This piece originally appeared here.

Lately my social media feeds (and my life) have been filled, packed even, with musings, strife, drama, rants, general laments, and intense debates and discussions over the notion of community. And it’s not isolated to one area of the country – I’m seeing these take place across the greater US – from small towns with a fledgling scene to metropolises with hundreds of performers.

In muggledom I’ve watched these debates hash out over and over again, especially in areas affecting fandom, nerdery, and games.  Usually the discussions have been sparked over “well meaning” (haha) warnings over the rise of “fake geek girls” or the lament of the “increasing casualization” of games or particular scenes. Ninety percent of the time the person sparking the discussion is someone who believes themselves to be the “core” of the community – a representative of the scene at large, and its no coincidence that these folks are often the most visible and the most homogenous. In areas of geek culture we see it over and over again – heterosexual, white, upper middle class males, in their 20s to 30s, standing up to speak “for the community” and “defend it” against the incalculable threats its facing.

In my muggle life as a content creator and critic of nerd culture and geekdom, I’ve said, time and time again that we don’t need gatekeepers. And I haven’t been the only one who has been quick to point out that the self-appointed gatekeepers and spokespeople for these communities are ignoring the broader swath of the people they purport to speak for.

When talking about community a “gatekeeper” is someone who actively seeks to shut others out. To build up barriers around that community and common space rather than fostering an open and inviting exchange. I find that gatekeepers directly contradict the notion of community entirely. They’re not leaders (though they’ll tell you they are), they’re not paragons of their artform, and they’re certainly not direct representations of the people they claim to speak for.

In fact, the point of community is inclusion. The word itself has roots in “commonness” and “fellowship.” You know, “we’re all in this together.”

And we are - when I think of the many people I’ve met over my short burlesque and performing career, so many of them are people who do or did live on the periphery of society. People who have been marginalized by their gender, race, sexuality, economic status, education level, but who have all found each other and their voices and taken their power back through the medium of being together on stage.

In the world of games, geekery, and fandom, it certainly seems like our communities are exploding – getting bigger – and they may be. But the self-appointed gatekeepers, those who warn about the “fakes” aren’t actually paying attention to the size, they’re getting scared off by the fact that the least served members of those communities are gaining more ground and more visibility. David Gaider of Bioware addressed these issues directly in his 2013 GDC presentation “Sex & Videogames” saying: “”If you’re part of a group that’s being catered to, you believe that’s the way it should be. ‘It’s always been that way, why would that be a problem for anyone?’” Gaider went on to explain that serving women, POC, queers, and other underserved members of our communities and consumer bases, only push our respective mediums forward.

I see parallels between the debates about geekdom and those taking place surrounding burlesque across the country. While burlesquers aren’t generally going after “fake burlyqueens” the theme of exclusion – of an old guard supposedly “protecting” the art from interlopers or those who don’t “truly understand or respect what it means to be a geek performer” (see what I did there?) are beginning to sound like a familiar refrain whenever they cross my desk. In burlesque we see, time and time again, the playout of the following debates: hobbyist versus professional; feminist versus not-feminist; classic versus neo; high art versus low; etc… We see treatises on “paying dues,” on how to create or not create, or what even really counts as burlesque.

In the many cities and scenes that I’ve interacted with, including my own, I’ve butt up against the entitlement culture that comes with wanting to be a “gatekeeper” to a scene and the damage that active exclusion has on that scene:

“Don’t they know who I am?;” “Well there’s nothing really out there;” “I don’t know why people book her;” “oh there’s a scene there, but they’re not as good as us” etc…

It never cease to shock me when I hear these statements or when I see people from this artform – an art populated largely by marginalized individuals – seeking to marginalize others. I cannot imagine clinging to something that means so much to me, that welcomed me, that helped me SURVIVE, and saying: “no this is just mine now. It’s mine and not yours, it helped me but it can’t help you. It’s not for you.” (and holy shit if you feel like I ever did this to you I don’t think I can apologize enough).

I know there are those who look at their own exploding (or imploding) scene and feel like they’re getting lost in the shuffle. Others find that growth has fostered cliqueyness and playground rules and drama because everyone’s fighting for an increasingly small part of the pie or conflating interpersonal issues with the dynamic of the community at large.

