Mone't Ha-Sidi
- sangfroidbooks
- Dec 8, 2018
- 12 min read
Updated: Mar 6, 2019
Founder of Jezebelle’s Army Founder of BlackArtsMatter Queen of Ratchet Burlesque Hairstylist by Day, Activist all the Time
Awards:
2017 Arizona Burlypicks Master of Lip-Synch & Master of Improv
2018 Utah Burlypicks Master of Lip-Synch & 2nd Place Overall
2018 Red Velvet Burlesque Extravaganza Improv Winner
Videos:
Brad Majors (Winning Act for Utah Burlypicks)
No Trumps
Star Wars
Mrs. Butterworth
Rafiki
Upcoming Events (as of 12/8/2018):
Dec 15th-Sacramento Peter Petty Hepcat Holiday
Dec 31st-Hubba Hubba NYE at the Uptown Oakland
Jan 7th-Producer & Host of Fabulously Body Wealthy -First all Plus Size Hubba
Feb 23rd-BlackArtsMatter Hubba at the Uptown
March-Freezing Tassels Burlesque Festival in Alaska
May -Panama Burlesque Festival
Questions contributed in part by Angsty Andy:
Introduce yourself with a brief description of who you are. Please be sure to include your location and pronouns. Taglines are also welcome.
MHS: “I was born and raised in Sacramento, California all 40 years of my life…I started burlesque 10 years ago at the age of 30. My pronouns are she, her, goddess and queen. My taglines are ‘the Sacramento F.U.P.A.’, ‘Queen of Ratchet Burlesque’… [more taglines included at the top of this post.]”
What influenced you to get into burlesque originally? Is this the same reason you are doing burlesque nowadays? Why or why not?
MHS: “When I was 18 I wanted to be a stripper, but instead I worked at Chuck-E-Cheese for 2 years…I actually loved Chuck-E-Cheese and people would request me to be their Chuck-E… when 30 was approaching I had a few-career changes so I was not still at Chuck-E-Cheese thankfully. I went from working in Customer Service for credit-card companies and student loans to finding that I wanted to have a career which lead me to being a hair-stylist and then I found out on craigslist that a burlesque-troupe was starting which is now known as the Sizzling Sirens…I was the original Sizzling Siren and I started it because I… always kind of liked to dance and perform. In high school I was in marching band and then became head of the Pantherettes (the dancing team that danced with the marching band.) Our marching band was modeled after the black marching bands of the South…If you have ever seen the movie Drumline the character Zoe Saldana played… that was me in high school. It… became a thing where I just wanted to perform and 10 years later…I’m… not sure what still drives me just because of all the obstacles I face being a dark-skinned Black fat performer in spaces that cater to the complete opposite of that.”
What observations have you made in the demographics of burlesque performers, and what would you like to see change?
MHS: “It’s very unfortunate that the conversations are still being had of how to make your shows diverse and inclusive. I feel that producers who especially are white… aren’t fully making efforts to make sure that their shows have representation of everybody that’s in burlesque because not everybody that’s in burlesque is thin, white, or cis. So… I’m still kind of bothered by the fact that it hasn’t progressed more in the time that I’ve been involved in it and people who’ve even been in it longer than me. Yes there’s a little bit more but we should be at an accelerated pace because burlesque in itself is inherently political and us going on-stage is a political act especially bodies that are not considered under European beauty-standards. It’s very frustrating that as a Black performer we do realistically have to work a hundred times harder than others around us to prove ourselves and to be honest Black excellence is always overlooked all the time, and it needs to be celebrated more so that’s kind of what Black Arts Matter was started for in order to make sure because when you go see a movie or a show you wanna see yourself right? You get so happy when you see yourself and kind of like Black Panther for me brought tears to my eyes because it was the first time that we were represented like that in that type of frame… it’s very important especially as a little girl because as a little girl I hated being Black and nappy-headed because I was told that it was ugly and undesirable… it took a lot for me to love and embrace who I am and that is the struggle that every Black girl has growing up… Burlesque could help with people especially [those who are] plus-size because if you don’t see yourself you don’t think you are welcome.”
