Confessions of a Burger Queen

Burger Queen photo by Holly Revell
https://www.facebook.com/hollyrevellartist

I think of Burger Queen as a platform for queered fat performance framed as a beauty pageant that is currently taking place in London. This year there are four heats and a final adjudicated by an ever-changing line-up of subcultural celebrity judges. The finalists will compete for a chance to win some tasty prizes, including a heavily glittered Unhappy Meal. There are many things that I love about Burger Queen, not least that it's really tongue-in-cheek and also deadly serious.

Last Thursday I took part in the second heat of this year's Burger Queen. I entered because I really enjoyed being a spectator last year, wanted to support it, and basically had a moment of madness when I clicked 'submit' on the application. I think it takes a lot of guts to put on the event, I know it's hard to find people to take part because, sadly, there's a world of non-show-off self-hating fat people out there. It's also telling that a sponsor pulled out at the last minute because they did not want to be seen to be promoting obesity. So I support what Burger Queen is doing and I want to see it thrive because, as well as love sweet love, what the world needs now is a full-on parade of shameless fatties.

On Thursday I was one of three contestants, the other two being Ginger Johnson and Bella Fata, who brought style, action and sass in spades. We holed up in a tiny room above the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, put on our outfits and hung out, waiting to be called to the stage for the three rounds: Trend, Talent and Taste.

For Trend I decided to bring some fat feminist realness to the room, it being International Women's Day and all. I wore a lurid tie-dye kaftan, shortened to show my legs; a knitted garter that spells F-A-T; some home-made bangles; a copy of Shadow On A Tightrope around my neck; and a giant fat feminism symbol on my head. This is the symbol designed by Karen Stimson for the Largesse Fat Liberation Archive. I also carried my Fat Bloc sign. For Talent, I showed some pictures and told some stories about fat activism, and ranted the Fat Liberation Manifesto. For Taste I made an Obesity Timebomb: a lemon cake topped with whipped cream, little hand-drawn toppers of the Burger Queen team, and a sparkler. There were three sparklers but I lit them too early backstage and they burned out – whoops!

I had completely underestimated how much work and nerves would be a part of my Burger Queen experience. This stuff takes a lot of effort! I don't know how the Burger Queeners pull it out of the bag every week, it took me a day and a half to recover. Luckily for me the work paid off, the gods and the judges smiled kindly on me, I won the heat and will be part of the final on 29 March.

I think I'm going to need a bit of time to process this experience. I still feel as though I'm in the middle of it, which I am because I need to prepare for the final. It's hard to have perspective. I suppose one of the big things for me is about how Burger Queen has affected how I think about and do fat activism. I love playing with the symbols that have become a part of my research, and it feels really exciting to bring the ideas I've been working with away from the academy and into different kinds of places, I think it's great that people have been so receptive to that. Mainly though, it's been a lot of fun, a hoot in fact.

Burger Queen 2012 Heat 2: photographs by Holly Revell

Burger Queen

Homosexual Death Drive: Fat Queer Old Lady Punks

I'm in a band and, even though this is a little self-referential, I want to write about it, so I will.

My band is called Homosexual Death Drive and it consists of me, my girlfriend Kay Hyatt, and a couple of occasional collaborators. Although we have both performed in bands before, neither Kay nor I would think of ourselves as musicians; we make songs with the barest minimum of skill, often just singing, or making a song using instruments, pedals and home-made gadgets that are easy to play. We have a small repertoire, did our first performance in December 2010, and hope to release a 7-inch EP on vinyl some time this year. We've played a handful of shows and no one has booed us off yet. Soon there will be some videos and digital downloads. We don't have a website, just a little corner of Facebook for now.

Corinna Tomrley painted this picture of Homosexual Death Drive entitled 'Showbiz'.

