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| Copyright Shilo McCabe 2010 |
Jukie Sunshine is an amazing sex-positive and size-positive activist and performer with a contagious fun-loving spirit. After spending the afternoon with Jukie, interviewing and photographing her for The Sex Positive Photo Project I walked to my car with a bounce in my step - she is one of those kinds of people that make you feel great just by being around her. I first met Jukie in 2005 when I took some promotional photos for The Fat Bottom Revue, a burlesque troupe that she was a member of. A self-proclaimed queer, alpha-femme glamour girl, Jukie has appeared in Time, Juxtapoz, Bizarre, New Yorker magazine and in Leonard Nimoy’s photo book The Full Body Project. Last month, I sat down with “San Francisco’s It Girl” to get to know her a little better. Shilo McCabe: So, who first called you San Francisco’s It Girl?
Jukie Sunshine: I did. I felt like I was doing a lot of things... the things that I had done were coming to fruition in the public and I felt “San Francisco famous”. I called myself that and then I really got caught up in the notion of being an “It Girl” and what it means to be an “It Girl”. I have actually purchased itgirlmagazine.com and I’m interested in creating a magazine because I know so many “It Girls”, so many people who, in one way or another, just have it going on and are really cool. And are out there and inspirational to other people and I’m interested in those stories and I’m interested in being one of those stories. Kind of like Oprah, I imagine, I’m going to be on the cover of every issue. (laughs)
SM: You’ve already been on the cover of a magazine or two, haven’t you?
JS: I have two covers. Other magazine, with the “church & state boobs” photo and Size Queen magazine.
SM: Over the 10 years I’ve been living here in the bay area, I feel like I’ve come across your image over and over again.
JS: I’ve lived here for a long time; I’ve lived here 20 years, and been a performer for 10 years now. The first performing that I did was in Good Vibrations’ Voluptuous Vixens.
SM: That was your first performance?!
JS: That was my first performance, a porn movie. I had started getting into the Sex Positive scene and when a call came up for the movie, I just had so many people say “you HAVE to try out for this...” So I did! I went and tried out for a porn movie. I took of my clothes and rolled around on a bearskin rug.
SM: Wow. Do you have background in performance or theater?
JS: I do have a theater background; I was a Drama major in Los Angeles. I really got disheartened, because it seemed like acting was all about getting into commercials and being in soap operas. Even though I was already doing things that were activist and acting related, I didn’t see a way to put those things together until I moved to San Francisco. It just became really clear that all these things I’d been doing, like putting myself in a cage or wearing a doctor jacket and pretending I’m doing vivisection on an animal – when I was doing animal rights activism – or walking around Union Square on Black Friday in a bloody fur coat talking about being “Worth It” (laughs). I was just a crazy character, it was fun. So I realized that this activism stuff is also performative and I was finding ways of putting them together.
SM: So you’ve been an activist for quite a while?
JS: My first activism was animal rights activism, specifically against animal testing, and more slowly I became a vegetarian – it was easier to give up leather than it was to stop eating meat. And so now I have a big animal rights tattoo in my back and I’m a total meat eater and I love leather (laughs). Oh well, it’s still where I came from.
SM: After Voluptious Vixens, did you then get into burlesque?
JS: I did the movie and there was a premiere on the big screen at the Roxy theater, I emceed the event. Afterward, Heather MacAllister came up to me and said “You’re hot. I want you to be in my troupe. Come try out.”
I was in that troupe (Fat Bottom Revue) for quite a few years. And when Heather got cancer, she was active in various degrees, so I took over in various degrees and tried to manage that. There was a lot of pain involved in doing the troupe, in not being the leader, and doing leading…. It was a good experience, it made for tough skin. It was hard on the inside, some of the getting along and not getting along, trying to be friends, and trying to be activists and trying to put on a show and have strong personalities. So, it was difficult at times. I kept in it as active as I did, because I really liked the message that Heather wanted to spread. Because I knew that I’d rather do this activism together then do it on my own. And it seems to mean more when we can do it in a group like this… that was amazing to have a huge audience on your side, there’s no fear: are they going to accept us, are they going to be rude? Which, initially was a concern… is this going to be too much for someone to look at… it felt like a lot to show, because I didn’t see it out there… I only saw it in the mirror! (laughs) It’s not generally still part of the media to see positive images of fat people, and the ones that are out there are still questionable… like Dance Your Ass Off, or something… there’s some positivity there… some of what is going on there is awesome, but, ew… it doesn’t feel right.
