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Dr. Timaree Schmit: Burlesque is for Everyone. Dance for Change.
74 Plays2 years ago
What does it look like to empower women? Queer folks? What does it look like to fight for change through the arts?
Dr. Timaree talks about the history of Burlesque and its role in satire and change. She talks about how the entertainment industry changed during COVID and how she practices presence, gratitude, and self-care in pursuit of wholeness.
Dr. Timaree Schmit holds the Ph.D. in human sexuality education from Widener University. She regularly lectures on the topic, sometimes in the same show where she dances with the alias HoneyTree EvilEye.
CONTENT WARNING: indirect references to childhood trauma, discussion of human sexuality, reproductive health
This episode contains explicit language.
follow Dr. Timaree on instagram: www.instagram.com/honeytree.evileye
check out her podcast, DTF: https://www.drtimaree.com/podcast/dtf
check out her website: www.drtimaree.com
check our her column at Philly Weekly: https://philadelphiaweekly.com/writer/dr-timaree-schmit/
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Transcript
Honey Tree Evil Eye's Journey to Burlesque
00:00:00
Speaker
My stage name is Honey Tree Evil Eye, so if anybody is interested in that could stop Honey Tree Evil Eye. Hello? Yes. So I found Relesk when I was in grad school. So I was a go-go at a lesbian bar. RIP. There aren't a lot of those anymore.
00:00:17
Speaker
And I could see that that facet of the industry was headed away. There aren't a lot of go-go gigs anymore. That's not really necessarily so much a thing as it used to be. But I could see that burlesque was definitely popping up. And it also afforded the opportunity to have more expression. Burlesque gives you the opportunity to be funny, silly, stupid, gross, scary, political. You could be absolutely anything you want to.
Introducing Dr. Timari Schmidt and Her Work
00:00:56
Speaker
It's Uncommon Good. The podcast will reach out to ordinary people doing Uncommon Good in service of our common humanity. My name is Pauli Rees. Fam, I am delighted to bring to you today the Dr. Timari Schmidt. She holds the Ph.D. in human sexuality education from Widener University
00:01:13
Speaker
There are so many incredible things that she does. She is a sexuality educator. She is a dance and fitness instructor. She is a burlesque dancer performing under the name Honey Tree Evil Eye. She is an author.
00:01:29
Speaker
with a weekly column in the Philadelphia Weekly. She is a comedian, a storyteller, the ultimate multi-hyphenate. A quick content warning off the top, this episode does include some indirect references to childhood trauma, some references to sexuality and human reproductive anatomy, and some explicit language. So as always, if these things are not right for you to listen to, feel free, switch this one off, and we will catch you in the next one.
The Inclusive Nature of Burlesque
00:01:57
Speaker
We go on to talk about the history of burlesque, how burlesque satirizes the aristocracy, eat the rich, being flexible, being present, practicing gratitude and self-care, the cost of art and compensating performers fairly and so much more. I was so incredibly grateful to have this chat to Dr. Timari. Please enjoy our conversation.
00:02:31
Speaker
Hey, Dr. Simry, so good to see you. Yes, I'm so excited for this. My first memory of watching you perform, you used to have a show where semi-regularly, I think back in 2014, 2015, you performed with drunk piano and underground art.
00:02:52
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I actually, yeah, and I still get to work with some of those folks to this day. It was such a great gig, like, to be surrounded by live music on a Monday night, like, that's a good vibe. And then there were pancakes that were coming out at midnight that were free. Like, what is happening? It was great. Who doesn't love a midnight pancake?
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then there would be like these random super professional musicians who would just happen to be in town and they don't have gigs that Monday. And then like, and like, wean would end up performing with us. In a weird story, I have like two or three famous people who have seen me perform and I've never seen them perform live.
00:03:41
Speaker
I think if there's anything that I miss more, being someone who also works in the entertainment industry, I miss there being things to do on a Monday, on the day off.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like I also ran a burlesque show that was weekly on Mondays for a long time. Actually, like drunk piano sort of came to an end when the ownership changed to the venue. Yeah. And we started a new weekly burlesque show and it really created an opportunity for burlesqueers to hang out with each other and just for the community to sort of coalesce because it was like seven dollars cover. So like, you know, come in and just hang out like you can get some food and
00:04:19
Speaker
and just see the variety of people that are in the scene. And I don't think people understood how big the scene was getting until we sustained a weekly show for years. I was so grateful that there are spaces that are so broad like that, that it feels like one of the precursors of the level of inclusivity that we're starting to see in
Burlesque: Art Form of Resistance and Diversity
00:04:41
Speaker
Philly Theater. Ooh, tell me more about that. I don't know that much about the theater situation.
00:04:45
Speaker
No, like I know a little bit from the comedy scene of Spaces. I have a couple of friends that are in the Philly Theater Company show that's running right now. What is it, Tattooed Lady? And then I see more in the improv theaters and Helium, but more of my non cis male friends are having to do a lot less work to get on shows.
00:05:13
Speaker
more of my friends of color are having to do a lot less work to get on shows. That's great. And or or casting directors are making
00:05:25
Speaker
making in some cases are doing colorblind casting, which just feels like progress. And I haven't fully worked out this theorem, but I suspect that the broadness of Burlesque and Cabaret in the small shows really had a hand in creating the environment where that could happen.
00:05:50
Speaker
I would love to give burlesque credit for that. I don't know if that's like historically, I just assume it's like almost always it's the performers of color who are just like, come on, and then like drag everyone into the future. But like, one of the things that I do love about the burlesque scene is that it is always been
00:06:12
Speaker
I mean it has a definitely a problematic history as you know at anything that has happened in america definitely there's definitely there's connections to winstory there were definitely like lots of things about it that were not great when burlesque clubs were run by the mafia and all that kind of stuff but that said in the whole time i've been involved which is a pretty long time it has always been much more diverse in its like
00:06:38
Speaker
depictions of beauty because there are so many different types of bodies that are beautiful and you wouldn't get that impression from a lot of art forms. And I'd say that you have a much better shot of being able to make a career in burlesque with any variety of identities. We have shows that are specifically for fat identified performers. There's an entire disabilities, I think might be the name of it, disability burlesque festival.