I don't know about Kay but I think of Homosexual Death Drive as part of a queercore tradition in punk. Our name comes from a branch of queer theory that's preoccupied with anti-social sensibilities and is somewhat nihilistic – just like us! Our songs, mostly written by me, inhabit fairly traditional punk turf: revolution, riots, burning things down, but we also sing tenderly about being alone, regret, survival. I use Homosexual Death Drive as a place where I can express unspeakable things. We try and make our performances energetic and memorable, this sounds high-minded but I try to pass on the same feelings of freedom and openness that I've felt when seeing and being inspired by other people performing. It doesn't always work, performing can often feel quite humiliating but I still feel compelled to do it because there's something good about falling on your arse in public, being okay with being the buffoon, letting people take from that what they will.

Since I was a teenager punk has been this amazing force in my life. Punk means many things to different people but for me it has to do with queerness, belligerence, impertinence, politics, rawness, immediacy, anti-authoritarianism. These are great sensibilities for girls and women to draw on. But punk can be very conformist. When I was a girl I thought punks were always thin, I never saw a fat punk anywhere, I still struggle to name many, let alone fat queer punks beyond Nomy or Beth, certainly no one like me then or now. Being a real punk was the main thing that motivated me to want to be thin. Aged 15, 16, 17 I wanted to look like Iggy Pop on the cover of Raw Power, I thought that's how it would have to be if I wanted to be recognised as a punk (this would also have meant being a man and being a drooling drug addict). I never got thin, and always looked chubby and wholesome, even when I behaved otherwise.

With Homosexual Death Drive I feel like I'm carrying on the lifetime's work of reclaiming punk for myself. Fat used to be the thing that I thought was incompatible with being punk, but it turns out that it's central, it's an asset. Often people will never have met anyone like us, they have no idea about fat activism, they see us and perhaps expect us to be comic, or fulfil a stereotype. Then we turn out to be something else, something they never expected from a pair of fat old dykes. Our bodies are a rare spectacle of public fatness unmediated by hatred, fear or prurience. We invite people to look and listen and relate. The people we play to seem hungry for people like us, they are desperate for evidence, that until now has always been slightly out of reach, that disproves the inevitability of fatphobia. It feels good to be able to deliver this in some way.

The band is still new and tentative and I don't know how it will develop. I'm happy with the way it's going and the way we mix fat, queer and punk together. That's all I'm going to say for now.

Homosexual Death Drive are playing R I O T S N O T D I E T S #5 along with Halo Halo, Bellies, and Town Bike, plus a screening of But I'm A Cheerleader from 6pm onwards, Saturday, 11 February 2012 at West Hill Hall, Compton Ave, Brighton, United Kingdom. It costs £6. Please come.


http://tinyurl.com/homodeathdrive

Burger Queen is back!

Great news! There's only a month and a half of wintery misery to go until Scottee opens the house for a second round of Burger Queen.

Why should you care? Ten Reasons to Love Burger Queen

Dates, times, tickets and entry forms are available at Burger Queen of course.

Do not miss it!

Queer Fat Performer film: Go Big or Go Home

I'm in this. Take a look and support the project if you can.

http://queerfatperformerfilm.wordpress.com

Ten Reasons to Love Burger Queen

I was cautiously optimistic when I first wrote about Burger Queen and now, having attended three out of the four events, I admit I was wrong to be so circumspect and can whole-heartedly say that it was absolutely brilliant in every way. Here are ten reasons why:

1. I've never seen anything like it in my life (and I've seen a lot)
Burger Queen went beyond any preconceptions I had about that stale irony-format, the beauty contest. Instead, it was like being immersed in a total environment where the focus was always shifting between performance, activism, weirdness, joy, anger, precious moments, and where real and fake were redundant terms. The Duckie performance influence is undeniable, I think, but it has its own distinct flavour (and smell, chips!), and I've never before seen performance of this kind applied to fat in such a skilful way.

2. Woah, activism
Looking at Burger Queen as a piece of fat activism, which it is but is also much more, makes me feel really excited about fat culture, especially that which is now happening right on my doorstep. There are so many ways in which it could develop, it doesn't have to follow the work I've seen, especially in the US, which is trad-burlesque heavy, or speaks to a lowest common denominator. Burger Queen is didactic but doesn't treat the audience like morons, offers a non-preachy pomposity-free polemic, is experimental and accessible, and it turns high concepts into a beautiful shared experience where rough and smooth all mix in together. This is what happens when people who get it use their talent and imagination to create something unique and wild.

