The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
Body Confidence After Birth with Cat LaCohie
Can burlesque become a tool for postpartum body confidence?
This week I'm delighted to be joined by Cat LaCohie and we're talking everything body confidence.
We explore the reality of societal pressures that many women face after pregnancy, and how Cat uses burlesque as a medium to reconnect women with their bodies and embrace self-love.
But this episode is not just about burlesque.
It's about the journey of self-discovery, and the transformative power of reclaiming one's identity. Cat shares how embodying powerful characters through burlesque helped her reclaim her strength during moments of self-doubt.
She challenges the notion of seeking constant approval from others, emphasizing the value of self-worth and the joy of being in the company of the right people.
As our conversation draws to a close, Cat sheds light on the importance of being vocal about who you are, and how it helps filter out those who don't belong in your life.
She shares her inspiring journey, from building her own website to teaching burlesque classes, and how she learned to say 'I'm amazing and you're welcome' instead of apologizing for her actions.
The message of this episode is clear: Individuality, self-love and authenticity can be empowering tools to navigate through life's challenges.
You can find Cat in all the cool places.
Her website
Facebook
Instagram and her other insta!
And if Cat has really made you think "Hey, I should give this a shot" then head here for online classes.
Just a reminder that HPNB now only has 5 billing cycles!
So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation!
BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.
This means you can sign up after your first child, use the program and recover and then still have access after giving birth to child 2 and 3!
None of this "pay X amount a year" nonsense, once you've paid..you've paid!
This makes HPNB not just the most efficient and complete post-partum recovery program, it's also BY FAR the best value.
Though I'm not terribly active on Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there!
And, of course, you can always find us on our YouTube channel if you like your podcast in video form :)
Visit healthypostnatalbody.com and get 3 months completely FREE access. No sales, no commitment, no BS.
Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions or comments
If you could rate the podcast on your favourite platform that would be a big help.
Playing us out this week; "Got me good" by elise
Hey, welcome to the Healthy Postnatal Body Podcast of your postnatal expert, peter Lapp. That, as always, would be me. This is the podcast for the 27th of April 2025. And because it is like I said every other week, I'll bring out an old one. This is one that I did. This is one of those. This is one I did a while ago with a lady called Kat Larkohe. You're gonna love this one.
Speaker 1:We did a whole thing about body confidence and, as I explained at the time, I always struggle when people pitch to come onto the podcast to talk about body confidence. I always struggle with where to go and all that sort of thing. But Kat has a very clear strategy and I absolutely love this. She has a different approach and she works with, as she calls it, women in transitional phases so postpartum, perimenopausal, post-divorce, that type of stuff just transitional phases in their life and, as we'll touch on, a woman's life seems to be one big transitional phase. So she's really, really experienced. I love her approach and you're going to love this interview. I was absolutely delighted to have Kat on at the time. It took me a while to get her on, so, without further ado, right here we go. So post postnatal body confidence issues. You know, everybody knows about them, everybody's aware that most women have them and yet no one ever sees them coming. It's something that's obviously something that's very difficult to prepare for. So how do you deal with the way you're suffering from it in the moment?
Speaker 2:I feel like anything that you're suffering from in the moment like, talk about it. That's my first thing is I talk about it? I find that so many people who come to my class whether it's a postnatal issue or any issue they've got I always go around the room and I say, hey, why are you in class? How did you find class? What do you want to get out of class? And invariably, in a room of 10, 12 people, half of them will all say the same thing or they'll say, you know, I've never felt like I've quite belonged, or I just I don't really identify with the body I've got right now, or whatever it is. And then suddenly the entire room is like, oh, I'm not the odd one out, everyone has the same freaking issue. Oh, and now I feel super relaxed and I know like I've.
Speaker 2:I remember being at like high school and being like, oh, like puberty is happening and I don't have to talk about this. And but I had a mother who was very, very open and so I could go to her and say, oh, this is happening and this is happening, and how do I, you know? And she was very, very open about her experience of of going through being teenage, years of going through pregnancy, of having a child like she didn't hold anything back, age years of going through pregnancy, of having a child like she didn't hold anything back. So those conversations were open. But I know I had some friends at school where I didn't feel quite as open to talk to them.
Speaker 2:And if you grew up without that kind of parenting or you didn't have an older sister to go to, like you're kind of in the dark and then you go oh my god, this one thing is happening to me and I'm the only person. And and until you start talking to other people and saying, hey, this, this thing's happening, or I'm starting to feel this way, or like you'll find somebody out there who's like oh my gosh, me too, let's talk about it. And as soon as it's out in the open and you've got someone to discuss it with, I feel like that's half your battle over, when you're suffering in silence. It's just not the way to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, because you're quite right, because I came across this a lot, Because, okay, men have some. And again, for all the listeners, I'm aware I'm a middle-aged white guy, right, I always say this from the start let's throw that out there, let's just get faster, because we don't have the equivalent, right, we don't have. Okay, we don't look like he-man or we don't look like captain america, right, you might be skinny, you might be fat, you don't look like a superhero, but that's pretty much as far as we go. Some uncomfortable years between 11 and 15, 16, but after that it's all kind of the same. So, and and when you, uh, when you got in touch earlier, you talked about the, this, the I absolutely love race.
Speaker 1:I work with women in transitional phases. Men tend not to have those At least we don't have as many or as standard, as women do. So for us, for men, it's much easier to go I wish I had bigger arms to another bloke and go oh man, your shoulders look phenomenal. How do I get them out? You do shoulder presses and you're done. I was really surprised when I became a postpartum PT, when I started working with women postpartum years and years and years ago.
Speaker 1:It's that there was no discussion amongst women, or not as open a discussion amongst women at like the mom and baby coffee mornings and all that sort of stuff that everybody has about how they're feeling. It's all about you. Better pretend life is wonderful.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because if you don't, then maybe you're going to be just being a bad parent or if you're just like.
Speaker 2:I knew. It's like the Barbie movie just came out, right, and there was this whole monologue that America Ferrera does and I've probably said her name wrong Oops, can't like. There's something about if I'm a parent I just gave birth and I'm like, oh, I really want to get back in shape. I miss how my body looks. There's something weirdly, innately vain about that. Like, why can't I want to look good? Because looking good is so inherently connected to feeling good. Like the clothing that you wear makes you feel a certain different way. If you're driving a different type of car, if you're living in a certain house, like your surroundings and what you're like enveloped in makes you feel a certain way.
Speaker 2:So if there is something about your body that has again suddenly changed as well because it's not just a gradual change, you know it's not you gradually get gray hair, you gradually lose or gain weight, you gradually gain muscle mass or lose muscle mass it's like a sudden I was this and now I'm that, yeah, and you have this sort of nine months of, oh well, I'm, I'm, I'm growing, this baby and this is all new and this is exciting and all, and I know it's going to be worth it in the end, whatever, like trauma you're going through. Oh, my ankles are, whatever, I'm swelling up. You think, oh well, when I have the baby, bam be done. But no, after you have the baby, it's like oh, but now I'm a whole new person, like I'm chemically alteredly, a whole new person, and so there's going to be a lamentation or a or a mourning of the person that you were before.