00:07:08
Speaker
That one, we still have a ways to go, especially in Philly because very few of the venues are actually accessible. So that's a ways to go. But yeah, I think the scene has always been, well, the art form has always been something that people went to.
00:07:24
Speaker
if they were gender non-conforming, if they were queer, it was always a safe space, a safe relative, a safer space. And a lot of the legends that I would talk to, and by legends, I mean literally someone who just did it before us, this is basically the honorific we give them. Some of them were queer women or just like disobedient girls who didn't want to have to get married and work at the
00:07:49
Speaker
The phone company and if you wanted to be able to live a life independently It paid much better than anything else that women were gonna be able to do so it's always historically been populated by these like Rebellious queer women and you know, some of them would get their asses beat by the cops and that kind of stuff but there were performers that we would possibly describe as Trans looking back but like
00:08:19
Speaker
They may may not have had that vocabulary so I can't like apply it to them But it definitely would have been a space for trans performers had we had that like vocab and it's still still very much That's one of the things I love about it. Yeah. Yeah
00:08:34
Speaker
You answered my follow-up question. Can you speculate a little bit? I don't know how much history we had, but you gave it beautifully. I'm very struck by the fact that the history of this art form is one that is formed from a space of resistance.
00:08:51
Speaker
from a space of not just Resistance of like mind and things that we can think about and write in a paper all those those things are important too But this is there's a very embodied sense of resistance that like our bodies are on the line Literally, they're they're what we are using to to generate our potential livelihood they're the things that are that are being
00:09:17
Speaker
being harmed when the machine fights back against it. That just feels like such a profound and important saying, I guess. I don't know if there is a question still, but
00:09:33
Speaker
Well, I think what it reminds me of is just like the origin of burlesque in general. And I love teaching burlesque 101s. A lot of people, when they teach a burlesque 101, it's largely a movement-based class. It's just about feeling saucy in your own skin and that kind of stuff, which is definitely a part of it. But for me personally, the really, really big
00:09:53
Speaker
piece of introducing new burlesters is explaining to them the origin of the art form because it has not always been so easy to get into and it wasn't always a thing that people did for fun and so they could feel like body positivity like the origin of burlesque the word Borla is joke it's satire it's inherently an anti
00:10:14
Speaker
aristocratic art form and not necessarily anti but just like mocking like a lot of the features of Early burlesque on stage and of course burlesque even before that was a literary genre dating back like centuries, but On stage it was basically like a big can I cuss on this show?
00:10:35
Speaker
Absolutely. We've earned our explicit rating. It's a big fuck you to the aristocracy. For instance, a lot of our aesthetics that are associated with classic, for less, you're going to think of long opera gloves, you're going to think about lots of rain stones, maybe a bustle, something like that. Thinking in the context of late 19th century theater,
00:11:01
Speaker
If you are a woman on the theater stage at that time, you are a sex worker. That's how they were viewed. It's just you're a woman on stage. You're a whore, right? And so they like kind of leaned into it. And then they like a burlesque performer might come out in
00:11:20
Speaker
like basically those same sort of ideas, right? So on one side of town on Saturday night, all the rich people went to the opera and they were dressed in this finery. And then on the other side of the town, because burlesque has always been a very working class art form, historically speaking, it's now, you know,
00:11:35
Speaker
something a little bit different, but, you know, you'd have your burlesque stages where they're wearing like, basically like a mimicry of that and then showing off their goodies. And it's, you know, in the cultural context, like a big fuck you. So there would be comedians and there's lots of vignettes and sketches and that kind of stuff. And a lot of it was
00:11:57
Speaker
It's like working class resistance. And again, it would be a much more inclusive art form than certainly the more elites would have been observing at the time. And so it's always just sort of had that. And then it changed a little bit like when all the comedians went to radio and sort of killed vaudeville. And Burlesque just sort of continued to survive by shifting and changing.
00:12:21
Speaker
Um, and it's it's just never been the same thing for very long and that's why it continues to exist. So like it branched off into Go-go and then strip clubs, you know, we've always had this like mixed history drag performance and now drag performers make so much more money than real estate. But we do still have a combined shared history there. Yeah.
00:12:47
Speaker
Is there, you've talked about how much it's changed, it's grown, it's morphed, mutated, adapted. Are there recurring sort of strands that feel mostly the same as it's continued to develop?
00:13:02
Speaker
what I ask people when they want to get into it, especially if they want to produce is like what you're not competing against other burlesque shows. You're competing against the couch. You know, like you're competing against every other option for entertainment. So what is it about some kind of entertainment that people are going to do? Why is somebody going to pay $750 to see Taylor Swift? Right? Like what is it about that? Like we have to like, no shade, no shade. Like people should. Yeah.
00:13:28
Speaker
spend money the way they want to that brings them joy. But like, what is it about your experience that the audience is going to get? I want to tailor the experience to the people who are supporting the show and also the performers. I want the performers to have fun. But what is the kind of show that I would want to go to?