Certainly no burgeoning community is without it’s growing pains – especially in the arts. And I’m sure it’s easy, when you feel you’ve helped build a community and carved a niche for yourself to feel ownership over that. It’s natural even to feel fear when it starts to take a shape you don’t recognize. But that’s the nature of community or of life even – these are evolving, changing, vibrant entities. It’s not productive for community to stagnate.

While I concede that it’s frustrating to start to feel like a drone after spending so much time as  a queen bee, sometimes the conflicts I see playing out are not about community (the greater good) at all, but rather about egos and deeply personal conflicts that should be settled privately rather than in public, backstage, or on social media.

Producers body-shaming their performers, cultural appropriation, addiction, creepers with cameras, rehearsal spaces getting shut down - these are community issues. “So & So didn’t give me a part in her show” or “XX blew my boyfriend backstage” are personal issues.

To truly be a member of a community means giving up some of your own needs – the need for stage time, the need to “call someone out,” the need for attention – in favor of what benefits the group as a whole and its long-term success.  As bloggers all over tumblr have pointed out to those calling out “fake geek girls” - anyone who truly loves their community and the art they consume wants to share it with others and celebrate its growth.

If I wanted to act as a gatekeeper (which would be so fucking hypocritical given how many people pushed me, welcomed me, and supported me through my early days of very bad drag and mediocre burlesque), to shut out new blood or people who were “too classic,” “too cliché,” “too strippery” or any of the other myriad “too …” statements I’ve heard over the years, I would be limiting this community that I love that gives me so much and our collective potential. I’d be serving myself while doing harm (even unintentionally) to many others. 

When a performer plays gatekeeper and attempts to define the rules for their entire scene, decides to set barriers rather than standards, they’re not helping their community. In fact they are both limiting that community and their individual self. If you find yourself trying to exclude someone or keep them from getting booked because they’re “not part of the community” – really stop and think about that statement. Stop to consider whether you’re really serving the community, the actual dynamic of the group you’re trying to protect or your own ego driven needs. Because a community with stringent, unwavering barriers, does not, no matter what the size, remain a community; instead, it becomes a clique – and we certainly don’t need any more of those.

In the four short years that I’ve participated in the Boston burlesque scene I’ve watched it grow exponentially. Venues have closed, troupes disbanded or rebranded, shows recast, performers retired all while a steady stream of new talent pours in. I will always, personally, want our scene to be known for polish, spectacle, innovation, and progressiveness. But I need to recognize and understand that those are my personal prerogatives and might not be shared among the greater group. Other performers are motivated by different ideals and personal narratives – and that’s ok.

New members bring new experiences, aesthetics, skills, and perspectives to the table. New blood ensures we stay humble, on our game, and committed to delivering the best art that we can.  New people prevent us from being complacent – because let’s face it, an unchanging community eventually becomes one giant circle jerk where all parties are patting themselves on the back in celebration of their own mediocrity.

Every time we set an arbitrarily imposed, inflexible, definition of what our community is and looks like – rather than a set of adaptable standards of what it could or might be – we limit ourselves, our art form, and ultimately short change everyone.  While the issues that pop culture face don’t seem as pervasive in burlesque, they are still there – for all of our progressiveness as an art form, we still deal (or don’t) with misogyny, body shaming, homophobia, cultural appropriation and racism.  And when any of us seeks to appoint ourselves as gatekeepers of a community – to shut out new voices that can help us address these things – or that ::gasp:: might call some of us out or offer up some much needed “real talk” we feed right into the systems that so many of us are looking to rally against when we get on stage.

This piece originally appeared here.

A brief smattering of thoughts following a blissful weekend of naked nerdery (aka The First EVER International Nerdlesque Festival) …

I know there are some neo-burlesque and performance artists who take umbrage with the category of “Nerdlesque.” They wonder why it is that we’re stripping out of other peoples’ characters instead of creating our own (note: lots of great Nerdlesque routines feature totally new ideas or takes on nerdy tropes rather than established and recognizable branded characters). And I totally get that critique and where it comes from, especially when it comes from the mouth of someone who sees themselves as a true artist and originator. In the end, however, I would argue that the criticism mistakes a perceived lack of originality for lack in quality.

But Nerdlesque – if it must be split out (and like Dangrrr Doll, I don’t think it does) fulfills an incredibly important function in the neo-burlesque movement: the subverting and reframing of pop culture narratives that reinforce patriarchal norms. To be able to do this, whether the performer even intends to or not, requires a large amount of creative dexterity on the part of that performer.

