| What would it be like to discover that your hardcore feminist, lesbian mother was once a Las Vegas stripper, gangster’s moll and the one-time flame of Robert Kennedy?
Vivian, the main character of Billie Livingston’s new novel, Cease to Blush, has constructed her entire identity around rebelling against everything she thinks her mother represents. After her mother dies, however, she realizes she never really knew her at all and embarks on a quest to unravel her mother’s past.
It’s a hilarious, fast-paced and thought-provoking novel that alternates between 1960s Las Vegas, where we meet mobsters, politicians and entertainers like Frank Sinatra, and current day Vancouver, where Vivian struggles to make a living as an actress and ends up enmeshed in Internet porn.
"I wanted to write something that would be a fun story, kind of gallop along like a runaway train, but still have some politics simmering underneath that you might go away thinking about," says Livingston.
Livingston was inspired to write the book after an editor sent her the obituary of Lily St. Cyr, a famous burlesque performer from the 1950s. After reading the obituary, she drove to the Burlesque Hall of Fame in California and found herself fascinated with the women involved in the industry and the story spun off from there.
Her most memorable day of research involved attending a Pentecostal church where people spoke in tongues, and then heading for an interview with a British couple involved in Internet porn, who, she’s amused to point out, lived at 666 Burrard Street.
"She’d just had a baby within a month or so and she paused at one point and asked, ‘Do you mind?’ And I said, ‘What?’ And she just whipped down her shirt and stuck the baby on her boob and kept on going about how porn worked," says Livingston.
Livingston soon discovered that there were strong similarities between the women performing burlesque and the women involved in Internet porn, despite the time-gap of several decades.
"The more you look at these (Internet) porn sites it just starts to get darker and darker, starts to feel like a dirty puddle. And looking closer at the sites, some of them have a real sadness in their eyes. Then you realize they’re not exactly where they want to be. It’s not their heart’s desire," says Livingston.
She says the owner of the Burlesque Hall of Fame said a similar thing to her about the burlesque performers.
"She started talking about all the passions these women had. The dreams, the aspirations, the success that they wanted and the way they wanted to achieve it. And then they’re broke and someone suggests stripping and they think, ‘I can do it now until I make it big,’ and then they start making really good money and it’s a bit of treading water there for awhile until you can’t do it. You get too old," says Livingston.
Livingston’s two main characters, Vivian and her mother Josie, are vividly drawn and complicated personalities. They’re both beautiful and smart, and want to live life on their own terms without having to conform to societal expectations. Josie, a lesbian, doesn’t let her prying and judgmental ’70s neighbours get to her. Vivian revels in her sexuality and rejects, as Livingston puts it, the "straitjacket" of feminist ideology.
Livingston says she likes the fact that Vivian never apologizes about her sexuality. "There is in contemporary guys this feeling that you somehow affect a virginal self so that they can believe that they’re talking you into (sex). They want to at least pretend that you’re a conquest," she says.
There’s a hilarious scene where Josie dyes her leg hair lighter because her feminist friends were hassling her too much about shaving. Livingston confesses it’s autobiographical.
"I did it in the ’90s because I was getting picked on so much by these really politicized women. I couldn’t stand it. Looking down at all this black hair," she says laughing. "I know the feeling of also being kind of stuck around highly politicized women – Andrea Dworkin style – very angry and feeling that penetration is rape… so you end up just rebelling against it."
Although the book explores how feminist ideology can be confining for women, Livingston also finds it disturbing that some women are so thoroughly rejecting it.
"I did want to make a comment on this weird circular route that women have taken in terms of their own politicization or lack thereof," she says. "There has been this return to a lot of weird ’50s sensibilities. God, why do you think it’s OK to go on TV and play Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? 10 years ago, if somebody told me that was going to happen, I wouldn’t have believed it. Maybe in 1956 but not now." |
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