Pandemic Era: Virtual Burlesque Shows
00:13:44
Speaker
And so two of the big strands of burlesque that helped bring it back from one of its many near deaths in the 90s was the
00:13:54
Speaker
it sort of is too like a bifurcation. Nerdlesk, which is basically taking an existing property and then burlesque. And so like watching Spider-Man go grocery shopping and then he, you know, like ends up at the sex toy store or like, you know, like that kind of thing. They're basically character studies or some people make it more of like a sexy cosplay. But you know, the idea is you're taking an existing property that people are familiar with and they get to play with it. So people like that because like I already like Star Wars. And so yes, I would like to see
00:14:24
Speaker
a BB-8 strip or whatever. So there's one branch that has really helped the guild succeed. And the other one is this sort of like retro aesthetic, like this harkening back to a time where it would have been really fancy and really special to get to see somebody
00:14:44
Speaker
strip in person. And so that side of the industry is much more about lots of rhinestones and having maybe more retro, pinuppy aesthetics and the feather fans and those sorts of things. And that's not the only thing that's burlesque, but what that appeals to is a sense of this is special and luxurious and I'm a big business person and I'm going to drink my old fashioned and watch the
00:15:12
Speaker
the the leg show and exclusive. Yeah, in that way, very much so. And you know, like the idea of like a speakeasy or you're going to do it at some weird place or at some very fancy place. And that definitely is still a major part of the industry. And those those are gigs that, you know, the showgirl gigs that
00:15:34
Speaker
are sometimes lucrative, sometimes are more about prestige, you'd be surprised to hear what gigs pay the best actually. There's some burlesque gigs that are known as being like this incredibly big deal, these really, really prestigious things. The tickets cost a ton, the space is beautiful, and the performers get paid like 75 bucks, which is not a lot for a night of work as a stripper.
00:15:57
Speaker
Like, yeah, you'd be surprised to hear what pays well, you know, those kind of things. I mean, that's almost the paying level of, like, improv. Well, I'm glad improv is getting paid at all because a lot of them are paying to get to do it. I want to ask a little bit about just how you discover this art form and where the enduring love of it
00:16:24
Speaker
Okay, I should also say since we ended up pivoting, not even pivoting, just going into burlesque, my stage name is Honey Tree Evil Eye. So if anybody is interested in that, could stop Honey Tree Evil Eye. Hello? Yes. So I found burlesque when I was in grad school. So I was a go-go at a lesbian bar. RIP, there aren't a lot of those anymore.
00:16:46
Speaker
and I could see that that facet of the industry was headed away. There aren't a lot of go-go gigs anymore. That's not really necessarily so much a thing as it used to be. But I could see that burlesque was definitely popping up and it also afforded the opportunity to have more individual expression because it's a go-go like the DJ is picking the music and really all I have is my body is the instrument, which is cool. It works for me as a dancer.
00:17:13
Speaker
I have other stuff I could say, and Burlesque gives you the opportunity to be funny, silly, stupid, gross, scary, political. You could be absolutely anything you want to in some facets of Burlesque. So that very much appealed to me. And despite having very little experience, I was like, I'm going to start producing so I can create more opportunities for myself to perform.
00:17:38
Speaker
So I started producing like immediately and then learned on the job. You have struck me as like I followed your career via socials a little bit during the pandemic. You if I'm right about the burlesque and this is not an industry that I would claim to know enough about except as a person who's come to shows occasionally.
00:18:00
Speaker
and has supported friends who have had shows is that it don't work during the pandemic. Well, that was a thing. So one of the things that makes for less different than other art forms is we don't have a fourth wall. We actively are interacting with the audience. That's a big piece of what makes it interesting. That's where it gives its stakes, is that I will stare directly at an audience member
00:18:24
Speaker
in their eyeballs, you know, and I will have someone help me peel off my glove and we might go out into the audience like in the same way that like dragged us too. But like we're not pretending that we're up on stage and the action is happening and the audience is not there like in the way that like most theater works as you're pretending the audience isn't there. Although sometimes people break the floor as well. We just don't even have it at all.
00:18:48
Speaker
So when we don't have an actual live audience, some performers were like, I'm not doing this. Like I'm not doing a virtual show. That's nothing. That does nothing for me. There's no audience. I'm getting no feedback. It's not fun. There's also the really big piece that for those of us who are fortunate enough to have
00:19:05
Speaker
Space to do it in and to have the technology to be able to do virtual shows it it afforded us a chance to make different stuff and to do Experimental things and to reach audiences that couldn't physically get to our shows whether it because they live in a different city or because they don't want to deal with Center City parking or because the
00:19:26
Speaker
building isn't accessible. So it created chances for us to work with people all over the world. I got to perform with people while they're in different countries. They're in their bedroom in Toronto, and I'm in my living room in Philadelphia, and then somebody else who like, for instance, one of my favorite disabled performers, Jacqueline Bock, she's like a huge deal in our industry,
00:19:49
Speaker
I can't book her in Philly. There's like no venues I can afford that I would be able to bring her into. So I got to actually perform with her at a virtual show and stuff like that. So there were advantages to it, but there's a degree of privilege involved in having the space to shoot and having like the tech
00:20:07
Speaker
knowledge you to do it. And I'm really fortunate that I live with a partner who's like a tech person and who was like real amped to be able to like help me set this up and it gives us something to do. So it really, really impacted the industry because a lot of people left. Some people just took a breather for a couple of years and some people just straight up retired because they're like, you know, two years in the entertainment industry, especially like live nightlife is a generation. So some people are just like, all right, that's my cue. Um, so it really did change the shape of things. However, I feel like
00:20:35
Speaker
nature is healing and we have like a couple new cohorts coming in, at least locally. It seems like, and when I traveled with shows, it seems like it's happening other places too, like people are back at it. So it seems like we're coming back and I think that there are hopefully some positive changes as a result. There's still some virtual shows because people did find, again, that increases access. It's a lot of work, but for those for whom it is their only way of accessing it,
00:21:05
Speaker
It's great. Yeah. Well, you've just described the question of access and privilege, the old way of interacting with the audience and the new one. It feels like in order to be successful in a space like that, you have to be willing to hold seemingly opposite sentiments and tension together.
00:21:27
Speaker
Is that fair to say? I'm not sure I understand. Tell me where. I mean, like, it feels like you talked about the question of access and privilege. You have to have a certain level of technical privilege to be able to offer the level of access that's necessary. And while that allows people to see it on the internet, there are a lot of people who will just say, no, no, thank you. It's not a live room. But at the same time, those people,
00:21:55
Speaker
I agree with you. I can count the number of rooms in one hand that would allow for not even necessarily compliant with ADA guidelines, but at least accessible by ADA guidelines. It just seems like there's some... I'm not sure if it's tension, but it just seems like two ideas that might not necessarily seem like they jive together, but then... Yeah, I see what you mean.
