Preview: Wild Card Kitty

Of course. She would look like that, all tumbling multicoloured curls escaping from a sexy up-do, perfect red cupid's bow lips, hourglass figure and an extra helping of sass. The only thing missing is an accompanying saxophone riff as she sashays over to the table.

Screen siren looks she might have, but 25-year-old Kitty ditches the air of sophistication and fizzes over with enthusiasm as she talks about her act.

"I have no sense of shame and have learnt to laugh at myself. I'm trying to say something artistically. Burlesque is about vanity, youth, beauty, sexual identity, stereotypes and black humour, so it's ideal for me. I'm going for it 100 per cent until I fail spectacularly or succeed."

So far Kitty has been succeeding, establishing herself as a hit on the burlesque scene in Scotland with a monthly residence at Edinburgh's Ghillie-Dhu and five-star Fringe reviews for the cabaret show she produced at the city's Bongo Club.

She has also performed at Miss Exotic World in Las Vegas in 2008 and 2009 and in New York – now renamed the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Back in Britain, her first short film, Girl, in which she starred and directed, was shown at the London Independent Film Festival last month.

"My work is more about the media and sexual identity as you get older and you journey into adulthood. It's about women choosing to do it for themselves, taking control of their own identity and, yes, I'm allowing you to look at my body, but I'm not allowing myself to be objectified. It's a difficult line to walk because you can turn yourself into that which you hate," she says.

That's all very well but, for all her sexual politics, doesn't Kitty just get men turning up to see her strip? "No, the ratio is about 70 to 80 per cent women. If men want tits and ass they go to a strip bar. Burlesque is stripping too, but there's a theatricality, a coyness about presenting yourself as a sexual being. As an artist, I'm trying to hold a mirror up to myself, and being so open and honest can be controversial."

Kitty has an MA in fine art and a BA in tapestry, and her burlesque persona grew out of her art-school background and course work in which she explored performance.

You might not expect a burlesque artist to be qualified in embroidery, but it comes in handy for sewing feathers and rhinestones on to her razzle-dazzle costumes.

Kitty even did a course in corset-making and creates her own pasties – nipple covers, to the uninitiated. "I sit and watch Mad Men and sew rhinestones onthe nipple covers for hours on end. My grandma taught me to sew."

As well as her grandmother, Kitty's influences include US burlesque stars of the 1950s such as Blaze Starr and Dixie Evans. "At the Vegas conventions all the original performers turn up with their grandkids and tell you crazy stories about their experiences on the road, what they did to get by. Little old ladies who will say, 'I used to go out with John Wayne.'

"And there's Tempest Storm, who went out with Elvis and is still performing. I had a tassel-twirling lesson from Tura Satana, who starred in Russ Meyer's 1965 cult film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, who can reach speeds of 100 miles an hour. These women have still got it. You don't have to be in your 20s."

And if you fancy being a part of the burlesque scene yourself, Kitty is planning confidence classes using burlesque as a base. "There's a lack of confidence in Scottish women. They're not allowed to do well and think above their station. But performance brings self-confidence."

And with that, she shimmies off to sew more sequins on her pasties.

Wild Card Kitty is performing The Cat's Meow at Ghillie-Dhu, Edinburgh, at 8.30pm on Thursday. Her Fringe show, Your Little Princess, is at Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh, in August

This article was first published in The Scotland on Sunday, May 2, 2010