Bonnie's Bodacious Beginnings in Burlesque

Bonnie Bodacious shares a story that’s personal, funny, and raw—a journey from fear to unapologetic magnificence. Her reflections on starting burlesque, building body confidence, and stepping into performance offer inspiration for anyone curious about burlesque in Atlanta or wondering what it’s like to begin this art form.

When I first began classes, I was overwhelmingly anxious to do burlesque “correctly.” I couldn’t wait to start, but I was also terrified. It made it a bit easier to dress for some sort of role when I showed up for the first night of class. I unironically ordered a leotard, tights, gauzy wrap skirt, and leg warmers and showed up trying to look like I belonged on the set of my favorite eighties TV show, Fame.

The first class I took was Burlesque Level 1 with Roula Roulette. The youngest of the three owners of the school (at that time) and leaders of the troupe (along with Ursula Undress and Talloolah Love), Roula has made teaching beginning burlesque a ministry. Her students in the years since I began have coined the term “Titty Church” to describe any class Roula teaches, because she takes you on a spiritual and soulful journey in all her classes, but especially with wide-eyed beginners, no matter their age or shape or experience level. It’s never just about the bumping and grinding, learning to do a perky princess walk or a sultry drag step. Roula begins by connecting you to your body, all of it. The bits you like the least are not tolerated, but celebrated.

It’s scary, it’s awkward, and there’s lots of floor staring in the beginning. But her enthusiasm and joy in her own ample and vivacious and sexy flesh is contagious. The first time she tells you to stop apologizing for taking up space, the first time she gets you to say it out loud, and then shout it in unison, it feels like the most obvious thing in the world.

It was standing in Roula’s class, accepting her challenge to look myself in the eyes in the studio mirrors, that I recognized how much of my behavior to that point had been an apology to the world for existing in shapes and sounds and movement that were not approved by some unseen tribunal. Even in the socially nude spaces I’d grown to love in the year before discovering burlesque, I had still shrunk myself at times, still told myself it was enough to be there, that I shouldn’t be too loud about it. And that was and is Roula’s gift to me and to every student who screws up the courage to walk into her class and give themselves to the experience she offers. That is the foundation of authentic burlesque. Dance steps are a storytelling medium. Believing that the story is worth telling must come first.

Six years since my first appearance at an Atlanta School of Burlesque recital, I am certain that my presence on stage is welcome, that the audience is worthy of what I’m offering, and that I am worthy of their attention and admiration. While I love my body post-surgery, I’ve gained back every pound that was removed, and I’m a plus-size burlesque performer.

My ass is large, my thighs jiggle and dimple and rub together, my upper arms shake and swing, body harnesses get lost a bit in the bra rolls on my back. Sometimes my ankles swell, and I have to be mindful of that when I choose performance shoes. But I am also fucking magnificent. I’m desirable and sexy. When I deliberately make my body shake and jiggle on stage, the audience responds with roars of appreciation (and frequently with raining cash).

So much of burlesque is attitude of movement. Fear is contagious, and I followed the same arc most performers follow. When you begin, you are certain that the audience will be bored if you stop moving, so you don’t. You fill every beat with a shimmy or a shake or a step ball change or a twirl. You lean on props, fans, boas, gloves to hold your audience enthralled. But, gradually, the more you perform, the more you see more seasoned performers, and the more you realize that so much of good burlesque is in how you claim your power on stage. Some of the most arresting performers in the world are masters of being still, of holding the audience’s gaze and communicating that their mere presence, the simplest reveal, is a gift of immeasurable value, and that they know their value, and that the audience is damn lucky to see them.

This kind of confidence is not at all related to whether their body is “commercially acceptable”—that is, thin and white with big perky boobs. I have seen performers of all shapes and races hold an audience completely rapt with stillness, with anticipation, with good face, with a masterful eye-fucking. And I’ve seen performers with commercially acceptable bodies fall painfully flat, their fear infecting everyone in sight and leaving the audience squirming and uncomfortable. The “it” factor is entirely internal.

Burlesque karaoke is an improv event. It’s a karaoke party, kind of like any other, except that folks who sign up to sing get paired with a burlesque performer who shows up on stage in a random costume. The burlesquer has no idea to what song they are performing until the singer starts singing.

Up to this point, I’d not yet done a solo number, nor had I stripped on stage. I had a lot of ideas, and I had commissioned my first full burlesque costume for what later became my first signature act, but to that point I had performed only in group choreography, which was sexy but which did not actually involve striptease. I was taking as many classes as I could, but the idea of choreographing a number was overwhelming.

Initially, when Ursula asked me if I could help out with burlesque karaoke, I’d responded that I could be the stage kitten again. I’ll never forget Ursula’s text response. “Nope, you’re strippin.” I remember staring at the text, my heart quickening. I’d attended burlesque karaoke. I knew it was improv, that there was no need to choreograph anything. Comedy and absurdity were encouraged. I didn’t have to take it seriously. It was actually probably the best way for me to cross that threshold, and I’m grateful that Ursula nudged me across that line. I didn’t want to let her down, and I figured, Hey, it’s a convention on a Saturday night. How many people will actually show up? Much less sober?

And so, after handling my kittening duties Friday quite professionally, and enjoying the convention’s classes and sights and vendor hall on Saturday, all while staying mostly sober, I retired to our suite to get ready to take the stage. I’d been told to bring three costumes and that I’d definitely use at least two of them, with the third in case the party was going well.