00:22:23
Speaker
Yeah, so this is also goes back to I have a lot of experience and like volunteering for political campaigns and doing like political activism. It's very important to me, like sexual freedom, reproductive justice, LGBTQ rights, like a lot of things that have been involved in for many, many, many years. And there are always the question of like, if your anarchist feminist group can only find free space,
00:22:49
Speaker
in a spot that requires you to walk up a flight of stairs, how do you square that? Because on one hand, it's like, what are your ideals then?
00:23:01
Speaker
if not everybody can be here, then you're not living your ideals. But on the other hand, do you want to get anything done? And it's hard to do that. So sometimes it's like, I think the answer is to just make a lot of different inroads, to make a lot of different ways for people to participate so that everybody can be present and involved to the way that makes sense for them. I think that's the answer rather than like biting at people because they didn't do it perfectly.
00:23:31
Speaker
That said, the groups to which I belong will always be the ones that don't have all of the bells and whistles and don't have all the fancy stuff. That's just the nature of it. I think it's just like do your best at the time. When we would do virtual shows even in the before times, just to make sure that people could join us, we didn't necessarily get a huge turnout on there.
00:23:57
Speaker
But it was it was about the the people who definitely were watching like I used to be an organizer in this group called sex sex It was basically like TEDx talks, but it was all about sexuality. It was a really cool organization We were able to do five years worth of activism. We put on an entire like four or five day conference and
00:24:16
Speaker
It was a really cool thing and we just kept getting de-platformed by social media just for existing, for being about sex positivity. It's not like we were putting up nudes. It was just like, what's my recourse if Facebook takes me down? Nothing. Something like that. We just kept getting de-platformed and we went off to go do other stuff.
00:24:37
Speaker
Yeah, we would have events that were in places that required stairs and so we learned how to do live streaming back then just because that's the only way to make sure that our people could attend. It's as you said, you couldn't possibly serve everyone and if you tried, you wouldn't serve anyone well.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, there's no one-size-fits-all solution to anything.
Burlesque and Community Activism: A Social Change
00:25:04
Speaker
I want to ask a very specific question. When you look at the landscape as we're increasingly lifting lockdowns and being allowed to come back to live theater, what sorts of innovations do you see in shows and performers that either wasn't there before or at least wasn't
00:25:28
Speaker
wasn't readily apparent. I don't know. I mean, I think we learned a little bit more about how to make mixed media performance, right? Because we had to do all this stuff on video. And I used to run a show called Agitated with a drag queen called Polaris Salt, who's a friend of mine who's a theater artist. And we're both just very, very political. And so we created a show where it was just all politics based performance, drag, burlesque,
00:25:55
Speaker
Uh, we would bring in actors, we would bring in comedians, whatever. Um, and the whole point was just like, you're going to get paid to make a unique piece of art that is about some sort of political point. And we, um, ended up using like mixed media a lot for that. So there'd be video in the background. I started doing burlesque acts with a PowerPoint going behind me.
00:26:20
Speaker
So that was a, that was a feature. Like for instance, the first, one of the first shows we did, I just like to, uh, write up the citizens United decision. I was like, how many people understand what that was and know what it was about? And so I did an act where it was like, and this was before I knew, um, it was like a Marilyn Manson song playing and I'm stripping on stage. It's just like, just regular old strippery moves, nothing, um, choreography wise, different. And.
00:26:49
Speaker
in the back is a PowerPoint that is in small pieces over the course of four minutes explaining the system's united decision just to be like you can look wherever you want to for the next four minutes and that in and of itself is saying like oh wherever you look is kind of like
00:27:07
Speaker
The reason you don't know why Citizens United is the way that it is is because there are so many things to pay attention to. And it doesn't mean that whatever you paid attention to wasn't important, right? I'm not judging people for not being up to date on the Supreme Court decision that says that businesses are people and you're allowed to donate whatever you want to political campaigns, which is what it did. I don't judge you for having other things to look at. So that was kind of the point there.
00:27:35
Speaker
That was years ago. So that doesn't answer your question, but We now have a lot of baby performers who came in during the era of virtual shows yeah, so they have this whole other arsenal of skills and They are able to set up like their own photo shoots. They don't necessarily need to like have
00:27:55
Speaker
I mean, still definitely you can hire a professional photographer and have like a proper shoot with the setup and all that, or you can, you know, there's a lot of ways you can do that, but a lot of them have now had to learn how to do it on their own because you had a couple of years left to do.
00:28:11
Speaker
If you wanted to get into this sort of thing and there weren't shows to be in, you have to make your own content. Exactly. That feels like it just reinforces this language. I'll add a word. Because the art of Velesk, as you describe it, to me, I hear it's always been something that's
00:28:29
Speaker
has a twinge of resistance to the machine. And it's always been the art form of, as you said, the common person. I'm sitting in Connecticut among a lot of people. So I'll say not a very posh.
00:28:50
Speaker
Um, sometimes it wants to be peace. Sometimes it really wants to be right. But, um, the, the, the language that I'll use is scrappy feel scrappy. Um, and I just kinda, yeah. Um, it just, it, it's so, it's, it's so burlesque in its own like meta of meta ways. Like, no, not, not Mark Zuckerberg of ways, but, um,
00:29:19
Speaker
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00:30:44
Speaker
I want to pivot a little bit, do like a little bit of an either or sort of speed round. For those of our listeners who are visually impaired, I'm sitting in a very vanilla sort of background. Honey Tree Stroke Dr. Timoree has this incredible white apartment with lots of beautiful art. You've got an ombre of this incredible cerulean blue and purple.
00:31:09
Speaker
Quick speed round. Favorite hair color?
00:31:19
Speaker
I was red for a really long time. That's my natural color. So I still do have like a place in my heart for that. But like a rock in the purple is felt very like, yep, this is how it should have come out of my head. If you had to choose between reverting underground arts to its former owner or reopening the long shuttered Trocadero theater, what would you choose?
