Fancy Feast Drops “Naked” a Backstage Pass Into Nightlife and Sex Work
From “Dildo Lady” to “Call Girl,” it’s a “triumphant punch-back at a culture that wants fat people to be self-hating or sexless.”
Brooklyn-based burlesque performer and sex educator, Fancy Feast releases their book of essays, “NAKED: On Sex Work, and Other Burlesques.”
A play on the world of burlesque and its artful removal of clothing, Fancy Feast’s “NAKED” is a hilariously transparent book on all things desire. Featuring cleverly named chapters such as “Dildo Lady” and “A Bag of Lube,” the book explores nightlife culture, sex work and our “obsessions with bodies, desire and even love.”
Offering a “backstage pass” into everything NSFW, Fancy’s essays also cross into an under-discussed-intersection: her take as a “fat woman who makes a living taking off her clothes.” From her earliest experience with fatphobia to her experiences “In the Field,” she leaves no secret untold.
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The opening page alone offers a new perspective on the monetization of desire. “I’m going to open my dress for you, just a little, because I’m nice, and because when I do, we will both get something out of it,” Fancy writes boldly. “I am the one on stage undressing, but I am not revealing myself to you,” as most assume of sex work. Instead, “you are revealing yourself to me,” she continues before detailing the mastery of mystique.
It’s a “triumphant punch-back at a culture that wants fat people to be self-hating or sexless,” as publisher Algonquin Books writes, and it’s a powerful read bound to rewire your perception of sex work, burlesque and the experiences of fat women.
Fancy writes:
“Fat women get two narratives in popular culture. They are either self-hating slobs who redeem themselves by losing weight, or they are self-hating slobs who ennoble themselves through a process of gaining confidence and empowerment, and that’s where the story ends. No consideration is given to what else might happen in the life of a fat woman. I hope this book provides a different kind of narrative, one that complicates and interrogates the grim, unimaginative world that people like me are expected to inhabit.”
In other news, Mia Khalifa dropped from Playboy after sharing Israel-Palestine comments.
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