SM: There’s still this underlying theme of non-acceptance…
JS: “Look at the freaks… aren’t you funny, bouncing around looking that way.”
But, I love being funny, bouncing around looking that way! Humor is a big part of what makes fat performance palatable, because it has a funny twist.
SM: In Hollywood, the fat actresses are always the funny sidekick, the butt of the jokes. They are just there for comic relief.
JS: I feel like if I can do that, be the comic relief, and be pretty I can take more control, more power with how I get seen… and that’s the image I am trying to present. Pretty and funny and together and fashionable… I’m the “It Girl”, I’ve got it going on! But, that’s only part of the story, that’s my performance persona. I still have ugly days and days where l cry and I have close friends that understand that. I’ve heard other activists talk about the difficulty of being on display and trying to be the best person possible and not always being able to be the best person possible, falling short of that yet still being able to have pride in yourself and not feeling like you’re a fake.
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| Copyright Shilo McCabe 2010 |
SM: One thing that strikes me on a personal level, is that when you are on stage you have this presence, this gleam in your eye, this… you’re strong and in control and hot and beautiful …and I just wonder… where did you get that?! Were you born that way? How do you find it in you, or outside of you, to fight the dominant paradigm?
JS: It’s really has been a combination of outside and inside, kind of believing the hype. I think that what happened is that as I started feeling sexually confident… well, my story is that everything changed for me on December 31st 2000… I went to Queen of Heaven, a pansexual play party put on by Carol Queen, and met a new community of sex positive people. With it being pansexual, and people of all ages and races and sizes, and as different as they could be and seeing what was hot to them, it really allowed me a space to find comfort in being comfortable in my own body and find comfort with a group of people who weren’t judging me. I didn’t feel judged and kept on the outside, I felt like everyone here is on the inside and I get to be on the inside too! I very much like pansexual spaces; I prefer inclusion vs. exclusion whenever possible.
Shilo: How long after the Queen of Heaven party were you in Voluptious Vixens?
JS: It was within a year and a half, so I was now a gay divorcee and very excited, really blooming sexually in a way that I hadn’t been afforded in Los Angleles, or in a marriage with so many problems… so at 30 years old I found myself blooming. I started feeling more positive about myself, I was getting a lot of positive feedback… so that created this monster you see now… where I feel positive about my sexuality. I think that’s a lot of what it is; it has to do with sexual self esteem. Once people feel they have access to that kind of pleasure and freedom in that aspect of their life then life is a lot better in general and people, I think, face the world differently.
Shi: Do you think that this could have only happened in the bay area?
JS: I can’t imagine this happening in Los Angles… its very body focused, about looking a certain way. Of course, it’s everywhere, but it’s more so in LA. So that was a place where I felt very drawn in on myself because I didn’t feel accepted. I didn’t feel sexually positive. I didn’t feel like I was going to find people there that would be interested in me.
SM: You were photographed by Leonard Nimoy for The Full Body Project, what was that experience like?
JS: There was something strange being naked in front of Spock. It’s just a weird situation…
SM: Really, you never thought you’d be naked in front of Spock?
JS: (laughs) no…
He was really kind, gentle and patient and soft spoken. I expected him to be this huge man with a big hand that enveloped mine… and he was very normal sized. (The Full Body Project) was something that he was trying to figure out too, it was clear that he was drawn to this and I don’t think he was necessarily concerned with how it was going to be taken. I know by looking at images of fat women that sometimes this is a lot to take, a lot to look at and there’s no way to erase what we’ve already been taught about the vilified fat body so there’s always that screen that you’re looking through. And the media totally sexualized (The Full Body Project) and that was really interesting and hard to take sometimes.
SM: The pictures were not necessarily sexual.