Speaker 2:Um, so it's, it's, it's gotta be talked about. But it's almost like oh, I'm a, I'm bad, or it's negative, or it's a judgment on me If I start placing importance on looks or like my body and I just I don't understand why. I mean, I probably do instead, but it's, it's just it's. It's something I really think should be removed from society. Is. Is this wanting to be to look good or feel good, when everyone judges people on what they look like? So to be living in a society where you can be judged for how you look like and we strive to have the right filter on Instagram, we're then judged for wanting to play by the social game, which seems insane to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it struck me that you know from again, from a purely practical, logical perspective, because I spoke to various women about this before I talked to you from a logical, man-brain perspective.
Speaker 1:Okay, women went through puberty, they went through the teenage phase, they went through that. So that transitional phase, so to speak, women are very familiar with. That transitional phase, so to speak, women are very familiar with, and society obviously at all stages, puts a tremendous amount of pressure on girls and women to look a certain way, dress a certain way and all that sort of stuff. And yet you'd think, so that pressure is constant almost. But from you'd think that if you're used to transitional phases and you know that it's coming, you'd think that there would be a way to prepare. And there really isn't just anything that, because everybody knows a woman who's had a kid, I mean. And yet when people are pregnant they don't discuss that side of things. Oh, when I you know afterwards I felt like, and just be aware that it is coming right, the whole chap nipples thing is still a yeah that's still a thing for and for.
Speaker 1:That's it's. It's astonishing to me that that is not as widely discussed as it probably should be unless you're like michelle wolf doing comedy or anything like that, because it's it's only comedians that make those, that make those comments right, I think also if you're not having the conversations with your, with your, with your inner circle, so to speak, and you're literally going off like comedians or you're going off tv or whatever like that.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's only just recently that I think women have been able to talk about bodily functions and what we go through. I remember doing this uh, it was not even commercial, it was a casting for um a thing and I'm supposed to be in the audience of this. Um, uh, I think it was like uh, I don't know, it was a presenter and I had to interrupt the performance and be like hi and, and the casting note was to ask for something embarrassing, like sorry, I've sneezed, can I have a tissue? And so, kind of being British, I think I don't know if the British just talk about these things more. I remember there being an episode of I've gone off on a tangent, but there was an episode of a sitcom where she had a spleen removed and someone ate it by accident and in the American version they cut it out. They're like you cannot do that on television. So I've come from England and I'm like okay, well, I'll, I'll use my British accent and I was like, um, excuse me, could I ask for a sanitary product of some sort? And I thought I've used the word sanitary product and I've been very humble about it and they stopped the casting. I was like, oh, you can't, you can't ask for that on on national network television, that's. And I was like I can't say the word sanitary product but you can say like you can say there's, oh, my gosh.
Speaker 2:So when the film bridesmaids came out and they're all talking about all that stuff going on, I was like finally, women are able to talk about periods and menstruation and, yes, we bleed every freaking month like everybody's. Half of at least half of the country or the the entire world goes through this experience every single month and we're not allowed to talk about it on network freaking television. So how are we supposed to have honest conversations about pregnancy and what we go through and then what happens afterwards? And it's not even just your body going through a transition, but it's the mental transition. I remember my mom saying that you know when she, when she had me and my brother, she's like I just suddenly felt like my life was done and that this being inside me was sucking all the nutrients from me and I was just becoming this shriveled up like thing that is now giving life to someone else. And now there's someone else will have my life and now I'm and I'm done with. So there's that idea of here's my purpose on the world. My only function was to survive this long so I could then give my living being and nutrients to something else to then continue on my legacy.
Speaker 2:And, second of all, the fact that now there's this being out there that is you're totally connected to. It's feeding off you, it's tugging at you, it's pulling at you, it's asking things from you, it's saying mama, and now you feel. Well, I say this from from quoting one of my students. She's like, I just felt like my body was now there. It's just like the feeding mechanism and the like. I'm not I'm, I'm an automated robot. Now I'm just there to look at my child. So, even if your body looked amazing and was exactly the same as it was before, and whatever you, whatever, well, however you look it, it's not even just the transition of yourself, like going through puberty. It's now a whole transition of my identity. Who am I? What? What? What's my purpose in the world? How do people see me? Um, there's, there's just so much going on, that it that can be discussed and can be, like you say, prepared for yeah, because it's exactly like you said.
Speaker 1:I wrote a. I wrote a blog a long time ago on my personal training website, so that's not over a decade ago, um, and I called it your baby is a parasite. Yeah, yes, um, just explaining that if you don't take the nutrients, that's what the baby gets the nutrients from you and that's what the baby cannot survive. You can't feed a baby spinach and kale and it's just not going to happen. You have a newborn. If you don't eat well, if you don't the baby will still get the nutrients, exactly like what you were saying. It just takes it from you and your body kind of goes to pot a little bit, because you know all your stores get depleted, all your nutrients or vitamins stores and I had so many angry emails from people.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, About the title of the thing and to be fair, it was a bit of a click-baity title.
Speaker 2:Right, it's an asshole title.
Speaker 1:It is baby title, right. I mean it's an asshole title, it is. But the interesting thing is that after the first, the initial wave of email saying that you said something really rude about my baby because my baby is not a parasite, right, it was all that type of response my baby is, your baby might be, but my baby is a lovely, darling baby. It was that that type of brigade, um, and after that I got a whole bunch of emails from people that from women that they said I had never considered that, I had never considered that I need to eat well, otherwise I'm going to feel and and look terrible because or not not.
Speaker 1:Look terrible, it's the wrong phrase, it's look nutrient deficient yeah, that slightly grayish tint that you get if you don't take your vitamin supplements every day, and this is not just for moms. You see people walking around Walmart in the States or Target wherever you go, and the same in the UK. People walking around walmart in the in the states or target wherever you go, and, uh, in the same in in the uk, people walking around tesco, and you just think they don't look healthy and it's because they're nutrient deficient and sometimes you don't realize.