The nerdy stories and characters that so many of us love – really love and embrace and hold dear – are, often, not created with *us* in mind. Rather they are targeted for the same audience that most pop culture goes after: straight white dudes (don’t worry straight white dudes, you can read and love this too).

I love Nerdlesque – I create Nerdlesque – because it fulfills an important function in reframing, retargeting, and restructuring narratives that are traditionally framed for the male gaze.

In spite of this, these stories and characters are so profoundly and deeply held and important to so many of the geeky ecdysiasts I know. Hell, I would NEVER have made it through a childhood filled with violent bullying if I didn’t have comics, videogames, and fantasy novels to escape to. In fact I think my really sweet GI Joe collection, and the even sweeter Master Splinter action figure I carried in my pocket, saved me from an ass whooping on more than one occasion.**

There’s POWER – tremendous power – in dismantling and reframing these stories so that we can see ourselves in them, or so that we can safely poke fun and truly satirize them. 

I love seeing women get the upper hand in the reinvented Nerdlesque narrative. I love genderswapped Nerdlesque (I mean, did you SEE LeeLando Calrissian and Betty Quirk on Friday night? AAH, all the feelings! RIGHT?). Or routines like Helen of Tronna and Loretta Jean’s Sailor Moon act that puts the emphasis back on the source material and moves it away from the watered down de-sexed material we see in the US (and does it in a super fun, sexy, way).

And it’s beautiful that we get to reframe these things and make these stories truly ours (or even “correct them”) with our bodies. Nerdlesque celebrates body diversity in a way that pop culture does not. I am a fan of burlesque because it drives home the point that everybody and every body is beautiful.

I also think of those of us who may have dealt with messages about our bodies being “not hot” enough, or “too hot,” or “too” anything and how using those bodies holds a giant middle finger up to ever person and system that has reinforced that.  When Nerdlesque takes the tropes of pop-geekdom and recasts them with regular bodies while amping up the sex appeal through sheer brilliance, tease, comedy, and story, it elevates the art it’s paying homage to.

Moreover, how many of us participate in geek culture and fandom while dealing with subtle (or sometimes explicit) messages that we’re not welcome. I make my living as a content creator for and critic of “geek culture” (secret, reveal, I’m talking about the “other me” that shares Allix’s body). I spend my days catering to the geek masses and yet I can not even begin to describe the number of times that I’ve been accused of fakery, of posturing, of “doing it for attention,” and I’m (muggle-alter-ego me) fairly visible. Given this it’s fair to surmise that most of the mega nerds I know through burlesque have experienced the same. And Nerdlesque is one giant, brilliant, answer to that faux-outrage.

I can’t think of anything more diehard, more perfectly, obsessively, geeky, than recreating point for point your favorite character’s costume, and then building a three minute story around their cannon, and sneaking in Easter Eggs for other diehards, while still making your number accessible to a main stream burlesque audience. DAMN, that’s a hell of a lot of stuff.

I am thankful to burlesque as an art form, in all of its varied forms, be they Nerdlesque, queerlesque, gorelesque, creeplesque, bizarroburlesque, or any sub-genre I haven’t specified yet, for giving me a place to tell the stories I want to tell. For giving me a space to create stories that well match the audience I’m trying to reach and subvert the norms that hold back the mediums I love.  And because Nerdlesque can do this - and do it really well - it belongs right up on the same stages as classic and pageant burlesque.



I have a lot of things to say about Nerdlesque, about geekdom, about community. And even more to say about the act that I brought to Nerdlesque Fest and how it’s evolution pairs with my burlesque career. But this is a solid start for now.  There will be more …

***True story, Splinter was kind of like my security blanket and one time when the boys who bullied me were coming for me I threw him as high as I could, into the branches of a birch tree, to “protect him” from them. My dad was nice enough to fetch him later.

This post originally appeared here.

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of joy and respect in each other’s life."  — Richard Bach


While creating my second piece for A Dark Knight in the Asylum I snuck in a “moment” for The Penguin and The Riddler - not because this is canon, but because the roles were being played by Dewie Decimator and me.

Dewie is one of the people I have known the longest in the Boston burlesque scene. I met her backstage at a Rogue Burlesque show several years ago. We were there as kittens and assistant stage managers and had both just started dipping our pinky toes into the world of burlesque.