00:31:42
Speaker
As long as I don't have to actually be in charge of running it, I think that Underground Arts is doing really interesting stuff still. I don't want to take anything away from them. And the truck was fun. I would love to have the truck back. That would be amazing. I know that it's logistically really hard to run a big ass theater. If you could do a show on the Rocky Steps, the PMA, or on the steps at Pan's Landing, which would you choose?
00:32:12
Speaker
Uh, you know, I think there are some relaxers who do some stuff on Penn's Landing already. Like, Leelu Lenore does some things on the Tellship Gazela. It's been a running show like during the summers. It took off some years, but it's already happening. On the Rocky Steps, that presents some logistical issues. But that would be cool. I like
00:32:34
Speaker
The other thing is outdoor performance and making sure that everybody is consenting to all of the movies and whatnot because that's always exciting. I perform some outdoor shows. It's exciting.
00:32:49
Speaker
I yeah, yeah that you would never have to worry about that seeing like a bunch of a group of white guys a lady and one person of color doing a heralds out out in the
00:33:05
Speaker
Thanks for the speed round, appreciate that. I'd like to shift a little bit more because one of the things that I so appreciate in the work that you did, you continue to do is sex education.
Dr. Schmidt on Sex Education and Media Evolution
00:33:21
Speaker
at a time where more of us are feeling less stigma around being, at least around the language of gender, are feeling more open to be more open with our presentations to have our expressions match our identities. I suspect along the lines of other components on the queer spectrum as well,
00:33:47
Speaker
Tell me about the journey towards, is it a weekly column, a monthly column? I write a weekly column for Philly Weekly and have for a very long time. That has been an interesting thing because to be in print media for a really long time is a strange thing. I got the gig initially because Steven Seagal was the editor of PW at the time and he
00:34:09
Speaker
I dug the stuff that I was doing independently. I've been a blogger and podcaster and that kind of thing for a while and he was just like, come on over. And so I was writing there for a while and there's just a lot of changes in editors and owners over the years. And so my role has shifted and I imagine that's going to continue to be true.
00:34:33
Speaker
Really, all of my jobs, I'm prepared for them to change at any time. That's the nature of all of them is they're very ephemeral. Even speaking now, I can't tell you what it's going to be like in six months, but at the moment, I get to write weekly. Under the current leadership, it is much more focused on me creating content based on prompts that I'm given versus in the past where I had a little bit more free reign and I could cover more local things.
00:35:00
Speaker
We'll see what happens. I'm not mad about it. I'm not mad that I get to get paid to write. That's an incredible honor. Yeah. That's the dream. The piece that always struck me about all of the different gigs that you have and that make up the wedges of having what seems like one of the most interesting sets of employment in the world is
00:35:25
Speaker
you have a level of flexibility and the capacity to entrepreneurial word alert pivot that I feel like is a skill that's not easy to learn. I wonder if you can talk about where that level of flexibility came from.
00:35:42
Speaker
It's one of those things that like you, uh, you adapt or you die, right? Like that's, that's, I can't speak to it being a skillset. I mean, it definitely is for me, it's more of a mentality. So there are a lot of folks who would feel deeply uncomfortable with the idea of not knowing how much money they're going to make next month. That number could be anything. And, um, I understand that. And that's the reason a lot of people take jobs that aren't necessarily something they're like super passionate about. Like you, you find joy where you do in your work.
00:36:12
Speaker
But there are lots of jobs that people do just because they got to pay the bills and that's real. I have decided to forgo that stability to only work on things that I super, super give a shit about, that I am passionate about.
00:36:32
Speaker
The decision I made that is not necessarily a smart decision, but it's mine and I like it. I've had times in my life where I dreaded getting out of bed in the morning because I didn't want to go do the thing. For me, the risk of the instability is worth that trade-off and I can't make that decision for anyone else. But in order to make that work, I have to be super organized.
00:36:56
Speaker
I have to keep track of a million thousand things or at least do my best at it stuff's gonna fall through the cracks and then Be like smelling the wind about like how things are going to change and noticing when I start just to find like even the tiniest little indication that something might shift so that I can Prepare to jump to the next thing or like set up, you know like a ladder just in case or whatever the thing may be and
00:37:25
Speaker
The way that I operate, I'm never going to be like a super big entity or very like major brand name famous person. That's just not going to happen. But what I will do is survive for a long time on the crumbs of random things that I find screwing around on the ground like an anteater.
00:37:43
Speaker
So it works for me. But I do think that it requires listening to the people in your field and getting a sense of how everybody is doing and what information they're gathering from the world and the community and that kind of stuff so that I can take that information and then apply it to my own life and just always be learning and listening and then being ready to jettison things and move on to the next one and just constantly
00:38:13
Speaker
It's the same as with your relationships, just constantly evaluating like, are the choices that I'm making continuing to serve me? Or am I continuing to hold on to this thing because I just don't know what it would be like without it? So just being ready to just continue to learn and change like that just as a person, if nothing else. And then I just do that on a macro scale.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, you do it at every possible level. There's no there's no level at which is like, okay I mean I do I do have some stability in my life like the employers that I've been with I've been with for a long time Like let me let me just be very frank. I'm not like I'm not like fickle I don't leave employers randomly. I will stay as long as something's good Yeah, cuz like like you said I've been at Philly weekly now for I'm gonna knock on wood at the longest of anybody that's writing there like I have outlasted
00:39:04
Speaker
I don't mean to sound like that. I have lived through so many ownership changes and so many editorial changes. I'm just grateful. I'm just happy to be here. I'm also a fitness instructor and I'll work at a... Right now I'm repping Philly Nance Venice. I've been working there for 10 years. As long as I like it and I feel like I'm being respected, I'll stay there forever.