Speaker 2:Just to add to that, like I've just spent a week and a half in the desert running this retreat and one of the girls who's um, I think she's, she's a nurse, and she's like oh, cat, you need to drink water. You look super dry. And I was like how can she tell? Like how does she know? I felt like I'd been drinking water, my lips were a bit chapped, but she just took one look at me and was like, oh, you're dehydrated. And I was like, oh, my god, do you know? So like we don't because again, it's a gradual change we don't, we might not know that we're nutrient deficient, and you know, it's not about us looking amazing, but just like, yeah, like you've got a bit of a grayish tint going on. You need some, some greens or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. We need to step it up a bit and and it's it's like you said that that the temptation to uh, to view yourself because society definitely does um as as a vessel of the baby, and after the baby is born, nobody cares about mommy anymore. That is an almost, and listeners will have listened to me talk about this before. All antenatal classes are about this, right, all antenatal classes are about how you can keep the baby alive, and maybe an afternoon about how you can keep the husband happy, because he might feel left out.
Speaker 1:There is very little about how to keep you alive and you happy yes, exactly, there's very little about how, how you as as a mother, as as a woman, not even as a mother, because, like it's like you said, your role in changes, but you're still a woman as well as, so to speak, and there's very little about that in anti-natal classes. So it is all about this is what your role is for the next 15, 16, 17 years. Yeah, and the issues that will indeed come from that will be severe, because when you lose your place in in in the world a little bit, when you lose your role, and then on top of that, your body doesn't feel quite the same as it used to, or even if it does, like you said, even if it looks the same, it never feels the same. But even if it looks the same, it won't necessarily feel right mentally.
Speaker 2:I think it's also that I remember when I was, uh, I started, I moved to LA and I was doing an acting class and one of the coaches was like a lot of people here in LA will be like if you want to be an actor, you need to be doing this like eight hours a day, you need to be studying and this. And I went to another acting class and they were like if all you do is an actor like, you're not a human. You know you're, you're an actor playing a human and you've got. No, you need to have an interest other than acting. You need to be a fully rounded being. And the same way, if you have a kid and you're like I mean absolutely like be a fabulous parent, but it's, it's being a fabulous like you've got to fulfill yourself and be a happy human first and foremost. And if that is fueling you, then absolutely fine. But you need to be a happy human in order to be a fabulous parent for someone else.
Speaker 2:And if all you are is just my child, my child, my child, what happens when that child goes to kindergarten? What happens when that child goes to school? What happens when that child starts rebelling and going through that normal teenage phase of like, oh I hate you, you're my mom, I hate you. Of like, oh, I hate you, you're my mom, I hate you. Um, you're gonna.
Speaker 2:Then your entire self-worth is then intrinsically linked to this being's uh, uh opinion of you. So now you're like, oh my god, I failed, my kid hates me. No, they're just being a teenager. But if you have something else, same as any relationship, like if, when you've got a long-term partner, or a husband or a wife, whatever, if, if your entire life is your partner and your entire self-worth is based on how they view you, then you're so beholden to something else. So having your own interests, your own hobbies, your own ways of of fueling up yourself and firing up yourself, making yourself happy, than in any moment where your kid is like, oh, I hate you, or they're not feeding, well, at night, they're not sleeping, oh, you know what? Okay, I'm just gonna take a time out and I'm gonna go and do this other thing that gives me joy, to replenish myself. So now I'm fueled up to now go back and we deal with this, with this baby, baby that's not sleeping or whatever issue is going.
Speaker 1:You need to time out, you need your own time out, you know yeah, and that's where that burlesque thing you do is is so interesting for me, because I approach almost everything as as a personal trainer. Right, it's so. Everything for me is you come to me with a problem, I fix the problem and then you go your merry way. There is as my, and I'm nice enough to be around for an hour a couple of times a week and all this sort of fundamentally I like I don't tend to be people's personal trainer for eight, nine, ten years, simply because that is not what a rehab personal trainer does, and this postpartum rehab is kind of what I do. Um, so there is very little hobby involved in what I do. There's very that outside, because it's still around the fix this core issue or fix my glutes or or whatever, whereas what you do is a much more rounded uh, a much more rounded thing that isn't correct me if I'm wrong not centered on just improving your physical appearance absolutely yeah, what?
Speaker 2:so? What I do in burlesque is not only getting yourself up and moving and yes, there's the dance element of it but it's a hundred percent the um being able to explore who you are, being able to explore your identity and your character, your persona, and to give yourself that chance to live as that persona for two, three minutes on stage, and it's very much my um. Some people come into burlesque from the dance world. I come into it from the acting theater world, and so, for me, theater gave me the chance to play powerful characters when I didn't feel very powerful, or to play really um, free, carefree, don't care what people think when I was super like people pleasing, and so my experience in in the acting world was great to be able to read all these scripts and and take on all these different characters. And then in burlesque, you're not waiting around for a director or writer to go hey, I've written this and I want to direct you in this piece. In burlesque you are creating the performance art piece, so you can say I want to be Maleficent and super powerful, or I want to be a cutesy cheesecake character, or I want to clown around and and be silly. There's so much now in terms of of gender swap and drag king, drag queen. I just didn't act where I come on as this real like sleazy dude and I strip off into the female character kind of thing. And it's almost therapeutic that now I can embody this like the sleazy dude that used to always hit on me in the in the club. I get to be that now. Um, so it's. It's been really fun to have a session, um, with mothers and grandmothers as well, um, and caretakers of all kinds, to come in and be like, oh my gosh, it's not about the other person anymore, it's absolutely about me.
Speaker 2:And when you're doing that creation, rather than it be almost a dance class where I'm saying here's the music, here's the costume, here's the choreography, I'm saying go play, go explore, make decisions and please yourself. So play around with some dance moves and feel which ones feel good on you. Let's play with some different characters and see which feels fun for you to play this week. And then let's play lots of different music and see what music you want to play around to. And it's a real exercise in exercising that muscle that is, knowing what you want and saying, yeah, that one, that one, that one, that one, because, especially when you've got your kid as well, now you're going oh, we can't have that food because that's not good for kids, or we can't have that in the house because it's sharp, we can't like you baby proof your house and you know I can't wear that expensive thing because I'm going to throw up on it. So almost every decision you make in your life now you've got kids in your house is oh, I have to think about the kid. So I'm just, my friend really hates it when they call it kids. She's because she needs, like derogatory. But whatever, I just it just popped in my head. I was like, am I insulting my kids instead of child or baby? I don't know. Anyway, whatever, I just I don't know. Flashback, just then. So in this rehearsal room the kid does not exist.
Speaker 2:You can be whoever you want to be and do. You can be the child going. I want the thing and now start demanding off everybody else. And how therapeutic and freeing can that be to suddenly be the person who goes? Give it to me, I want the thing.
Speaker 2:So it's been really interesting to see people not only getting up and moving around and also loving their body. There's a part of burlesque I call self love, like it's a physical concept in burlesque, where you're literally just touching your hair, touching your skin and feeling what your body feels like and enjoying it, and not looking in the mirror and going, do I look right? But feeling your hair and saying I love how my hair feels. Is it soft, dry, is it curly, is it straight, is it split, endy, is it short, is it long, doesn't matter, I'm just gonna love what I can feel, and love what and and decide why that feeling feels good. Um, and feel my skin. Does it feel dry, does it feel soft, does it feel moisturized, does it feel fluffy, does it feel whatever it is? But find a reason why that, why that feeling feels good to you. Um, you know, like, feel, feel your scars and or stretch marks and don't go oh my God, I've got stretch. Oh my God, feel these scars. They feel really smooth and they feel kind of like like I can draw my finger along them and I gave life to something else, like I love these scars.
