PLAZA DE ARMAS
Glitter Political
Outlawing the tease
By JADE ESTEBAN ESTRADA
January 10, 2013
The backstage window of the opulent Gibson Guitar Lounge at Maggie Mae's provides a bird’s-eye view of the holiday revelers below listlessly searching for a transitory home before last call on Austin's famed Sixth Street. Three members of the Jigglewatts Burlesque Revue sit serenely around the dressing room enjoying each other’s company with no apparent sign of haste.
Coco Lectric, Goldie Candela and Ruby Joule just completed 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. performances of Tease the Season. It's about 1:30 a.m. when the topic of San Antonio's new “underboob” ordinance shimmies its way into an already spirited conversation.
The discourse is, of course, much calmer than it might have been only a decade ago. Social media has allowed many of the more outspoken burlesque community members to indulge in personal rants almost as soon as the news hit the street that San Antonio’s City Council had passed an ordinance making it illegal for women to perform in pasties – the traditional hallmark of burlesque – unless they’re working at a registered “sexually oriented business.” (That designation is shorthanded, somewhat hilariously, as SOB.)
Lectric is internationally known for her tassel-twirling capabilities, a skill I'd only witnessed recently.
“The thing is...San Antonio is incredibly conservative...sexually,” Lectric says as she slowly gathers costumes of lace and silk and tucks them back into her garment bag. “Which makes all of the strip clubs very popular. Which makes all the strip clubs work in San Antonio.”
When I ask what she means by “work,” she sighs dramatically. Her jet-black hair accentuates her severe bangs, a style originally made famous by burlesque icon Bettie Page.
“Anywhere that you have a society that is incredibly conservative and restrictive, you have taboo...you have at least of quarter of the population that is willing to spend money to get out there."
When Lectric performs for an audience, she speaks in a girlish and breathy croon. This subject, however, makes her voice ping with a crisp articulation.
“Honestly? I credit my Catholic upbringing for all kinds of my arousal, OK?”
Her right eyebrow arches on the word “arousal.”
“The idea that you're doing something a little bit naughty...the idea that you're doing something a little bit risque...gives you a little bit of that boost.” Her right shoulder pushes forward and her eyes bat slowly when she says the word "boost. It gives you a little bit of that adrenaline. That's what makes things scary. That's what makes things supernatural. All of a sudden people want to spend money for that shit...and they do.”
Her index finger rises.
“But the thing is – burlesque is not that thing.”
A murmur of approval from her colleagues as I realize I've just been narratively teased.
“Strip clubs,” she continues, “are that thing. You can pay a girl twenty dollars to jump on your dick. Twenty dollars.” She bounces her hand as if dribbling a basketball. “For a whole song.”
In true burlesque, on the other hand, there is absolutely no contact between performer and audience.
“It's a theatrical situation. It's trained performers, trained dancers, trained singers, trained emcees, trained actors. You don't get to treat theatrical performers the same way that you treat strippers,” she says as she picks up a long red glove from the seat next to her, wraps it three times, then places it in her bag.
“I'll be honest,” she says, “I've worked in a lot of strip clubs in San Antonio and there used to be a very strict 3-foot law. You didn't touch [the dancers]. [The clients] didn't touch you. You did your thing. You gave a beautiful private dance. You were teasing. You were arousing. It was beautiful – but they didn't touch you. You didn't sit on their lap. They didn't touch your hips.”
Only after the private dance was performed and her clothes were put back on was the dancer permitted to sit on the client's lap.
“Now that everyone is a little deeper in debt, now that everybody's a little bit more broke...they're gonna try to get their bang for their buck. And they don't have the [security] in the strip clubs to protect the girls. It's not about tease anymore,” Lectric says.
Talk turns to what the ordinance could mean for SA’s fledgling burlesque scene.
"We've tried to encourage them all this time,” Joule says. “We don't want them to be shut down. They're just now getting their wings under them.”
I ask them to name local burlesque artists they admire.
“Jasper St. James, who is a brilliant boylesque performer!” Joule says with enthusiasm. “We don't have boylesque performers like that in Austin."
She also mentions Rose Muñoz, who created the Devil Bunnies and produces Bite Fest, which has donated proceeds to the San Antonio Food Bank.
“We're fighting the good fight in Texas,” Lectric says.
“It's going to be the domino effect – just like venues. Once one town in Texas gives into the fear then the rest of Texas is gonna be like, 'Oh, you mean we can fuck up those strong women some more?' Because that's what it's all about. We aren’t even getting health care in this state.”
Lectric's repertoire includes a number performed to George Michael's 1990 single Freedom ’90, a not-so-subtle nod to birth control and the reproductive-rights movement.
“When you're dealing with San Antonio, the Virgin Mary is the symbol of what women should be,” Lectric says. “And I'm sorry, but in San Antonio we have some real problems with teen pregnancy. We have a real problem with unwed mothers. We have a real problem with single mothers who can't support their own children.”
Joule, chuckling, finds some amusement in the ordinance.
“It's so specifically...weird ...'You cannot show from here...to here...,'” she intones like a 1950s radio announcer.
A native of Seguin, Lectric wanted to bring classic burlesque to SA so she started performing here in 2006.
“I was almost arrested a couple of times for showing pasties on the River Walk,” she says. “There was a news segment that I was in while we were trying to open a burlesque club off the River Walk in 2009. And it didn't work out as one might imagine.”
The Blackstone was the venue.
“They were putting millions of dollars into this beautiful space. For political issues the deal didn't go through and the investors pulled out,” she says.
“They really did make it look dirty...they put me in slow motion just like you see on the local news... the slow-motion video of the convicts coming out. They had me doing a stocking peel in slow motion looking seductive and scary – at lunchtime news.”
Lectric becomes pensive for a few moments then looks up softly, undeterred.
“If you want to be afraid of something, that's fair enough, be afraid of the strip clubs,” she says. “They haven't been able to shut down the strip clubs. The strip clubs have money...they have political power ... they have the cops on their side in a lot of different ways.”
“I was just disappointed in San Antonio,” Joule says. “I felt like it must be a matter of miscommunication really...that these politicians in San Antonio must not really understand what burlesque really is and what the goal of it is.
“I hope there will be...and I know this is a pie-in-the-sky kind of hope – a distinction ... between a business, a machine, an industry like strip clubs, and burlesque. What we're doing, what our intention is, is really not the same thing at all. It's no judgment against one or the other. It's just totally different. It's apples to oranges.”
Lectric stands by her initial impulse when she first heard of the ban on Facebook.
"My first thought was, 'You know what? I'm gonna go over there ... I'm gonna come into this town ... I'm gonna wear my pasties..."
Her eyes squint with determination.
"I'm gonna do a twirl ... "
Her lashes, perfect.
" ... and I'm gonna get arrested," she says.
Her lips, deep red.
“And I'm OK with that."