3. The details that mattered
It's the little things that count, like the fact that you could buy a burger meal with your ticket, the Burger Queen staff uniforms, the fat-centric soundtrack, the being-on-TV jokes, the morbidly obese woman singing at the end of the night, the weekly diet, and the graphic design, to name but a few of them. It was a complete experience created by a team of enablers. It made me feel that I was in one of Scottee's demented fantasies, which is not a bad place to be.

4. Timberlina
I enjoyed all the Burger Queen performances but Timberlina's ukulele-assault on the cult of LighterLife was unforgettable.

5. It was messy
There were no tidy, nice, clean, respectable fat people at Burger Queen. No wannabe good productive citizens in sight. It was all about sweat, tears, being out of puff, having physical limitations, being in a strop, showers of chips and glitter, wobbling flesh, dirty cakeholes, genderfuckery, hairy bellies, sexuality, foul mouths, and low life (which of course is high life). Hallelujah for queered-up non-assimilationist fat people, there are few things more beautiful.

6. Fat is a politic
The idea that fat is a politic rather than a dress size was put forward in Burger Queen. I'll add the caveat that I think that fat is also about particular kinds of embodiment but luckily queer theory means that I don't have to reject one in favour of another, it can be both and more. Anyway, fat is a politic is a radical suggestion because it engages people of all sizes, it shows that everyone is implicated in fat and it incites people to do something about it. And this being uttered not at some exclusive academic conference, but at a pub in Vauxhall. I love that it supports multiple ways of being fat, and doesn’t offer these false binary divisions of fat/thin, or fat activist/fat ally. I have a similar thing with The Chubsters, which is a fat queer girl gang that you don’t have to be fat, queer, a girl, or remotely aggressive to be a part of. Hurray!

7. The people
The contestants, the judges, Jude Bean, the crowd. I wanted to be best friends with everyone and it gave me a bunch of new crushes to obsess over. Favourite contestant moment: being forced to wave my hands in the air by that out-of-control queen and dodging the sweets that she pulled from her face and hurled at people angrily.

8. Being a punter
If I want to be involved with fat activism usually what happens is that I have to either travel thousands of miles, or do it myself, or by myself. Burger Queen was the first time that I could just get on the tube and enjoy being in the audience. I could see that everyone was working like crazy, the stress of putting on something like this is major, but there was none of that on my part, just eye-popping fun and an event that felt as though it was made just for me. Bliss.

9. Queer-Disability-Fat
I did an MA in the early 90s and published a book in 1998 that applied disability theory to fat activism. I also wrote about queerness in that book but the feminist publishers believed that queer was the devil's work and wouldn't print that stuff. What delights me 13-20 years later is that Burger Queen comes along, crowns the gorgeous Nina Neon, and it's clear in the loveliest way that queer and disability and fat have a lot to say to each other and can interact with each other in fantastic ways. Burger Queen is theory that I helped develop reflected in reality, and done in a way that anyone can understand, with humour and style and humanity.

10. There's going to be another one next year
Yes, yes oh yes.

Burger Queen

Register for the final ESRC Fat Studies and HAES Seminar - FREE

ESRC seminar series: Fat Studies and HAES: Bigness Beyond Obesity
Seminar 4: Researching Fat Studies and HAES: working with/as fat bodies

5-6 May 2011, Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (Elwin Room)

To register to attend the seminar please follow this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KKWV6R3

This seminar will address the ethical and methodological issues involved in researching Fat Studies and Health at Every Size and will explore possibilities for the engagement of public, activist, policy and practitioner communities in Fat Studies and HAES research.

There will be a combination of presentations, workshop activities and performance art.

The following speakers are confirmed (more to be announced asap. See the seminar series website for more details):

Keynote: Jacqui Gingras, Assistant Professor, Ryerson University.
Rachel Colls, Durham University
Bethan Evans, Durham University
Jacqueline O’Toole, Institute of Technology, Sligo
Vicky Chalkin, Goldsmiths University of London

The seminar will run from 1pm-6pm on Thursday 5 May and 9am-3pm on Friday 6 May.