Speaker 2:You can love everything about yourself that society has told you you need to fix or change, or you know, oh, that's wrong, you should hide it, cover it up. But once you start really feeling it, acknowledging it, embracing it and then affecting your, your mindset, how you want to feel about it in the moment, rather than avoiding it. Oh, I don't want to touch my scars, my stretch marks, because I've been told they're wrong and I might put cream on them every day to get rid of them. But other than that, I don't look at them, go near them. No, embrace them, touch them, get to know them and then, and then implant how you feel about them for yourself and then you can go around feeling much more confident about that as you go through your day. So it's yeah, it's not just the physical, it's the physical, it's the mental, it's the exploration.
Speaker 2:And whether you come to a rehearsal for 90 minutes and you're just you loving you, and then you come out and you've had that as your event, or whether you're doing a full course where you start actually creating your act, then you've got this project that is totally yours, totally a solo. It's not even rehearsed with other people. So, yes, you can be the parent and be looking around looking after your kids, everything else. Be the parent and be looking around looking after your kids. Anything else but for like an hour a week. You work on your creative art project and you come into rehearsal and then and then you perform on stage and you can just be whoever you want to be on stage for three, three to six minutes, um and uh, and have your have your time out. I like calling it time out because it's like time out for your kid. It's almost like you say to a kid who's like playing right time out, mommy needs her time out. You sit there. I'm going to go off and do some burlesque.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you go away, I've got stuff to do, yeah, so what? Just for everybody listening, because I have a lot of Eastern European listeners and a lot of Asian listeners what exactly is burlesque? Because the first thing people think of burlesque is probably Moulin Rouge type stuff or sexy type stuff? Right, Absolutely. That is the first thing that usually pops into people. So what exactly is it?
Speaker 2:So burlesque is a performance art form. It originated as being a satire or a parody of the like hoity-toity theater that was happening for the people you couldn't afford a theater ticket, and so for the sort of the plebs in the corner, burlesque happened, music hall happened, where they were almost satirizing the upper class, and so an element of strip was only part of it. There was jugglers and sideshow and clowns and comedians, and so the strip it just sort of took on that word even though it was only a small part of it. But for me now, neo-brelesque, or what we're sort of embracing now, especially with all the theater element of, is that burlesque is a three to five minute self-contained performance art piece that is purely created by the performer and involves an element of strip. But that could be physical, it could also be emotional, psychological. So I might do a strip where I'm dressed in beautiful, gorgeous clothing because I've been made to feel my entire life that if I look pretty I have self-worth, and then maybe the strip is I strip all that off and I wipe my makeup off and then at the end I'm like, look, I'm just me. Maybe the strip is I had a girl who had lost a lot of weight. And so she she was wearing this ball gown underneath sweatpants and a T-shirt and she stripped off the sweatpants and T-shirt and got ball gown cascaded over the top and it was like I've shed this weight. And here I am showing you the new light to me, I've released this weight.
Speaker 2:You know there's there's a number of different visual strips. I've got people who use walking sticks and they come on stage using the walking stick and then they sort of throw it away with anger and then they'll have some fabric that is wings. They'll stick the walking stick into the wing to give it some structure and then they use the walking stick to give them wings, to say, hey look, my walking stick is nothing to be shamed of, it's giving me my freedom, freedom and I'm going to go from the um sort of almost like crippled person into a butterfly with wings and absolute full freedom. So I love burlesque because it is. So it isn't just the I'm walking down a staircase with a feather boa covered in rhinestones. It absolutely can be that.
Speaker 2:Um, that's more of the classic burlesque, but adding in the satire and adding in the comedy and adding in what I call the reason for the strip. Um, and that reason for your strip can be whatever you're going through at the moment, um, whether that's like an angry strip, whether it's a super sexy strip, whether it's revealing. Here is my new, um postnatal body that I now want to show off to everybody. Um, it's, it's so creative and it's so individual and it's just so um available to everybody. I think that's the main thing I want to get is that it's not about Moulin Rouge and being sexy and looking a certain way, and it's certainly not about being sexy for the audience.
Speaker 2:I find like that's what a lot of people look at is the stripper world and the world of chorus lines. You're looking good for the audience, you're trying to please the audience, and burlesque is the performer being on stage and celebrating themselves and the audience celebrating them as well. And that's the sort of switch of mentality is that you're celebrating whoever it is that you are, whatever you look like, whatever your background is, whatever your culture is, whatever your opinions are, whatever, um, all your messes and your flaws and your bruises and stretch marks, you are getting everything on stage. I I call it the good, the bad and the wobbly and you're going look, here I am and I'm freaking amazing and everyone else goes yes, you freaking are, and it's just the most amazing uplifting feeling and the most amazing uplifting community, and I don't know any other sort of art form where you can so celebrate the unique you in so many different areas.
Speaker 2:As a writer, you know you can write about your experience and then publish a book or a play or a film, but then you sort of pass it on, you know. Or you can be a costume designer, you can be a sculptor or an artist, but when you're sorry a sculptor or painter, but you put it on the wall and people look at it and you can walk out the room. But when you're doing burlesque, you are on stage, you chose the music, you chose the movement, you chose the story, you chose the character. You are putting it all out there and it's a hundred percent you and you get all the credit and you get all the applause for just being you, and I can't think of anything more exciting and wonderful and uplifting yeah, it sounds.
Speaker 1:It sounds a lot more an empowering sort of thing than indeed, what's the what, the general image, right, that plebs like me have of burlesque, and all this because because it is generally, I remember, and I've never seen it was it passed me by, right, it's one of those things, and I'm not too old to go and watch it. This that I have um nonsense to watch on television, but it's, it's. The impression was indeed always that the entertainment is for the audience. So it's almost like you know, my wife does theater stuff and all that sort of stuff, and that is all about entertaining the audience. If you put the audience first, then that would not have the same impact at all on your self-worth, unless you get adulation from the audience, right, and in that case you're still just people pleasing. Fundamentally, that's then. But so it sounds like from what you're doing is is the complete opposite and there's much more. Take it or leave it.