In what ways do your performances/ productions forward or embody intersectional feminist thought and advocacy. Why is this important to you?
MHS: “Well, living in Sacramento I’ve pretty much been the only Black burlesque performer here in a majority of my 10 years in burlesque. There’ve been maybe 1 to 2 who have come in the last year or so but I’ve been pretty isolated and been singular here for that representation. So… because I haven’t been welcomed in spaces that are existing we have to create our own space but unfortunately even… that space isn’t being supported so I keep going like nevertheless I still persist and I’m very grateful for Jim [Kingfish] and Hubba Hubba for giving me the opportunity to produce Black Arts Matter shows with nothing but Black performers… I’m very proud to have had drag performers, performers who sing… who dance… Egypt Black Nile, who has won the most burlesque awards in the history of burlesque, who is also a beautiful, Black woman guested at one of my shows and it was an honor to share the stage with her and have her there also coming next year in January 7th is going to be the first plus-size Hubba Hubba!… It’s just important to have those spaces in burlesque because we all exist in burlesque too and we deserve a platform for our art and we deserve to get the same support as people… real-talk just because we don’t get your dick hard doesn’t mean that we’re not good performers, and unfortunately the way the crowds are skewed towards the white male cis-gaze makes it very hard and it even crosses over to photographers often not taking pictures or as many pictures or even flattering photos for Black performers, art performers [who] are plus-size so imagine being Black and plus-size and having that problem. I will say that with the shows I’ve done with Hubba Hubba … the photography staff and the videography staff… have been amazing in giving representation for everybody who’s in the show and unfortunately, that shouldn’t be a rare thing in the industry, but it still is.”
Are there any specific cultural and/or systemic issues that you address in your performances/productions?
MHS: “The Black Arts Matter, I addressed the fact that we need to have shows that are featured all-Black and it’s very interesting because tokenism is still way too practiced… in this industry where a producer will have no problem booking 10 thin white girls in a show, or repeatedly booking the same 10 thin white girls in a show but for their Black performers they can only have 1 and that can only be every so often… I try to make it a point to flip it and… possibly, when I do shows locally in Sacramento where I live at the Blue Lamp… which is a venue that unfortunately gets targeted by law-enforcement because they host hip-hop shows and the neighbors will call if they see Black people outside but they can host punk-shows with a bunch of white people and the cops are never called… I would actually like to give a shout-out to Gabby Garcia who owns the Blue Lamp because she does provide a safe-space for performers of color in Sacramento which is a very conservative-city and does not support the Black arts, hence why Black Arts Matter started… What I try to address in my shows is having that visibility and it’s kind of like people get frustrated when you apply for a job and they tell you you can’t have the job because you need experience but if nobody is willing to give you the experience than you can’t get the experience or get the job… I have no problem with mentoring performers especially if they are from marginalized groups if they are women of color, if they’re Black women if they are trans. Having a place to fine-tune and craft their art because we all have to start somewhere and some people I think gate-keep too much when it comes to that and I understand that you don’t want to have somebody who doesn’t know what they are doing onstage which is completely valid but you also should give chances to people who are passionate about it, because what is starting to happen and what’s starting to drive our industry… down are people who are just doing it for fun because they wanna be ‘hot and sexy’ … therefore they are taking free-gigs, therefore they can go piggy-back off of free gigs, therefore they are not people who are actually invested in the industry or the culture or the art by not taking any classes, by not attending any conventions, by not educating themselves on the history of it and they are just putting on anything at Lake Avenue and getting onstage and dancing to any jukebox/ postmodern-jukebox song and then it’s burlesque and then the people are like ‘oh my god’ and what that does is give people the bad of our industry when there is so much excellence out there… in order to actually help that problem some producers might wanna be a little bit more open and therefore maybe offering lessons and mentoring… I feel like that’s kind of a lost thing… people should be willing to mentor under somebody because for me what makes sense to kind of learn from somebody who’s attained the goal that you want to attain for yourself… if people are hitching their wagons to a bunch of bum-ass bitches (yeah I said bum-ass bitches) than they’re gonna be a bum-ass bitch and then they are gonna put out bum-ass bitch-shows and… that’s gonna make all of us look bad… We should be a little bit more opening because that will cut down on everybody who saw the movie Burlesque, or took 1 burlesque class and then all of a sudden they are producers of burlesque shows and then having a bunch of bum-ass bitches in their shows and it’s just a hot mess… Let’s bring back mentors, and scholarships, and taking people under our wings and helping to grow and nurture a flower.”
