It’s strange posting photos of me in a dress now 😅 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ This shot was taken by @nina_photography___ at @theyardtheatre two years ago when I had finished the @sohotheatre cabaret lab and was starting work on a show about the relationship I have with my body. An East Asian body that has been hyper-sexualised and stereotyped; a white-passing body that makes me question whether I'm should make art about my race; a body that to some suggests my gender and a body that felt like it was restricting me because it was small and for so long all I got called was ‘cute’. 'Cute' was submissive without my say so. 'Cute' gave me no power or sexual autonomy and drag was a way to reclaim that. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ However, the first acts I made - including this - I now see were still based on a limited view of what ‘sexy’ is. I was ‘performing’ sexy for others as opposed to feeling myself. I was replicating what I had been taught; a limiting, safe, socially acceptable, largely heterosexual and media reinforced view of what a person with a body and genitals like mine ‘should’ perform in order to be ‘desirable’. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Dresses are LUSH. I love lace and suspenders on other bodies. But after a couple of years of doing drag (and taking time to interrogate how my queerness feeds into that); I’ve realised that I don’t like how ‘femme clothes’ feel on my own body = BIG surprise. Another outcome I didn’t expect from my lockdown exploration into my queer body was to PROPERLY be at peace with its growing size, PROPERLY recondition my fat-phobic thoughts. I can’t articulate it yet but I feel embracing queerness FULLY goes hand in hand with embracing bodies of all sizes. The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor is a 👌 book re: this, talking about how to be free we must move from supportive statements of body positivity to looking inwards and practising radical self love.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ And as for cute? A post won’t cover that. Stay tuned for the novel 😂