Speaker 2:This is what I'm putting out there absolutely, yeah, I, I always say you know when you're. I teach in my intro class about the core concepts to be watchable, to take control, to have rapport with the audience, and it's about being on stage in front of a group of people and inviting them in to watch you. As as a motivational speaker, you could use these techniques. As a teacher, you can use these techniques. So part of the core concepts is is rotation of eye contact, and so you have this entire audience and it's not just you staring out into, like the black light or the exit signs, I say, or just focusing on one person you are, I'd rather say, connecting with rather than entertaining, because you're not. You are entertaining them Absolutely, but the way you're entertaining them is by having a connection and having a real connection with them all.
Speaker 2:So I look at someone with eye contact and I connect with them and I interact with them. But then I look at someone else but I'm juggling the two eye contacts. So I'll look at someone, make eye contact, I'll lock them in, I'll draw my attention to a part of my body, lock them into that part of the body. Now I can look away at someone else, have a connection with them and I always draw on the idea of if you've got a room full of children, you want to give enough attention to each one that they all think that they are your favorite.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of how I look. Right, I was like drunk audience members and children they're basically the same and you want to be able to have that magical feeling of everyone in the room thinking, oh my god, she looked at me and she spoke to me and she and she smiled at me and we had a laugh. And that's a real skill of a ballast performer is being able to sort of um, do the rounds almost like a great hostess of a party you want to be able to, like, talk to everybody and make sure everyone's having a good time and be the bell of the ball kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Um, so I was going away on a point with that. Yeah, so the the rotation of eye contact and the idea of, like, if I'm talking to this one person here and they're not, uh, appreciating me, I don't then pander more to get their attention, to get them to smile. There's 28 million other thousand people in the room who I can deal with. So if I walk up to one person and offer them a glove or my hand or I smile at them and they ignore me, it's like huh, bye, bye, now I'm going to deal with you.
Speaker 2:And that empowerment of I don't have to almost like, lower myself or dull myself down to be acceptable to this person. I can instead be so fully alight as myself and now go scouring the room for someone else who will appreciate me. And it's such a different mentality. Um, the stripping world is more like oh, you're not pleased, I need to, I need to please you. And when you've you've got a, a kid, running after you all day and all it is is pleasing the kid, please, please, please, please. Now it's like no, no, no, I please myself, I please myself yeah.
Speaker 1:But that's almost more life skill than anything else, isn't it?
Speaker 2:As in, that is very much the sort of thing that people could really, really really do with just even walking around the office oh, I, I gained so much from burlesque in my own life and that is a hundred percent why I teach it, because I was like I have learned so much, um, from from burlesque and from the acting world as well which is what I think I bring into burlesque as well is is this I am good enough. I don't. I don't need to please everybody. I love the. The meme that went around yeah, you don't have to make everybody happy. You're not tequila um like. Do you love everybody else? No, you don't like certain people. So why does everybody have to like? You just find the people that you love. It's like going house hunting. You don't have to like every single house you want, you only need the one.
Speaker 2:So I say to my students, especially in this intro class, I walk them through the general bones of a Belasque act. I'm like it's your entrance, hello, here I am, your self-celebration, look at me, I'm amazing. And then your exit with no apology. And it's the no apology part, because everybody wants, everyone wants to say sorry in that class if they, if they go ahead a bit quicker or they slow down, they go. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm like no, you're, you're doing it at your pace. So as I, as people exit, I say you want to say to your audience I'm amazing, so that they know that you are. And instead of saying thank you because they didn't do anything, you did all the work, you go, I'm amazing and you're welcome. And you said you're welcome. And in in the dating world, in the interview world, like the job world, you can go into a job interview and be like you're welcome that I'm here, like you're privileged that I got to interview me, because everyone's got a certain amount of time. On this world. You can never replace, replenish your time. You can always make your money back, but you can never get your time back. So, whatever I chose to do with my time, the fact that I'm here doing this podcast, the fact that you're here allowing me to be with you, we're both giving each other time right now that we'll never, ever get back. So never apologize for what you did with that time with someone. It's that saying you're welcome.
Speaker 2:I think in the dating world that hit home for me because, as an actor, when I first started out, I was very much what is the director and the writer and the producer looking for when I go into that audition room. I need to mold myself and and and get it right. You know I need to second guess what they're looking for, and the more I became a better actor, I realized oh no, no, I'm coming in as the expert, like someone saying I want to renovate my house, I need to bring in a decorator, and the decorator says this is how you should decorate your house, because this is my expert opinion. I, as the actor, take this script and go well in my expert opinion. This is my expert opinion. I, as the actor, take this script and go well, in my expert opinion. This is how the character should be played, and they're.
Speaker 2:They're using your expertise, not hey, what do you want me to do as an empty vessel? Uh, so it really is a building of your self-worth by going. This is what I want to do with my burlesque act. This is how I want to do it, and you don't need to tell me if it's good or bad. You don't. I don't even need your pause because I am so full and strong and I'm doing what I love doing. Doesn't matter if anyone else does, because I do and I'm the only one that matters like make your music for you, make your art for you, live your life for you. So at least you're happy, because you have no idea if anyone else is ever going to be happy with anything that you do.
Speaker 1:Um, well, that's very true and I I always remember my favorite comedian, bill burr. He said, yeah, he said something on I think it was a joe rogan podcast and you know I don't listen to joe, uh but I listened to bill burr and there's a clip on there and he said his biggest mistake as a comedian for a long time was thinking he had to please everybody and everybody had to find him funny. And then he realized that he did.
Speaker 1:He just needs 5 000 people in every big city to think he's funny there you go that's a full room, that's a sold-out stadium or whatever it is, and one of my podcast hosting friends who has a podcast that he started up later he's later than than I did, but he does a different style of podcast. He said listen, you have to think of your numbers in this way. Everybody wants hit joe rogan numbers, don't get me wrong. I'd be delighted if I had like a million downloads per episode, but they don't. But he said look at it this way you have a few thousand people that listen to you.
Speaker 1:If you were to walk into a room, that'd be an astonishing number of people you'd be talking to, right, that'd be insane. And when you're talking about, because obviously everything this day is, uh, this day and age, everything is is connected, right, we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram threads, we're not on Twitter anymore, we don't do that anymore, but we do all the other stuff. And you get this. There will now be for every person out there, for every single person listening to this. No matter what you put on the internet, you're going to find a hundred or a thousand people that agree with you and you're going to find a thousand people that disagree with you. You can say tulips are pretty flowers. Half the world will lose their shit and half the world will say, yes, they're the best right 100.
Speaker 1:That's so funny, yes, but it is we seem to have moved from feeling a lot of pressure, because everything is connected, because indeed, we're focusing, and I do the same. Right, if someone sends me an email saying you're a jackass, you got this wrong, I immediately go jesus, what did I do? And that's my initial instinct is I must have really screwed up. I better apologize to this person. And I listen back and I'm like no, actually I was right. But our initial reaction is to compare ourselves to other people, usually people who we think of as better than us, especially on social media, because, you know, people put out what they want to put out, and and and. Uh, we don't get the full picture. Um, but the temptation is to compare ourselves to other people and ignore the fact that we have, I don't know, a hundred followers or or a thousand followers, whatever you have, of all people that think you're adding value to their life.