00:39:28
Speaker
That's incredible. That skill of listening, of paying attention seems more efficient than ever. That skill, do you trace like an origin point or like a Mulan style training montage for where that came from? I mean, if I'm very, very frank, I think
00:39:46
Speaker
you know, if you grow up in a household, I was an only child. And I had to be aware of like, I was, you know, I was the child of, of birds were very busy and had other stuff to do. And I had to be paying close attention to the cues of what was happening. So I knew what my
00:40:10
Speaker
strategy should be, right? I'm sorry, somebody keeps honking outside. I think there's a lot of stuff I'm finding on therapy Twitter now about parentifying children, right? Where you have to do like the caretaking for the parent and that's the role.
00:40:29
Speaker
I think that some of that applies and then having to be like a little bit hyper vigilance so that you can Let me use I statements so that I can predict what's about to happen what I need to do For the situation so I think
00:40:45
Speaker
There's a lot of things where they were tough facets of being a kid, but I was able to learn skills that have served me, right? And I got them earlier as a result. And so the worst life experiences we have, there's still gotta be something to get out of it. Not necessarily a great life lesson always, but I don't know. There's always anything that happens. I like to go like, all right, so what do we learn from this?
00:41:12
Speaker
like I hope and I'm going to say that in a way where if somebody's going through something terrible like that I'm telling them to do extra work now and like find the silver lining like I'm not like that it's just like I don't know I operate from a place of just trying to find gratitude like
00:41:31
Speaker
There's so much to be sad about. We have had this collective trauma for the last couple of years that never really came to a close and even longer than that for many people. There's not going to be a happy resolution. We're not going to have a VE day where we celebrate the streets about the end of all of this. I think the closest we got is when it was like,
00:41:57
Speaker
november 2022 and philia was partying in the streets and it's really easy to be cynical and sad and it's really easy to focus on what is difficult and how hard it is to push back against it but the only tactic i know is just to continue to have gratitude for everything that i do have that i'm fortunate about and to think about all the things about the world right now that are
00:42:26
Speaker
It's actually better than they ever have been in the past. It's hard to draw a focus to those things. There's a greater literacy rate now than at any other point in history. We have so many ways to prevent illnesses that used to just kill people. We have so many ways to treat illnesses that used to just kill people.
00:42:45
Speaker
And there's lots of stats on things that are going badly, but there are also lots of things that are going really well. And I want to point to those things because those things are real and people work very hard to make them happen.
00:43:00
Speaker
It's just your infant mortality rates are lower than they used to be, just real basic stuff. I think about how many people can live independently now that in previous generations would not have been able to. I think about there's this huge pushback against LGBT stuff happening in a lot of different countries.
00:43:25
Speaker
At the same time, we have so vibrant of a culture and the access to communities using the internet that never would have been possible before. People have always been gay, people have always been trans, but now we have more shared vocabulary and the ability to meet people who live across the world. A lot of really beautiful things. I personally am very prone to depression.
00:43:46
Speaker
It's really helpful to me to be like, what are the things that I'm grateful for? Every time I get injured, it's a good reminder of like all the times it wasn't. And all the other parts that are still working, like whenever. That's right. That's right. Well, I'm grateful for gratitude as well.
00:44:04
Speaker
I have this thing that I say where it's like, there have been so many things in my life that I definitely do not need to be thankful for, but when I find something that I can begin a day being thankful for, that's probably the start of a pretty day. I want to pivot a little bit more. You mentioned gratitude and how it sounds certainly like life-giving, a thing that gratitude can be, I think is probably fair to say between the two of us. What other sorts of
00:44:35
Speaker
ways of being like those abstract things or maybe it's like very specific embodied things like a strong cup of coffee in the morning. What sort of things like help tend the wellspring when like things are like really, really like sucky. The coffee's real. The coffee thing is real. That is a very real insight. For me personally, I have in, you know, I was discussing the
00:45:00
Speaker
wild mixture of careers that I have, but I have constructed a life around the things that I need to do for self-care, to be honest. So I have learned enough about myself, my sleep habits, my physical needs. So I have constructed a life where I don't have to get up earlier than like, I think my earliest class, I need to get up at like 9 a.m. for it, which is to a lot of people, like, you're a lazy bitch. And it's like, no, because I work at night. And like, if I needed
00:45:29
Speaker
to be able to work the whole day and then also be at a show until two in the morning. Like I have to take care of myself and build in time for sleeping. So I have constructed a life where I'm not going to teach any 6 a.m. spin classes. I did that stuff when I first started years ago when I was young and foolish, but I had to earn my way in and then I did.
Personal Self-Care and Lifestyle Insights
00:45:50
Speaker
So I carve out time for sleep and nobody can touch it. You can't do it.
00:45:57
Speaker
I as a fitness instructor make sure that I am working out every day. It is so important for my physical and my mental health to get regular Exercise and I don't mean like you out. You don't have to do it for like four hours a day I mean I have at various points because I like that kind of thing but it's also not necessary. So just like
00:46:21
Speaker
If it's just a yoga in the morning and then I move on with my life, that's just still prioritizing that sort of thing. Just real basically remembering that I am responsible for this vessel, so eat the vegetables.
00:46:38
Speaker
of don't eat things that afterwards are going to make you feel not so good. You know, get plenty of fiber. Just honestly, it's real basic stuff like that. That is my whole entire key to my life. I don't have any wild hacks that nobody else has. It's just, what would you do if you were responsible for a living thing? Yeah.
00:47:01
Speaker
And about this vessel, at least until we have like a realistic and less racist expression of the get out surgery. Like, this is the only one you get. Yeah, it's the only one I want. I'm good. You know, like, I'm fine. Like, there's that like thought exercise, like if you just switch bodies with somebody for like a week or forever or whatever, who would you switch with? And I'm like, I'm kind of intrigued by
00:47:24
Speaker
like what if I could go into like a pro athlete and just feel what that's like to be that powerful and just to be able to do kind of like pretty some parkour guy but like the thing is is like I wouldn't know how to run just because I know how to drive this like car doesn't mean I could drive that one so all of this is obviously hypothetical anyway but I'm just like the the learning curve of starting all over again being a baby is rough being a child it's hard you know
00:47:52
Speaker
I don't want to do that again! I have to walk around through things and bump into things and inevitably follow. I already did that enough.
