This Wednesday night, a rowdy group of students packed the Campus Center’s Multi-Purpose Room to watch naked women twirl tassels from their nipples. The Sex Workers’ Art Show, a cabaret-style performance that included spoken word, music, burlesque, and multi-media performance art, featured eight different performers with personal involvement or connection to the sex industry.
The show’s founder and director, Annie Oakley, introduced the show, explaining that she wanted to give sex workers a voice that society does not typically allow them.
“It’s okay to like naked ladies,” Oakley said. “I like naked ladies. Naked ladies make the world go round. The problem is they’re often only allowed to be naked ladies.”
The first performer, Julie Atlas Muz, the current Miss Exotic World, set the tone for the show, with her number “Breaking the Law.” Emerging in a skintight zebra-print outfit, but soon stripping to nothing at all, Muz, in the dance’s most provocative move, grabbed her labia and buttocks, squeezing them together to simulate speech.
Not all performances were so physical. For example, Kirk Read, writer and operator of a clinic run by and for sex workers, read his short story “Hello Babylon,” which told of a bible salesman who had hired Read as a prostitute. The audience laughed and cheered as Read recalled tying up the salesman and then tearing out the pages of the bible that condemn homosexuality and prostitution and laying them one-by-one on top of his customer.
Despite the hilarious lines the story was underscored by commentary on the links between religion and sex in American culture. In a poignant moment, Read described looking at the frayed edge of an American flag and realizing that it was akin to the place sex workers and others considered to be immoral occupy in American society.
“We’re that threadbare ridge where shit gets messy,” said Read.
Jean Pockrus ’08 met several of these performers through her involvement in radical organizing in the sex workers’ community. Through these connections, Pockrus and Lauren Pellegrino ’08 decided to bring the show to campus.
Both women, who first attempted to bring the show last year, put a great deal of personal work into the production. Although they had not raised enough money to cover this year’s show, they agreed to pay for the rest personally if audience donations did not make up the difference.
Fortunately, the audience gave enough to pay for the show.
“We wanted to bring it to Wesleyan because it wasn’t tilted towards a Wesleyan audience,” Pellegrino said. “It was interesting, because there were so many different types of sex workers. To see what Wesleyan students had as an image of a sex worker and to see which stereotypes were challenged; I was surprised.”
Although not necessarily a normal Wesleyan performance, some numbers in the show drew upon one of the campus’ favorite themes, the overtly political. In a dance entitled “Patriot Act,” burlesque dancer Miss Dirty Martini came onstage dressed as Lady Justice, bearing scales, a blindfold, and a floor-length American flag print dress with a bustier on top, while Lee Greenwood’s “Proud To Be An American” played in the background. She eventually dropped the scales, revealing them to be filled with money, and took off her clothes with money pouring from beneath them. Martini ended the number by stuffing a bill into her mouth and then pulling a string of bills from her buttocks.
Other performers used their piece to comment on the links between sex and violence. C. Snatch Z. came onstage carrying a life-like dildo as a gun, sucked on it in silence for several seconds, and then marched around the stage in an army print shirt. To conclude the piece, Z. pinned paper hearts and a red-lettered sign reading, “Don’t shoot,” to her chest as the same words flashed on a screen behind her.
Reginal Lamar, the only African-American in the show, offered a unique perspective on the role that race plays in his job. Playing softly on a piano, Lamar pondered the realities of working as an African-American male prostitute.
“You have to come to terms with a kind of violent masculinity,” Lamar said.
Lamar went on to play a song he had written about the brutal murder of an unarmed African-American man in New York City by police.
Perhaps most shocking, however, was Julie Atlas Muz’s second number, in which, completely nude, she drank from two wine glasses and then refilled them onstage with her own urine.
Further highlights included burlesque dancer, Jo Welden, teaching an audience member to dance and leading her in taking off her shirt and swinging tassels from her breasts. Writer Steven Elliot read a passage from his book, which detailed the heroin-charged year he spent dancing as a “go-go boy” in a Chicago bar.
Overall, the show offered a nuanced look at the lives of sex workers and the way in which their jobs interact with other sectors of American culture.
Audience reactions were generally positive, though students were certainly bemused.
“It was really weird and wacky, but in a good way,” said Julie Lam ’09. “It was really interesting.”
“I’ve been interested in how sex workers actually lived behind closed doors, and I think that the performers really had a strong voice and a lot to say for themselves,” said Christie Kontopidis ’10. “It was a really diverse show. I admire the lack of fear with which these artists either read or danced or sang to express their marginalization.”
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