Speaker 2:Wow, absolutely, that is so. Yeah, you're adding value to their life and it doesn't matter. Like if I had a hundred thousand followers who didn't necessarily love my content or didn't spend their day going. Oh, I wonder what Kat's up to today If they just followed me. I'm like, okay, I followed them, that's great, and they didn't spend their day going. Oh, I wonder what Kat's up to today. Um, if they just followed me and were like, okay, I followed the, that's great, and they didn't have to interact with me. Um, but if I had 10,000 followers and, oh my God, they loved what I did so much and would come in and check what I'm doing, and they love what I'm doing, so now they buy a class with me and now they come to my show and and now they're supporting me in my actual business. It's, it's the right people. I don't want to have 10 friends that I'm bored with and who put me down and criticize me and and and go.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, why are you wearing those horrible scruffy jeans? Or, oh my God, whatever they're saying to you? I won two or three amazing diehard friends I would trust my life with, I have an absolute blast with. If I got stuck in an elevator I would be hooting my ass off because laughing, laughing the whole time. I want those friends, and the more vocal and loud and obviously you you can be, then the more you filter out the people you don't want in your life.
Speaker 2:If I don't want to hang around with people who like tulips I'm going to go on about how much I hate tulips till the day is long, right, because then at least up front I'm like do you like tulips? Great, get out of my space because I don't need you to be in my space. Be vocal about upfront. Filter it out because, like I said, there's only so many hours in your day and days in your life. And if you think about how I actually haven't think about that now because on social media and in the virtual world, it's infinite. You know you do a Zoom webinar, it's infinite. You do a post infinite people can see it If I'm doing a show and my theater only has 50 seats in it, then I want that to be filled with 50 people who are going to love my show and if my life has 90 years in it, I want those 90 years to be spent with the people who appreciate me and love me so upfront.
Speaker 2:If I'm inviting people to my show and I want 50 seats of these people, my marketing has got to be like you won't like it if it's this and you will like it if it's that. I need to be brash and obvious with my marketing, because I don't want people to come in my solo show thinking it's a strip show and then it's super comedy. I don't want people coming in thinking, oh, it's a conservative TED talk and now, oh my God, there's a naked girl on stage. I need to be so vocal and open. This is who I am, so those 50 seats are filled with the best people, and I've never really done that analogy before, but I think it's so light.
Speaker 1:So right, because I've only got so many hours of my life to fill with people and I want to make sure that they're right. People, yeah, and, and it's, it's like you said from a, because we are very careful. And I know I mean I, when I started hbmb a healthy person, my little website uh, like three or four years, however long uh, three, four years ago, um, I think I had to build it from scratch, right, I had to do it myself, um, literally, and it was just it. It didn't work.
Speaker 1:Well, I know some people listen to this with kids, so I won't say the shit word, but, but it was that it wasn't great, um, and I thought I had to be middle of the road with absolutely everything as in now. You can't upset people, you can't say this, you can't say that, and then I really it took me a while to realize. Actually, you know, they said I'm a jackass. I am. I'm not an asshole, I'm just a jackass. I say stuff because that's what I think and and I'll just go with that. If I disagree with you, I'll disagree with you, not in an offense. We can disagree and remain friends. We can disagree and we can talk it out, and I might well come around to your point of view. I don't mind that at all, but it is much easier for me to be me than it is for me to be this middle-of-the-road person, like if you listen to the old old podcast episodes, because I'm thinking I'm on number 230, something. Now, right, so I've been doing this for a while.
Speaker 1:The first ones are terrible yeah not because I was necessarily terrible behind the mic, but just because I had no idea of what I could say and I cared so much about what people might think and, indeed, attracting as wide an audience as possible exactly what what you're saying, but then I'm attracting the wrong people. So those people feel that they've wasted their time listening to me and I'm sure a lot of them still do, but but they, they feel like they wasted their time listening to me and I don sure a lot of them still do, but but they, they feel like they wasted their time listening to me. And I don't like to waste people's time. Right, it's, it's, it's not, it's all the night. I don't like it when people waste my time by telling me something's going to happen that is clearly not going to happen, or me having the misunderstanding that if I come to see, I remember in, uh, in edinburgh we have the fringe festival, the the biggest like festival, right?
Speaker 1:So my wife said to me let's go watch a sherlock holmes play that is on, and she knew she was. She knew she was lying. That's what people oh, no, yeah, that's what people that you've been married to for 15 years do. Right, we've been married for 15 years at that time and she said let's go watch it. This is amazing. And it turned out that when she bought the ticket, she hadn't read the description properly and she didn't want to tell me uh, it was a show about, uh, sherlock holmes spirituality, because he believed in ghosts and all that sort of stuff. At his funeral he appeared as his own ghost, talking to his widow and that sort of thing, and the thing was terrible on all levels. The main reason it was terrible is because it wasn't hands off the basketballs, which was what I was promised. Yeah, it's not that the show itself sucked, it's that my expectation in advance did not meet at all.
Speaker 1:What, uh, what was actually put out there. And it's interesting what you're saying with gus and burlesque and with regards to how that then translates into people's real lives, because that's fundamentally what we're talking about. Right, not everybody listening to this is going to sign up for a burlesque, but the life lesson is that if you are just open about what you're bringing to the table, if you're open about the kind of person you are, the kind of things you like tulips or no tulips then people can make their own decision and you'll feel a lot better about yourself, because you'll only be surrounded by people that are open to what you're bringing to the table, whether they agree with you or not yeah, yeah, I I um, I think I started on the track of the of the dating world.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure if I finished that thought, but similar thing, like if I'm going on in the dating world and I'm like, oh, that was it. I was saying about how it, as an actor, I started being like what is the director and writer looking?
Speaker 2:for in in in dating, Like, oh, do I dress up for this person, do I dress down for this person? I'm not really sure. And if you, if you are a t-shirt and jeans sort of person, and then you dress up because you think, oh, that's what's expected on a first date, and then you go to the date and the other person is also a t-shirt and jeans person, but now you're all dressed up, you're like, oh, damn it, I think it's not me. Um and I I talk in in burlesque about how I've got this like hard skin little nubbins on my hand from doing aerial like weightlifting stuff and, uh, I went on this date and this guy was like, oh, we're gonna have to get rid of those, aren't we?