Almost five years later, I don’t recall if I used two or three costumes. I just recall the first one. Kisa von Teasa, an experienced performer from Knoxville and a leader in a Knoxville-based troupe, was in town. I was in awe of them. They were a bit younger than me but, like Ursula and Talloolah, they had been doing this long enough that they exuded complete confidence. I don’t know who did the lineup, but they were before me in the first act. Just prior to call time, I nervously struggled to get into my first costume. Although I don’t recall specifics, I do remember the usual challenges of professional fishnets cut to be thigh highs that lift the butt, some sort of body harness, taping my labia to prevent any slipping, applying my pasties inexpertly (as I’d not needed them prior to that), cutting strips of the large roll of carpet tape I’d bought for the purpose, making sure my stage makeup was just so in less-than-perfect light, that my outer layer, the parts I was peeling, laid just right.

I was ready early so I got to see Kisa’s whole act. Contrary to my assumption that this would not be a heavily attended event, it turns out convention goers love burlesque karaoke. The room was packed with a few hundred eager patrons. It was standing room only at the back and in the crowded doorways. The karaoke singer was in one corner of the stage. When the music began, Kisa ascended the stairs with studied disinterest, appearing to notice the audience only when they began to catcall and cheer for them.

They rolled their eyes. In one hand was a bag of Doritos, in the other a huge Slurpee. For the entire song Kisa toyed with the audience, not stripping at all, simply eating Doritos, giving them looks of contempt, striking poses in a skintight onesie, and then unceremoniously taking big slurping gulps of the Slurpee.

They took their time, crunching slowly, making eye contact with audience members. The room was on fire with appreciation for how they were owning everyone with the mere gift of their presence. They never even stripped. They made everyone grateful for the mere opportunity to watch this magnificent creature eat Doritos and drink a Slurpee. It was a boss-ass-bitch move, and I was completely shook. This person owned the entire room unapologetically while literally giving them nothing but actual crumbs, and still they thanked them. When they left the stage, the room erupted into a standing ovation. I stepped aside to let them come down the stairs off the side of the stage, wide eyed and shaking in my shoes. Kisa is a lovely and kind person. They broke their persona for just a moment to give me an encouraging grin and to tell me I was going to kill it. I’m sure I gave them a faltering nod in return, but inside I was a mess.

I had to follow that?

I’d barely stripped for my husband before (doing striptease for an audience and being naked at a nude beach are very different things, after all), and now there were a few hundred people clamoring for me to take it all off to a song I might have never heard, and to do it without apology or reservation.

I swallowed, my mouth a desert. Oliver announced the next singer, and the person took the stage. I didn’t know them, and I had no idea what was to come. I just knew I had been taking classes on burlesque movement for almost eighteen months. I knew I could move to a beat. I knew, intellectually, that I could do this, and probably do it well, or at least adequately, but could I meet this level of expectation right now? Lola had danced before Kisa, and while her performance had been more typical in terms of movement and striptease, it had been totally polished. You’d never have known that it wasn’t a choreographed number. I knew that if I didn’t push through it, I’d crumble under the certainty that I was going to disappoint a crowd that had been professionally primed.

And so the song was announced. I had no idea what it was, and the music started. I took slow, deliberate steps, climbing the stairs, trying to imbue my entire body with a take-no-prisoners attitude. I heard Roula in my head, telling me not to apologize for taking up space. I had turned my back to strike a pose, planning to coquettishly begin engaging the audience over my shoulder, when the music suddenly stopped. It was the wrong song. There was a technical glitch, rustling and hushed conversations from the table where Oliver was running things. The singer was off to the side of the stage, head down next to Oliver, looking at his screen, and I was alone.

Someone coughed. I heard people talking. Folks were getting up, and others were coming in. I did my best to become a stage prop, grateful beyond belief that my back was to the audience so they didn’t have to see my lower lip trembling. I could feel my legs quaking to the same internal thrum, but I tried my best to keep them still. The moments dragged on for what felt like minutes but probably weren’t. As my body quivered in anticipation, all the moments that had led to my being in that spot, in that space, in that time, washed over me.

I was a long way from the twentysomething woman who would never take her bra off in front of anyone out of embarrassment about how her breasts looked. I was miles from the thirtysomething woman who had lived in Spanx and sweated every inch of flesh that rolled under my clothing and “ruined” my silhouette despite the constricting and sweaty shapewear. I was a forty-five-year-old woman with fire-engine-red hair shaved on one side, full pouty glitter-red lips, and a plan to take off my clothes in front of a few hundred strangers (and some friends and my spouse) in the expectation that this would elicit delight and applause. I was a forty-five-year-old woman who was in the process of falling in love with myself and with my body, both the new shape of it and the old and stubborn jiggle and dimples of it too. I was a forty-five-year-old woman who was striving to stop apologizing for taking up space. I was ready, in fact, to take up all the space with all my magnificence. Because, damn it, I was, I am, magnificent.

My body is juicy and warm and beautiful and fun and absurd. My skin had experienced the headiness of breathing the outdoor air and now, now I was going to show this huge room full of people that my body was and is worthy of all the things, not least of all their admiration and adulation. I slowed my breathing, closed my eyes, and when the music finally began in earnest, so did I.

Want more of Bonnie’s story? Pick up her book, Bonnie Bodacious: From the Courtroom to the Cabaret – An Ecdysiast’s Tale, available now on Amazon

Offstage, Bonnie also operates Roam 2 Renew Travel Agency, helping travelers recharge, renew, and experience the world with the same spirit of curiosity and joy she brings to the stage.