The Stage Belongs to Fat, Frigid Freaks: A Review of Ms Mabel Syrup's Fucking Accepted

Main author: Krishnakumar, Jo
Format: Other           
Online access: Click here to view record


Summary: Ms Mabel Syrup is a neo-burlesque dancer/drag queen with three years of experience in the Oxford/London drag/burlesque scene. Her larger body of performance seeks to claim aesthetic joy for fat people, subverts dominant ideas of female sexuality, and provides political commentary using creative and comedic metaphors (for example, a drag-burlesque performance involving a love story of a moth and a lamp or a feminist rendition of “Stacy’s Mom”). She uses performance and social media to navigate her relationship with her body, her journey with PCOS, and her divergence from what is considered “normal female biology.” This review focuses on her performance of a lipsynced spoken-word piece, Fucking Accepted, that the reviewer watched at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London during the final stages of Not Another Drag Competition (NADC) in 2021.
Language: English
Published: Radical Open Access Collective 2022