Speaker 2:and I was like, no, wow, because now, within five minutes, you've made me feel self-conscious about myself and the younger me would have been like oh, is that? Oh, and now I have to remove these things that give me the ability to do an activity that brings me joy. But I was able to then probably go, oh, no, now I need to get rid of this hard skin. I go cool my neck. The next day, I go on will be a person who goes, oh, I really value in that because it shows you're strong, you've got some power in your arms, and it's almost like a scarcity thing of like, oh, my god, I've got to be right for this one person, because that's all I have in the world. It's not all you have in the world, and using that in to bring it back to postnatal like your kid isn't all you have in the world. So don't, oh, my God, I've got to do everything and everything and be perfect, and also, the way you want to bring up your kid doesn't have to be absolutely social, acceptable either. So, knowing, knowing yourself and knowing what brings you joy and then knowing what. What brings you joy in the way that you want to bring your kid up.
Speaker 2:If one of my friends traveled a lot when she had two kids under three and she brought them around, like to different European schools, and they lived in Denmark and they lived in Finland, and they lived in England and they lived in France, and someone's like, oh, if you do that, they're not going to have much connection to the world and they're not going to be able to speak English very well and it's like OK, I know all the downsides. However, if I was to stay at home knowing my job could take me to all these amazing places, I would be miserable and I don't want to stunt myself. So I'm going to find out a really great way of having my kids go to all these different places. And isn't it great that now they get to eat sushi in Japan and as a three-year-old you eat sushi, right and all like going. You know for every downside there's also an upside, so you could live your entire parent life of going.
Speaker 2:Well, what's everyone else doing? Oh, is everyone else giving their kids mobile phones maybe I should as well or everyone else letting their kids do that. Oh, maybe I should do that as well. Like you, you bring up your child the way you believe is correct and is going to, you know, benefit everybody. I mean, obviously there's caveats to that, but yeah, like I think that that sort of pressure of, oh, this is what's expected, so everyone else is doing, do your research and do what brings you joy and and have. Do your research and do what brings you joy and have what's the word have conviction in your beliefs and your opinions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the courage of your conviction is a beautiful thing to have when you get there. And it's amazing If you look at again this DNA, if you look on YouTube and you just because YouTube is phenomenal YouTube is like the one non-toxic place on social media. I find YouTube is so good. It's insane. If you're in the search bar in YouTube, you enter anything you want, anything you like, something will come up with someone who has done it, so you can.
Speaker 1:I know everybody's a travel blogger these days and everybody's wanting to be asher uh, asher house, you know, but the for people who don't know me, he's the guy that rescues animals and all that sort of stuff. But he started off just driving through America with his dogs, just going. This is what I do. I'm going to YouTube this. This is amazing. 20 years ago that guy would have been a bum. He would have basically been Keanu Reeves in Point Break, just a dude, not terribly successful, and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:But you know there are a tremendous amount of people out there that support whatever you're going to put out there. I was going to make a crude joke there, but I'm not going to. Even Trump gets 30% of the votes in America. That guy convinced 30% of the people in America. That guy, that guy convinced 30% of the people that he would be the guy. And I'm not his biggest fan, I have to say, but I'm just saying people will find something to gravitate. People will. If that guy can get a third of a room to like him, people listening to this can get a third of the room to like them as well it's like you're saying about music and saying, um, were you saying about music or anything?
Speaker 2:but I think you're. Oh, when you're saying about your podcast, I know I was going middle of the road so that everyone would like it or I get as possible.
Speaker 2:I was thinking about music and how. There is not one song that is the song that every human loves. There's not one song. And if you try to have a song that's a little bit country and a little bit metal and a little bit pop music and a bit classical and a little bit Mozart in there, like what is that song going to sound like? It's going to be the worst song and nobody is going to like it. So go as far country as possible, go as far metal as possible, go as far classical as possible, and then we can split off into our little groups and appreciate that with other people who are appreciating it.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be in a room listening to my hard-ass metal and everyone is going well, this isn't country music. Well then, go into the country music room and you'd be happy over there and I'll be here and and we're all good. Um, we don't need to all love the same thing at all. We don't need to all be the same at all, because, you know, I'm thinking of of Big Brother by George Orwell, and it's like everyone's just saying the same thing and wearing the same thing and what, what is? What is that? Nothing in the world is exactly the same. No, all. There's so many species, so many different types of plants, so many different colors. The world is variety. That's what it is, um, and for some reason we've had to become the same, I guess. I guess it's that animal instinct of I need a group to survive.
Speaker 2:I mean look, let's look at babies. Right, they're born, they're not self-sufficient, whereas I think it's like look at the goat. The goat just gives birth. It goes all right. Bye-bye then. But we need others to survive. So there is a survival instinct of I need to be accepted in order to survive. If I am not accepted, I get abandoned from the tribe and I get left behind die. So it's absolutely understandable, um, but it's just sad that it's become so um and expanded. I can't think of the word.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's. It's become a bit prevalent that that is the way, even though, yes, within your immediate environment, there are certain rules you need to stick to. Right. There's some sort of social agreement that we have, but that doesn't mean you can't be yourself or indeed move out of that environment if you must. Right, you obviously don't live in the uk anymore. I don't live in holland anymore, because I was surrounded by dutch people, and it's 15 billion of us, and that's too many for me to deal with, so so I had to go somewhere else where I had a bit more space, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Um, cool I was thinking, oh, maybe it's because we're so connected now and internet and instagram etc, that we're now trying to be pleased to have so many people please us. But now is the optimum time to be. Like this surrounding group I'm with. I don't agree with their opinions. I don't like how they make me feel I can go somewhere else Back in the day I don't know which day I'm talking about, to be fair, but like I'm thinking of like wagons in mud and sort of like straw huts.
Speaker 2:You know you're in a village of 500 people, like 100 people, right, and you're like the outcast society. You're going to have to go travel on foot a long, long way to find any other human and so, yeah, you are cast out of the tribe and you are kind of left to die. But in this day and age there's you can hop on a plane and go halfway around the world. You can do an internet search and go. Who else likes tulips, like you can find your group so easily. So why are we all suffering with the the nearest and dearest, and I think with family as well? The nearest and dearest is never really the nearest and dearest the amount of people who coach me in class about oh, my brother this or my mother this or my, my daughter this, my sister this. Well then, stop hanging around with them. How many billions of people are in this world and you're wasting your 90 years with people who make you feel like shit? Well, I can't say that word no, no, you can.
Speaker 1:You can say the word. There's a little note in the podcast intro that's okay, okay, but yeah like, why, why?
Speaker 2:why waste your time? Why? What are you getting out of?
Speaker 1:it. Yeah well, okay, right, that's right and that's a good point. Cool, so we've touched on a tremendous amount of stuff. Um, what's anything else that you're like? Oh, I was gonna mention this, oh, um, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Um, I think we we talked about reconnecting with your body, so being able to give yourself time to see that, this new body that you've got, see this new identity. You've got to embrace it. To embrace it, to love it, to reframe it in your brain, to reconnect with what it means to look a certain way, to feel a certain way and then to start experiencing other characters and live as more power, take time out from the person that you are. Something else we also do in burlesque is um, you know, you name your character. So I'm, I'm cat, like my character's name is vixen deville, and because I came from the acting world, I wrote a whole background and backstory for vixen deville.
