freckled, flabby ones proudly displayed on stage and celebrated as sexy.

It's liberating not only for the performers but for any of us looking on. It's also art. Many burlesque artistes are trained dancers, and the fact they make the fan dance look so easy is testament to their skills. Performers are rightly proud of who they are and what they do. Long may their defiant, feminist tassles twirl.