The seminar is free to attend, including tea/coffee on Thursday 5 May and lunch on Friday 6 May, but participants must meet their own accommodation and transport costs. Directions to the venue can be found here: http://www.brlsi.org/about.html There is plenty of hotel accommodation available in the centre of Bath. A list of recommended hotels is available from E.Rich@bath.ac.uk

There will be an optional dinner on Thursday 5th May (costs not covered). Please indicate whether you wish to attend this on the registration form.

There are a limited number of bursaries available to contribute to travel/accommodation costs for students/unwaged participants. To request a bursary, please complete the relevant section on the registration form.

More details on the seminar series are available online here: http://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/research/researchprojects/fat_studies_and_health_at_every_size/

Any questions, please contact Emma Rich (E.Rich@bath.ac.uk), Lee Monaghan (Lee.Monaghan@ul.ie) or Bethan Evans (bethan.evans@durham.ac.uk)

Queering Fat Activism: Burger Queen

Scottee is a wunderkind of London's queer performance art scene, and also someone who makes his fat body central to his work. Take a look at his new project, Burger Queen.

What are fat activists to make of this beauty contest which revels in fast food, excess and carefree attitude? It seems a far cry from what Katie LeBesco identifies as the will to innocence in fat activism, ie the assertion that fat people are not responsible for getting fat, don't choose to be fat, and can't change. It also seems far away from healthism in fat activism, exemplified by images of beaming salad-loving, yoga-doing fat folk. It doesn't really fit more common-or-garden forms of fat activism, such as refuting health claims made against obesity, fashion consumerism, or placard-waving protests.

Burger Queen takes on the appearance of fat lib – 'fat is a politic' – but also revels in themes that would upset orthodox fat activists. I'm talking about greed, love of grease, grotesqueness, nihilism. It breaks the rules, not least because of its resident judge, Amy Lamé, who is both a great supporter of fat activism in the UK, and also appeared on Celebrity Fit Club. Intentional weight loss is a big no-no in many fat activist quarters, and weight loss reality shows have often come under fire for whatever it is they're seen to be promoting.

So what is this politic? For me there is a flimsiness about Burger Queen as a political statement. Revelling in burgers and chips as a refutation of healthism is too neat a mirror-image flip, it maintains a relationship with dominant ideas about "the obese" when it could be going off on a much weirder and wilder tangent that has nothing to do with obesity rhetoric and everything to do with creating autonomous fat culture. So for me it doesn't quite go far enough.

I'm interested in new forms of fat activism that have or don't have a relationship to feminist fat activism of the past. It's fascinating how ideas mutate and fall back on themselves. I think it's great that Scottee is not bound by what has become fat activist orthodoxy, and neither can he be neatly compartmentalised as a Bear – the only other option available to fat queer men at the moment, apparently. But I also wonder if he knows about this great movement, and if he is incorporating it into his work. For example, when Scottee raised a few eyebrows at The Fat of The Land: A Queer Chub Harvest Festival, with his apparently sincere poem about a tragic fat girl did he know that he was rubbing people (who were looking for 'positive images' of fatness) up the wrong way? Was he being ironic and confrontational? Was it something else? On the other hand, Burger Queen is absolutely coming from fat activist tradition, in which people use the forms of activism most available to them, in Scottee's case it's queer performance art. The beauty contest, too, although well-worn, has been a site for fat activism in the past.

What Burger Queen reinforces for me is my disillusionment with what I thought were the certainties of fat activism. When I started my research into the movement I was pretty sure I had a handle on what was and what was not fat activism. A couple of years on those ideas have been erased only to be replaced with a growing discontent with the side-effects of certainty: boundary-policing, intolerance, a prudishness about the down and dirty ways in which some people talk about fat or embody fat, the divisions between good fat activists and bad fat activists. So I'm keeping an open mind about Burger Queen, I'm looking forwards to seeing how it turns out, and I'm hopeful that it will be part of a queer turn in fat activism, work that messes up fat, makes it unruly and complicated, not nice, safe, or easily knowable.