Well, actually, Dewie was much farther along than I was. She had already performed (as part of Rogue’s very first Lucky 13 Amateur Competition - an event she would later go on to win!) while I was mostly spending my time backstage or in class.

I had been aware of the Boston burlesque scene, as an occasional fan, for about 6 years before I ever decided to get involved. Many factors drove me to exploring burlesque - a need to reclaim my body, try new things, re-ignite my passion for performance, and find a creative outlet that could be just mine. (After almost a decade of making work for other people I was finding I was too burned out to create things on my own time for my own purposes).

I was also, around this time, dealing with the loss of my “Boston family,” my first “chosen tribe.”

A funny thing happens when you grow up in a huge family - you don’t really see the need to make friends because you’ve got a house full of them at home. Sure, I had acquaintances and teammates and a few study buddies, but my sister, brothers, and cousins were and always will be my best friends. Growing up  with a house constantly full of people, I was never lonely. In fact I relished any time I could find alone - rare moments of quiet and solitude were precious.

When I entered adulthood however, I found myself far from the family I had grown up with, and realizing that I had taken that support system so for granted. For the first time in my life I encountered real, true, profound loneliness.

I was fortunate enough to start meeting people and rekindling old friendships with a group of folks who would become my “Boston family.” We called ourselves that. We were a tight knit group who lived in the same neighborhood, had keys to each others’ places, and had dinner all together at least once a week. We supported each other through breakups, tragedies, successes, losses, everything.

But time passed and due to varying circumstances people started leaving. Some to forge new career opportunities, some to pursue new relationships, some to return to their own families and homes.  I was the only one who stayed in town. And while I had lots of acquaintances, I did not have anyone else in my life who I felt close or comfortable with the way I did with “the family.” So as my Boston family dissipated, I found myself again on my own.

I didn’t intend or mean to find a new family in burlesque. I didn’t even necessarily come to my first classes or shows with any expectation of making friends. But over the years that’s what has happened. And it’s been amazing.

Outside of my massive biological family (125 first cousins and counting), I’ve never experienced unconditional love, acceptance, and support the way I have from the burlesque community over the last few years. I’m still stunned, dumbfounded, and generally blown away by the honesty, open-ness, and kindness I find not just in Boston but across this medium in general. And letting myself accept and build new relationships and kindnesses has been a profound lesson in learning what it really means to be an adult. 

After that first show backstage (PS - that’s also where Ricky Lime got his start), Dewie and I of course kept in touch. She joined Rogue Burlesque as a full time member, and then, a few months later (after a LOT of encouragement from Dewie, Polly Surely, and the troupe’s founders, Dixie Douya, Ms. Sassypants, and Busty Keaton), I got on stage for the first time as a burlesque performer. I eventually went on to audition for and join Rogue and I had an amazing career with them for the next two years.

Eventually the time came for me to part ways with the Rogues. I had other artistic avenues to pursue, specifically music, and wanted to spend some time exploring life as a solo performer. Everyone was supportive and encouraging in this new step and it proved to be a very positive change, artistically, for me.

One of the most interesting benefits of leaving the troupe was being able to spend more time socially with my former troupemates - focusing on being together as friends and individuals rather than professionals preparing acts together. It’s nice to sometimes just be crazy-cat ladies or gross out queens or horror movie buffs together.

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t really miss sharing the stage with the ladies of Rogue, especially Dewie (aka the second half of the Skeevy Brothers, Earl). And so when it came time to put together the ambush and fight scene for Arkham, I had The Penguin step away from the fight, opting instead to watch the action with The Riddler after returning the question mark cane.

I doubt anyone in the audience thought much of it, but this was one of the rare instances in my artistic process where I did something not for the audience, but for me as an individual - and not even as Allix Mortis, but as Alli, the person I am offstage. For 15 seconds, I enjoyed sitting, quietly, with one of my closest friends, while chaos reigned behind us. I let myself have a split second of taking in the sold out crowd and the fact that we were together on the stage where we first met. If you were at the show, you might have seen a GIANT almost manic smile on my face as that scene ended. So I will here admit - it wasn’t because I was in character, but because I was relishing the moment I was sharing with my chosen family, and marveling that we found each other and are navigating this beautiful, raucous, planet together.



Photos by Hans Wendland