00:48:04
Speaker
Oh boy. Stories of wild spruces and scrapes. Yeah, I feel you. Yeah, my most recent scrape was very mistakenly taking too much luggage up an escalator. I won't do that again anytime soon. I'll wait for that long ass elevator. Oh, escalators are no joke. I can't believe that we can just hop on them. It's so dangerous.
00:48:31
Speaker
it's death it's a death trap waiting to happen it's really actually quite fascinating the like the the things around us some things are like super bumper fight right and like made super safe but then like we just call it escalators right no yes yes you're just like one one one errands who lays away from a final destination situation
00:48:55
Speaker
Um, but uh, but my, my, my only question are where are Devin Sawa and Tony pot in the situation. He's still acting. He was in hacks. He was in an episode of hacks. I was so happy to see him. I don't know his filmography well enough to know what would need to be rebooted in order to see more of him, but, um, Now is the time he can play an older Casper. He's aged in the ghost world too.
00:49:21
Speaker
Casper having a ghost mortgage and changing a ghost car tire and paying ghost taxes. Yeah, nevermind.
00:49:32
Speaker
No, no, no, we're good. All of the parts about being a ghost that are the nice parts to be liberated from. I want to pivot a little bit to one of the pieces of work that we've danced around but haven't talked about.
Blending Burlesque with Public Speaking
00:49:51
Speaker
You have a show. You have a PhD in human sexuality and sexual education. You are
00:49:59
Speaker
I think it's probably fair to say a prolific burlesque stripper here in the Philly market, and you have a show where it's even in the title. You do both. I would love to hear more about where the genesis of the show comes from. Yes, the show would get you, babe. We can do both. It basically comes from Ignite. As a concept, Ignite Philly is actually how I met my partner
00:50:26
Speaker
I got this email inviting me to come speak on like sex positive feminism at Ignite and Ignite is an event that happens in a bunch of different cities, but I've been Philly and It's just people give like a five-minute talk with PowerPoint behind them and they use the pachukucha model, which is Japanese for chit chat. So it's
00:50:49
Speaker
15 seconds per slide, so it's 20 slides, that's what it is. And the idea is that it just keeps it moving. And so if you have only five minutes to talk about something, it really distills it down to its most important, salient points. And people give talks on anything. The night that I was there, I talked about mine, there was somebody who talked about voting, somebody that was talking about
00:51:08
Speaker
making these big Halloween decorations. Somebody gave a talk on the techniques of making Tom Cruise look taller in movies. There was just a bunch of stuff. It was very cool. My partners also involved in burlesque as an MC, and we were just hanging out. We were having brunch and talking about how many burlesquers we know of super interesting other things they could talk about because they usually have a completely unrelated day job.
00:51:35
Speaker
And also just they're interesting people like they have they have fascinating life experience that they can talk about We're like would people want to hear strippers talk and I think so So let's see and we did a show at Ruba and I was shocked. We like sold out immediately people were like, yeah I definitely want to hear strippers talk about stuff and they came up with really interesting topics our very first talk is
00:51:57
Speaker
uh, was on the myth of sleeping beauty, I think, and it's different incarnations as it existed. Like, you know, Disney didn't start it, obviously, but just like the, um, the historical, uh, ways in which that, that myth has shown up. And there was a talk that was all about
00:52:18
Speaker
Yeah. Like pre-K education and one that was on like dental care and like just a bunch of stuff. I think I talked about the origin of or the history of how like Western science has tried to categorize and measure like sexual orientation, tried to study it.
00:52:37
Speaker
So it was just this huge experiment and I was just like, thanks everybody for taking this risk with me. And the scary part is giving the talk. Public speaking for many people is more terrifying than getting naked in public, especially if you're used to doing that part.
00:52:52
Speaker
So we just jump off this cliff together and then it turned out to be this incredible high to have that experience and then that show has grown. So it's been in Philly since I think 2017. We've taken it around to other cities so we'll find a co-producer in
00:53:10
Speaker
like Boston, Montreal, New Orleans. We just took it to San Diego and to Denver. We have toured with it and then we had a tour planned in March of 2020. We're kind of back at it.
00:53:26
Speaker
But the idea is a five-minute talk and then burlesque in the same show. And it just basically is proving that not only are the performers who are strippers capable of also being competent adults, that it doesn't preclude the possibility, but it also proves that audiences are interested in that as well. And for me personally, it's a really big statement about the fact that I know there's a lot of naked pictures of me on the internet and people think that I should therefore be considered unhireable.
00:53:53
Speaker
as a daytime professional and I'm just like, if you think that, that just shows me that you're stupid because I'm super good at more than one thing. I'm sorry, you're not or you don't think you are anyway. So I know that my openness about being in burlesque has closed doors for me professionally.
00:54:13
Speaker
And I, again, am willing to take this risk with my career and a lot of people can't because their job, if they really knew that they were in burlesque, they might lose their income. And I totally understand that and needing to keep those lives separated. So I don't think everybody needs to do it this way. But for me personally, it feels more sustainable and authentic to be just open about who I am. And I just think it's extra important now because like,
00:54:37
Speaker
sexuality is a really organization, a church, a family, a country can tell you who you are as a person, if they can tell you how you're allowed to decorate your body, if they can tell you who you're allowed to love, if they can tell you what you can do under the covers at night.
00:54:58
Speaker
There's nothing they can't control. And so it's really, really at the core of all other autonomy, civil liberties, like for every other facet, you have to be able to say what to do with your own body. So to me, this is a part of just like pushing back against this sort of fascist regression that's happening really hard in the US. And there's only so much I can do about it. But what I can do is create art that creates community and people feel like they're not alone anymore.
00:55:27
Speaker
when the overwhelming messages are so regressive that most people don't actually feel that way. A lot of the cool people definitely don't. Yeah. The work is therefore inherently political. It's inherently subversive. It addresses some of those deep questions of life. What does it mean to be human?