What do you hope your audiences take away from these performances?
MHS: “I like to say that I embrace stereotypes and I shatter them, which is why I’ve taken on Ratchet as my brand… For people who aren’t aware ‘ratchet’ is the slang for ‘ghetto’… ‘that bitch is hella ratchet’ or whatever…. I saw this necklace in… Las Vegas and it said ‘Ratchet’ and I [decided] to buy it… and I start wearing it all the time and I realize you know what? There’s nothing wrong with being ratchet because oftentimes you cannot control where you grew up or where you were born or any of those circumstances… but that doesn’t mean you have to be negative and so for me I turned R.A.T.C.H.E.T. into standing for Revolution Artistry Through Curve, Heart, Energy, Truth… I even got Ratchet tattooed on me… I like to embrace and shatter stereotypes like, yeah, there’s times where I will eat fried-chicken onstage but then I’ll do an act to Talking Heads once in a lifetime and Brad Majors from Rocky Horror Picture Show… which is completely against ‘type’ for a fat Black woman like myself to be doing… I hope people come away from my shows thinking even though she’s on one hand ratchet she’s also very diverse in her ratchetness, if that makes sense… With my ‘Strange Fruit’ act, when I saw that… watermelon dress… I was like, ‘well that’s a stereotype’ so I gotta get that watermelon dress… and then I was like ‘well, maybe I should get a fried-chicken bucket or buckethead-piece or tie some fried-chicken into it… it is… playing into the [Black] stereotype and then performing to the song ‘Strange Fruit’ which has a very heavy meaning in history behind it…. I performed that act at Body Political, Laika Fox and Andi Stardust, they have created this space which somewhat inspired some shows that I’ve done locally too in which you can do something that’s not sexy, that’s more personal… political…making a statement, and I’m very honored to have been part of three of them so far because… the history of burlesque is inherently political but for some odd reason a lot of people are scared of that and they don’t embrace that and they just want to, you know, be sparkly which is, that’s fine. That’s totally fine… but don’t be afraid to use your sparkle to make a statement. Don’t be afraid to show your soul onstage… sometimes, you never know who’s gonna be in that audience and who it resonates with… that art that you are putting out there may inspire them and it may help them through a rough time as well.”
What are some unexpected reactions you received from audience members, and how did you deal with those interactions?