Speaker 2:So I find the people who are going through moments of transition, like I said, either that's having a baby or leaving a town, or leaving a job that you have and relationship you have um, looking at, maybe renaming yourself in some way, like you have a new name, you have a name right.
Speaker 2:So, um, I just thought it's interesting that as soon as you have have your child, you do instantly have a new name, and that is something for us, because it's renaming ourselves and and and writing this new backstory. But when we're born, we're just given the name. So you know, you're given a name that you and you're named after your aunt or someone that your, your parents, liked. I don't want to be named if that person so claiming your name. In the same way that you would build a business and name your business what you want it to be like, you've been given this name of mom, mommy, whatever, like maybe you don't want to be mom, maybe you want to be mama, maybe you want to be muumuu, like you know, make sure that the name that people are calling you feels good. Right, I know, especially when you get married, it's like oh, my partner, my better half, my spouse, my, whatever it is, you've got to feel comfortable with the name people are calling you, because every single time they call you it, it's going to get at you.
Speaker 1:You know, I hope that that was a roundabout way of getting to a point, but yes, no, that makes complete sense because a lot of again, when you're talking identity and all that sort of stuff and a large part of body confidence is obviously identity and what we spoke about earlier, because a lost identity and all that sort of thing you know, you become. I don't know if your son's name is jack. For a long time at school you'll be jack's mom. Yeah, now, that is, that is what you are. You're jack's mom and the insane thing is that other parents will call you jack's mom right, my mom introduces herself as I'm cat's mom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and she kind of likes it. She's like, well, I liked it better than being mrs eccles or whatever she was at the time she said it sounded like a hiccup. She's like Eccles. Uh, so, but she, she will still to this day go. Oh, I'm, I'm Kat's mom, I'm Janet, but I'm also just Kat's mom, and I was like, isn't that funny that you're going to be introduced as like belonging to somebody else? Um, but, yeah, it's so interesting that that's your identity now, forevermore.
Speaker 1:Yes, and then that is so it makes sense for what you're doing, to say, ok, you can, you can reclaim some stuff and you can say, now, this is what I am and this is what I'm comfortable with, and this is what how I'd like to be addressed, because we know, because nobody corrects that, oh, you must be Jack's mom. No, my name is Marie.
Speaker 2:Yeah hi, I'm a Marie. Yeah, and to actually say that I'd like you to call me that from now on. I hadn't even thought about. I hadn't thought about other people like I just thought about. Oh yeah, when your kids saying, oh, mommy this, mommy that, and then when you're with your partner you'll call each other, hey, can you just give that to daddy and you know? And then you start calling each other those names, but I don't even consider that. Yes, at school you're considered to be, and then whatever your kids if your kids is is is amazing, an A-star student. Oh, you're Jack's mom. Oh yeah, nightmare.
Speaker 2:At school it's like, oh god, here comes Jack's mom you know it's like, oh gosh, now I'm a hundred percent just the identity of what my child is Like. I have to be really aware of what they do.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, it's a hard, hard life, but at least, with what you're doing and all that sort of stuff, it makes sense to take that approach. And I know there's tons of because I had a look again. There's tons of burlesque things available online, or at least in the area. I know there's several in Edinburgh, for instance, where I am, and all that sort of thing. And you do online stuff as well, don't you?
Speaker 2:Yes, so I do an intro class, usually once a month. I try to alternate it so that there's one at 6 pm Pacific, which I know for England is a bit of a nightmare, and I think I do some like 10, 10, 30 am pacific, on the weekends, and I do once one a month, uh, as an intro class, and then I do a full course where I take you through the process of performing and then you can either perform online or in your hometown, and in december I have coming up a three-day intensive, so it's gonna be three days, uh. So totally put like, give your kids to someone else to look after. Invest yourself for three days, um, in it's.
Speaker 2:It's burlesque techniques. So dancing, how to remove your bra, a lot of fun stuff. There's a lot of creativity making feather fans, rhinestoning and embellishing your costume. There's different dance techniques. There's some of this exploration of character and backstory and building this persona that you want to create. And there's some business stuff thrown in there as well, because people want to make money out of being a burlesque performer. Yeah, I'm super Might as well. Make it your side business. So even just a bit of branding, marketing, um, how to get booked. So it's called your burlesque breakthrough. That's happening in december, um, so anyone who's like oh, I kind of want to kind of know about this burlesque, either come this intro class or the yeah, the burlesque breakthrough is a really nice, uh immersive like dunk yourself in it and and come out the other side feeling reborn.
Speaker 1:Happy days. That sounds excellent. I will link to absolutely everything in the podcast description and all that sort of stuff for everybody listening to this Cool. Well, on that happy note, I will press stop record here and, as always, press record, stop record. It's exactly what I did. Thanks very much to Kat for coming on. I've got a ton of stuff to report here. Obviously, check out her website. I will link to it KatLarkoHecom or VixenDeVillecom.
Speaker 1:She has online classes and she does an amazing thing in December which is a three-day intensive course which some of you might absolutely love. Like I said, kat has a different approach to this sort of stuff and I think her approach, compared to a lot of, let's say, body positivity coaches out there and I'm not saying Kat's a body positivity coach, I'm just saying compared to these people, her approach is much more powerful. Of these people, her approach is much more powerful. It makes a lot more sense to me, to you know, to do it in the way that she recommends to do it and, like I said, I'm a guy. I know nothing about this sort of stuff, right, but she does, and that is why you should go check out her website and all that sort of fun stuff and maybe even think about taking one or two of her online classes. That is it for me for this week, because that's another one hour and ten minutes. Let me know what you think about the transcripts and all that sort of stuff. I have a team working on transcripts now that try to get them out as soon as the podcast comes out, but they're not necessarily native English speakers and some of you have picked up on that. So let me know if you spot some basic mistakes, because I check them over quickly. But I don't have that much time either. To be honest, I'm doing a million things because we're also still working on the YouTube channel, right? Anyways, you have a tremendous week. Here's a new bit of music.
Speaker 1:Take care, bye, now, we'll be right back. What's going on? What's going on, cause it feels like I'm bleeding now. Got my dreams in the dirt, sweating now, got a bad, bad taste in my mouth and I can't turn it off. What's going on? Tell me what's going on. I feel the pressure of a lifetime killing me, watching blood. Take a bow and then trip your feet, walking in circles, just to watch them walking away. Tell me why we have to keep on with this misery. Feels like I'm bleeding. Now. Got my heels in the dirt sweating down, got a bad, bad text in my mouth and I can't tell at all what's going on. Tell me what's going on, we'll be right back. Bye, thank you.