Vanessa Kisuule: Bringing Sexy Back

Vanessa Kisuule has always been obsessed with the concept of sexiness, from rooting through her mother’s hidden magazines to stripping in front of strangers. As part of Bristol Old Vic’s artist development scheme, Ferment Fortnight, Kisuule presented a show and workshop as further steps in trying to understand what sexy really means, and how to find it.

In Sexy, presented at The Wardrobe Theatre, Kisuule explored the difficulty in wanting to be sexy and simultaneously wanting to smash the patriarchy. Is it bad that we want to be seen as sexy, when that is so tied in with being objectified, she asks. Her show reveals how dark, damaging and hilarious sexy can be.

Kisuule admits she hasn’t always felt the topic was worthy of further inspection. “In a world where you have climate change, economic disparity and all of these big crunchy, political topics, talking about ‘Am I sexy or not?’ felt a bit frivolous.” Within the scope of feminism too, she said, it felt like one of the least important issues. “But then I couldn’t run away from the fact that it plagues my mind all the time.” Her constant assessment and deconstruction of what sexy is controls a lot of her behaviour, she said. Through openly discussing it, she has realised she’s not alone. “It is clearly something that other people can connect with. We’re all obsessed with sex and bodies.” She decided to attempt to untangle it all in a public environment. “I’m an artist so my way is always to talk about it in front of a bunch of strangers.”

Kisuule reveals a lot of herself onstage in Sexy, both physically and emotionally. She draws a comparison between art and sexiness, and how we whore ourselves out for art, making ourselves vulnerable in front of others. Having been a spoken word poet for years, she is used to bearing her deepest emotions on stage, but it was the physical element that presented the largest hurdle. “It’s that fear of objectification, that fear of being reduced to your body, or being assessed on what your body looks like.” In performing the show in her underwear, she brings attention to our judgemental society where, she said: “It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how accomplished you are. This incidental vessel you’re in weighs so much as to how people treat you, how valuable you are.”

Kisuule’s ferocious language in her one-woman show blends with casual chatter, provocative dancing and comedy skits. In a particularly poignant moment she comedically lip-synchs to women from history. She tries on these other women for size, attempting to understand their versions of sexy. Does it come from their body, their style, their mind or their mouth? She explores the link between race and sexiness, exploring black femininity and the difficulty of growing up watching women with the same dark skin being typecast and objectified. With every step she takes towards understanding, she bumps into another obstacle. Another trouble with sexy.

This battle continued into her workshop. No matter what age, race or sexuality of the women taking part, sexiness seems to evade us all. Much of what was shared in the workshop felt fragile and incredibly personal, and though faces were pulled at the phrase “safe space”, it was an open and welcoming environment. One thing that gradually became evident was the amount of sexual assault that has occurred, and how that had stripped women of their self-confidence.

We began to attempt to untangle it all. Sexiness and its relationship to race. Sexiness and its relationship to heterosexuality. Sexiness and its relationship to others. Vanessa led discussions, movements and tasks that tried to unpick each woman’s understanding of how we judge what is sexy, whether it is something you feel in yourself, or something other people put on you by how they feel about or react to you. Is it something you gain by putting on a particular outfit? We created movements that we associate with words relating to sexy. We moved, analysed, chatted and laughed.

It felt like personal progress was made in the workshop, but Kisuule believes societal change is still too slow. She talks a lot about the choice women are forced to make between being sexy and smart.  “You can’t be both.” She argues that women are not allowed to follow who they feel they are in a particular moment. “It’s like no, you’ve made a choice. You’re the funny one so you’ve got to be funny. You’re the smart one so you’ve got to be smart. You’re the sexy one so you’ve got to be sexy. People can’t compute that a woman could be all of these things.” 

In order to test herself, Kisuule has decided to do a burlesque show. “I can get my tits out and shake them to a jazz song, then go and do a spoken word show and then speak on a panel. I can do all of those things and nobody can tell me how they contradict each other, or that I can’t be all of them.”

While tackling large issues, Kisuule’s work is laced with humour. “I like to take the piss out of myself and political situations. It’s really important as a performer to show people your contradictions and your fallibilities. Laughter is so important. It relaxes people and it means they’re more receptive to hear more serious things. So when it gets more serious in the show, I think it sinks in better than if I just hit in with this really intense preachy deconstruction of the objectification of women. Comedy is a very powerful tool.”

“We’re but for a short time on this earth, you’ve got to squeeze all the fun you can out of life otherwise what’s the point?”

The workshop finished but no one left for a long time. Gathered in a circle after the final activity, stories were shared. Videos, books and websites swapped, and it genuinely felt like friendships were being built. Eventually we were kicked out of the rehearsal room of the Bristol Old Vic. We swapped contact details, project ideas and kept in touch. We’re going beyond the search for sexy now, but the conversations all stemmed from Kisuule’s initial exploration and extremely valid obsession.