MHS: “[Laughter] I’ve got a perfect story for that one! Okay, so I was just in Minneapolis… in September, which is not that long ago, and I was at a gay bar and usually we think of gay bars as being safe spaces. I had sung my song ‘No Trumps’ which I’ve sung at the Body Political… at Hubba Hubba… and at various other shows. It’s a parody of the TLC classic ‘No Scrubs’… afterwards this cis-white man in a gay space proceeded to tell me that he enjoyed my song, but he voted for Trump… I feel like if you hear that song, what good do you think is going to come out of you telling me that you voted for him? So, I was like, ‘get out of my face we don’t need to talk each other’, and so his fiancée piped up and she was like ‘oh we don’t talk about politics’ and I’m like ‘well, that’s your privilege.’ As a Black woman, I cannot date or be fraternizing with anybody who voted for Trump, because this has had real-life consequences for my life and the severity of it is I had my tubes taken out after the election so I could not have children because I did not want to bring a Black child into this world to deal with the racism that I deal with. That’s how much it has affected me. So, he continues to go on about how he voted for Trump, and then how nobody cared about Trump until Trump was president, I was like ‘that is not true, because some of us cared during the Birther movement, some of cared during the Central Park Five, some of cared when his wife, well now ex-wife, went on-record saying that he had raped her. Some of us cared when he was not renting to African Americans back in the ’80’s. There’s a lot of reasons why we cared about him prior to this.’… and then he started yelling… Trump supporters believe that if there’s anything outside of their belief it’s fake. So this white man started yelling at me that I was a ‘fake performer.’ Fake performer, fake performer… and I was like ‘Get out of my face.’ One of my friends, he was about to take a punch for me, because this guy was aggressively getting in my face, yelling how I was a fake performer, and I went and got security, he’s getting kicked out, he’s like ‘Fuck you fake performer!” just yelling at the top of his lungs…All the while I’m thinking of course his fiancée’s still going to marry him and they’re probably gonna laugh about that story, about when he yelled at a Black girl in Minneapolis and called her a fake-performer because they’re from Seattle, where Seattle is supposed to be liberal, according to some people, but Black people know the truth and know that it’s not…So, that is the reaction that I’ve got after performing that song…. It’s the first time that somebody physically confronted me over it.”
Any upcoming performances or events you are doing that relate to feminism and intersectionality?
MHS: “Humboldt Burlesque Festival in November… a very diverse and inclusive space. Black Arts Matter happening at the Uptown Oakland on November 4th . January 7th, gonna be the first all-plus size Hubba Hubba, on Monday, January 7th… I wish I had more shows coming up but, unfortunately the punishment for us speaking out against racism, against rape-culture in Sacramento very much particularly is that I’ve literally been black-listed by the producers here… They will not have me in their shows and then when I try to create my own space my shows are not supported and I’ve been harassed, threatened, doxed, and had eggs thrown at my face for protesting and speaking out about these things…. Oh! And I’m going to the NOLA Nerdlesque Festival next month as well… I’ve never been to New Orleans before so I’m super excited and my Brad Majors Rocky and The Talking Heads is the one that got accepted…”
[This interview was taken over the phone on October 16, 2018. For more recent dates for upcoming shows, see the list towards the top of this post.]
What do you think the future of burlesque, in regards to intersectional feminism, will look like five years from now?
MHS: “[Laughter] …Honestly, truth, the needle’s not gonna move much from where it is today. Especially with everything that’s going on politically right now… it’s been shown that mainstream feminism still upholds White Supremacy. Even down to the fact that a lot of women are outraged over Kavanaugh but let’s not forget that 53% of white women voted for Trump and it was white women also who voted to make sure Kavanaugh had a seat…. Your outrage should be at your sisters, mothers, aunts, daughters, grandmothers, cousins, girlfriends, friends that did this… but also the fact that now that movement wants to take a knee during the National Anthem shows how far we haven’t gone because the fact that they would want to co-op the movement that was formed by Black people and Black people have suffered for that and sacrificed for that and now to overtake that gives me little hope that in five years a lot will change… I can’t really say that I’m hopeful…Expect the best but prepare for the worst… but expect the worst because that’s what history has shown us… Also, real-talk, there’s way too many white men in charge of production of shows in burlesque and I don’t understand why that is. I don’t understand why something that’s supposed to be powerful or empowering for women is still very much ran by the patriarchy and it’s still very much run in the gaze of the white cis-man. Women, we need to take more spaces, and men, if you really believe “Not-all-men” right now, then maybe you should step aside and allow for women and women of color to be on the same level with you.”
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