Black Exotic Dancers

I was giving the visual arts curator Michelle Lee a hand with her upcoming CAAM exhibition on the "Harlem of the West" the Fillmore in San Francisco earlier today. In her section on burlesque, I was appreciating the beauty of the women, Lottie The Body and Toni Elling. Then I remembered the first exotic dancer I ever saw. Talk about beauty! There once was a whole grip of clubs in Los Angeles where you could go and dance your legs off and also watch some professional dancers. This one night somehow I got a seat up close to the night's performers. I was still pretty naive and when my date, Cornell, told me the dancer was a man, I didn't believe him. Embarassed and curious, I peered closer at Sir Lady Java. Nothing about that dancer said man to me. His skin was velvet. His shape as curvy as mine and stare as hard as I could I just couldn't find any evidence of any male equipment. It got me thinking about what propelled him up onstage changed from man to woman. Over the years, I've talked to female impersonators and found many different reasons for their choice to perform. One year when Sammy Davis (pictured here in the Fillmore) judged a female impersonator's competition, he and I talked about how stunningly beautiful some of the contestants were. That's it. It all goes back to beauty I guess. Men like Java were too beautiful to live 24/7 as men, I think. But gender identification is curious and confusing. Take the case of Caster Semenya, the runner who has been challenged over gender issues. She runs too fast to be a woman, so let's subject her to total humiliation. This person who is 18 could be forever damaged by what she was subjected to this week. I have no idea what will happen to her, but I wish people could just appreciate the beauty of her running and let her be. I'm Ruth Adkins Robinson