JS: I don’t think they were sexual at all. They were naked... nude. People weren’t just able to look at them as nudes, as they would look at nudes of non-fat women. I suspect that would be true even if they were not as fat as we were, that it would still be difficult for people to look at as just art - something that was not even supposed to be erotic.
SM: Were you disappointed in the media’s response?
JS: I didn’t expect it to be easy. I guess one of my fears was that it was going to be made fun of, that it was going to be on Jimmy Kimmel and it was going to be a joke; and it’s going to be on “The Soup” on E (network) and there’s going to be a fat joke. And… I think it was on both of those and I think it was a fat joke and I didn’t crumple… it didn’t kill me. I was able to not take it personally because it is this separate image… it was me posing and doing specific things that he had asked for, down to facial expressions. The hard one was from The View. Joy Behar brought the book out and Whoopi was into it, she was all “I don’t know what you are talking about, these women are beautiful” – she was cool about it. Joy said something to the effect of “I don’t know what makes these women think they can do this – don’t they know they are grossly obese and there is nothing beautiful about them”. It was horrible! I felt like I couldn’t leave the house. I took that really personally. I felt exposed, and not in a positive way. I felt like I wanted her to be a feminist and be positive about it, and she was a traitor and I was somehow put on the outside. I like the way that Leonard dealt with it throughout. I like what he said in interviews and what he said in the book. He really acknowledged the beauty myth and the double standards and the dominant paradigm in our society and how fucked up it is.
SM: I noticed that a lot of people assumed that he was sexually attracted to fat women, and that’s why he made this book.
JS: And he was always very “no no no” but, whatever, I know he thought I was hot! Whatever Leonard, I know you want me! (laughs)
SM: Did you hesitate when you were approached to do this project, or did you jump at the chance?
JS: I was like, I don’t know… this means I can’t be a school teacher now, or… I can’t run for public office. Not that I was planning on doing those things anyway (rolls eyes). I was certainly choosing a certain path in the direction of sex positivity, deciding okay, I’ll be a spokesmodel for this. I knew that somebody would feel good about it. That’s ultimately what went on with both the porn and with Leonard Nimoy. Someone is gong to say “Wow, she looks good; I look like that, if she can look good like that then I can look good like that!” There is an aspect of “if she can do it, I can do it”. That’s not just from a fat viewer, from anybody. Certainly, skinny women have issues with feeling ugly, and being not enough or too much, and needing to purchase products to make something better. So I knew that most everyone would be able to relate to it in that way. And for the people who just wanted to say “ew, gross” they were going to say that. I was really surprised about how much came out about how it was not okay to glorify something that was unhealthy. That was an argument that was written about a lot online and a lot of people felt strongly that it was not okay to show pretty, fat women because fat is evil.
SM: Totally the opposite of HAES, the Health at Every Size movement.
JS: Right, there are still so many people who don’t believe that’s possible, the media and the medical profession too. It’s really difficult also, for instance… I know there are a lot of health issues related to belly fat. I have belly fat, so I watch Dr. Oz and he talks about belly fat being the enemy and it’s still something I’m trying to figure out. How do I love myself the way I am and not see myself as evil or bad in some way and still have this knowledge that my belly fat isn’t the best thing for me. I do believe what doctors have to say about the association between belly fat and some diseases. I’m not going to hate myself in the mean time and think I’m evil and horrible and deny myself the right to have happiness. So it’s about finding the balance of those things and also figuring out how I can help other people feel good about their selves.
SM: I feel like, as someone who has been able to benefit from the positive role model that you are - seeing you out there being your persona, being happy with who you are, being sexual regardless of what the dominant paradigm is telling you and being a happiness activist… I know I’m not the only one who has internalized that message and benefited from it. So, on behalf of myself and the other people like me, thank you!
JS: I think it will be interesting to see how I handle it as I grow older, there will be the age activism that is automatically going to be involved too, that I dare to do what I do being at the age that will continue to increase… but that’s important too. So, yeah, I guess I am a happy activist and specifically for me I feel like the way that people will achieve happiness is through having a positive sex life and you have to have a positive image of your own body to have a positive sex life.
SM: Absolutely!