00:55:57
Speaker
Because what is our human identity if we don't have a level of autonomy that affords us choice over our own body?
00:56:12
Speaker
Yeah, because I have a lot of friends who are activists and we all have our pet projects and our priorities. I totally get the idea that none of this matters if we don't have an inhabitable planet anymore, which is a totally fair point to say, yeah, climate change and that sort of thing should probably be never once. But I also don't feel like I can do a whole lot more about that. I already don't eat meat. I already ride a bicycle.
00:56:42
Speaker
doing what I can. But what I can affect is social change and these things are not mutually exclusive. So we can see that these things all help each other too by creating a world where the population is more educated and open-minded and values art that are more likely to come around a lot of other things too.
00:57:03
Speaker
And you could use those communities to then share other messages as well. You can also use those same platforms to talk about anti-racist things, talk about body-positive things. These things are not mutually exclusive.
00:57:19
Speaker
I often worry about this thing because we live in the world of the 24-hour news cycle, maybe even the six-hour news cycle, I suspect.
Impact of Social Media on Discourse
00:57:27
Speaker
But we're told that we have to care about so many things all the time. I think this goes back to one of the things that we were talking about, the trade-offs of access and privilege.
00:57:40
Speaker
I don't know how I feel about social media whether it's going to be a net good or a net negative for the world but I'm grateful for the level of access and voice and agency that it grants people but at the same time I don't have the level of attention span or like energy in my body to care about all the things I'm told that I have to care about and to be constantly
00:58:03
Speaker
Compassion fatigue is a real thing and It's yeah, it's it's an area of study increasingly. It's just the idea of like how much can you? Yeah here this up and and there's research on like the further away It seems like you can do anything about it The less you can care about it because you just can only we only have so much willpower we only have so much like energy that we can give to like trying to save the world but
00:58:24
Speaker
When it comes to the social media piece, I think that it really helps me to have read a lot about the history of other forms of media because the same complaints come around every single new piece of technology that is media. It was like radio is going to make people stupid, putting news into print form was going to make people stupid, putting it on TV was supposed to ruin. The thing is,
00:58:50
Speaker
There's real stuff with screens and the way that lights are keeping us up at night and the way that we are getting social media is designed specifically to try to work like a slot machine and get us this dopamine fix to be psychologically addictive. Those are real things. But at the same time,
00:59:09
Speaker
All of it is just the same as it always has been, which is about how do we learn to adapt to it, having the media literacy skills to be able to parse through it and teaching those things to young people so that when they encounter it, they're not overwhelmed by it. It's our responsibility to teach kids how fiction works, how the concept of TV shows, it's not real sometimes.
00:59:39
Speaker
But with social media, we're just going to have to learn our strategies for how we'll be able to consume it in a way that isn't detrimental, because it is incredibly important. The Arab Spring would not have happened without Twitter. That's real. And I think that as we're recording this right now, Elon Musk, who's just taken over Twitter, and everyone's like, well, it's fun and a lot less. And there's not really an alternative that everybody can hop to, because Macedon doesn't work the same way, Reddit doesn't work the same way.
01:00:06
Speaker
Meta has its own problems. So we're all like, I don't know, I've been back on Tumblr for a while because I think that's the best way on the internet right now. But like it really, we're just gonna have to figure out our strategies because it's like, it's just a product. It's just like sugar. I have to learn how to manage my relationship with it. You know, it's not it's inherently evil. It's got its upsides.
01:00:30
Speaker
There's so many things I've learned about because I'm on Twitter. Like I've become much more of an abolitionist about like police in prisons because that's information I wasn't getting. I wasn't finding that in the news. Nobody's talking to me about that on the street. Like I found it on Twitter and I'm like, oh, all this makes a ton of sense to me.
01:00:47
Speaker
I apologize for the hard pivot. I'm so grateful for the time that we've lingered together today. The last line of inquiry that I have, just a little question about impact in the future. Same question that I ask every guest to end
A Vision for a Kinder World
01:01:03
Speaker
with. What do you want the world to look like when you're done with it?
01:01:06
Speaker
I mean, I don't know. I have to assume I'm having seven impacts, right? Like, I don't know how big the footprint is, but I want as a cancer, I want everyone to be kinder and softer to each other and more direct in their conversations. I want to normalize things in my community that weren't necessarily there when I got there.
01:01:33
Speaker
I'm not the only one doing it. It's only going to happen if lots of people are doing it, but things that I appreciate are direct conversations, assumption of goodwill, talking things through with people, and treating everybody as though you'd...
01:01:50
Speaker
I don't know their story. I don't know what all background things this is reminding them of. I don't know how their day is going. I don't know what else they have going on, but to be faster to patience and curiosity rather than judgment. That's what I want the world to do. That wouldn't be so bad at all. I don't see it outside.
01:02:16
Speaker
Me neither. I guess if we dig into more stories like why people constantly climb telephone poles and why we have to grease them. I'm fine with it. Good for them. Whatever. That's an interesting athletic feat. I'm impressed.
01:02:39
Speaker
It's interesting for sure. Dr. Tamari, so grateful for the time that you spent with us today. Thank you so much for having me.
01:02:48
Speaker
My thanks to my guest, Dr. Timmy Rees-Schmidt. You can check out her website and follow her social media at the links in the episode description. Thank you so much for tuning in to Uncommon Good with Paulie Rees. This program is produced in Southwest Philadelphia on the unceded land of the Lenny Lenape Tribe and the Black Bottom Community. Our associate producer for this episode is Kia Watkins. If you enjoy listening to the show, please support us by leaving us a five-star review and a comment and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. It really does help people find us.
01:03:17
Speaker
Uncommon Good is also available on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram at UncommonGoodPod. Follow us there for closed caption video content and more goodies. We love, love, love, love questions and feedback. You can send us a DM on social media or an email at uncommongoodpod at gmail.com. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, wishing you every Uncommon Good to do your Uncommon Good to be the Uncommon Good.