Candy B, Australian Booty: The Fatty-Boom-Boom Remix
11 April 2012
Red Bennies
to 15 April
comedyfestival.com.au
Attendance at a Candy B's Australian Booty: The Fatty-Boom-Boom Remix show should be compulsory, as it's impossible to leave without feeling damn hot and wanting to shake your booty all over town.
Ok, so the chances of me shaking my booty are slim (I am an uptight white chick who can't dance and knows that she can never say "You go girl"), but that's the only thing about me that has ever been slim and I'm standing with Candy and her gorgeous musical director and sister Busty Beatz to reclaim the sexiness of fatty boom boom.
From the moment Candy struts onto the stage in her "sexy-arse, body-hugging red dress", she own the room and the hearts of everyone in the audience – and most of their libidos.
Starting with a story about buying the dress, this show's about owning and loving who and what you are, and refusing to wear ridiculous floral tents. Being "Blasian" (she's from Dandenong with a South African, Chinese and Malaysian background), she's also faced racial crap and lets us delight in her shaming those who delivered it, and there's a wonderful bit about various communities trying to claim her when she first gained media attention.
Candy and I have many things in common – I also fancy gingers, wear clothes that emphasise my breasts and dream about endless dessert buffets – but I didn't grow up listening to the angry politics of Hip Hop and the casual misogyny of rap. My teen music was Rick Astley, Split Enz and The Human League and that the first political song I bought was "Do They Know It's Christmas". Candy B is Hip Hop and, for us who still don't know that "phat" is cool, she translates some Snoop Dog lyrics. Yep, there's plenty of room for change in some of those attitudes and it's amazing folk like Candy B, Busty Beatz and the Massive Hip Hop Choir (who opened the night) who are leading the way and reclaiming the phat beatz as their own.
Candy B is drop-dead gorgeous, jaw-aching funny and proves that we can and will remix attitudes. The only way the night could be better is if there were a koeksister stall downstairs. (It's a South African doughnut deep fried and served in syrup.)
PS: As a 70s child, I had a black Barbie. She was generic not-Barbie who still had long straight hair, and I love that it never occurred to me that she should date my golliwog.
This appeared on AussieTheatre.com
