Naked: On Sex, Work, and Other Burlesques is an essay collection and memoir by veteran burlesque performer Fancy Feast, and draws on her broad and rich experiences to create a thoughtful narrative that carries valuable insights for both the burlesque virgins and stalwarts of the profession. The sheer breadth of anecdotes Feast is able to draw upon in this memoir is endlessly impressive, from being a fat theatre kid to working a sex shop, hosting orgies to hosting the Long Island Garlic Festival. All this is compounded by the unique lens of her day job as a social worker, which colors her already vibrant stories with her additional knowledge, offering fresh meaning to her own experiences.
Feast offers numerous insights across her twelve essays, performing a balancing act of poignancy and humor, each covering a different aspect of her career as a modern Renaissance woman. Taking us through a vivid thread of Feast’s earliest days finding her calling as a burlesque performer in “The Assorted Nudities” and celebrating strange performance behavior in “Pasties” and unique audiences in “Mistress of Ceremonies,” Feast also delves into serious topics such as sexual abuse as in “Yes/No/Maybe.” Her honesty is a testimony to the authenticity that is exuded across the page, and her insights do not come across as confessional, pent up in shame as memoirs often risk, but as opportunities to reflect.
In amongst engaging and entertaining accounts of life as a burlesque performer, Feast provides moments of education, as in “FAQ” where she outlines commonly asked questions to burlesque performers, and “Doing Yourself” where she ruminates on the health of her past relationships. Finding learning in positive and negative life experiences, Feast uses these multiple opportunities to reflect on the nature of sex, relationships and work in the US. In “Dildo Lady” she provides impassioned critiques of sex education and connects her experiences of abuse in customer service to wider structural deficits. Her willingness to delve into traumatizing memories and difficult circumstances allows for a greater level of depth than gossip and shows gone wrong. Her goal to make sex both educational and fun reveals compassion rather than anger. For a debut writer, Feast understands what she wants to achieve with her memoir with clarity and self-assuredness.
It is popular nowadays for essayists to engage in talk of stigma and sex, and many a memoir is written by those working in sexualized industries to offer their insights to the public. What sets Feast apart from many others in this area is her reverence for her fellow performers which creates a sense of full and healing community that demonstrates a real love for her craft and an uplifting of her profession. Feast namedrops performers throughout her essays, and more than once we risk enchantment by the description of a particular performer’s piece, breaking away from reading to search for an underground star. Her love for other burlesque performers presents Feast as a performers’ performer, and encourages the us to view her insights on the craft as engaged and knowledgeable—her stories can be read in the comfort that this is someone who knows what they’re talking about.
For those of us for whom burlesque is not a subject they know much about, Naked breaks the mold of what is generally understood about the art form. Visually exciting essays such as “Work Nights” and “Pasties” take us beyond the typical Dita von Teese and Cell Block Tango renditions of burlesque we’ve come to expect in US popular culture. The opening essay, “On Assorted Nudities” serves as a type of manifesto for a broadening of the profession as Feast reflects on nudity—political, anarchic, grotesque, dramatic—exposing us to ideas of burlesque that challenge the notion that all burlesque is inherently and purely a sexual impulse. Whilst many of Feast’s essays begin with sex, they rarely end with it, often taking us on a journey that starts with the lure of lasciviousness and ends with a lesson.
At a time when the nightlife scene in various cities is veritably dying, bars are closing and performers are unable to pay rent, memoirs like Feast’s are an important and powerful reminder of what we risk losing. Her discussions of the intricacies of life as a burlesque performer, working in and around sex, and the reflection she offers on this life within America’s purity culture, are ones we can all learn from.
Naked: On Sex, Work, and Other Burlesques, by Fancy Feast. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books, October 2023. 256 pages. $18.99, paper.
Atlanta Tsiaoukkas is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge researching fin-de-siècle constructions of girlhood in the context of queer and feminist histories. She is interested in histories of sexuality, particularly lesbian and queer femme narratives of childhood and girlhood.
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