Paperwhites, such is life

In the realm of horticulture, I'm more of a vase than a flower pot. My thumb is far from green.  Yes, I fantasize about having a garden someday, but truthfully that fantasy has alot more to do with the wide brim straw hat than it does the dirt under my nails. Which is one of the reasons I am so grateful that every year my Aunt Nancy brings me a Paperwhites kit to remind me of the promise of Spring.  This kit is the easiest thing you could imagine: add water, insert bulbs. That's it. Easy peasy.

Somehow this year I've managed to screw it up anyway. But fortunately, these little guys decided to take matters into their own hands. Despite my error in shallow bulb placement, hundreds of spidery roots began shooting upwards through the soil with the determination of a California Redwood. Then, four beautiful little flowers started to bloom, each as delicate as a tea cup; polished and perfect, like an an Easter egg.

In these final days of winter, it helps to remember that sometimes that all it takes is a little water and some sunshine to create a miracle.

From Poultry to Pleasure

Exhausted from a full day of work. Stuck on the A train with a sick passenger. Bloated from a lunch of pizza and ice cream. "How the fuck am I going to conjure up the creativity to do this?"

This is the question I asked myself as I made my way uptown to meet my friend Kendra. She is starring in a fabulous play called Next, and there is one scene where she does striptease out of a satin robe. She asked me to help her choreograph it, which I was happy to say yes to in the moment. But in my present state was not certain I had the mojo for the job. I was feeling, in a word, schlubby. That feeling I get every Winter here in NY where all my shoes have a salt crust, it's too cold to wear anything but pants, and my skin starts to resemble the pallor of an uncooked chicken.


When I arrived, half an hour late due to the train debacle, Kendra was waiting in the studio with a cotton robe and a blond wig. What (pleasantly) surprised me, was that as soon as I put the robe on and started moving to the music, my chemistry started to change. I went from feeling like my brain outweighed my body to having all my senses engaged. My mind focused and I felt no worries. All that mattered was the music, the character, and the moment I was in.

As much as try to resist it, I really do think I've found my creative soul mate in Burlesque. Nothing else makes me feel more like who I really am, or requires me to operate on all 4 creative cylinders quite like Burlesque does.


What is your creative soul mate? The one that both takes you out of yourself, and plugs you into yourself at the same time? Share with me, my darling reader.

Who Am I?

One of my favorite parts of the holiday season is Christmas Eve Mass with family.  As a young girl,  I loved seeing the members of our small town in upstate New York put a little extra sparkle and glamour into their normally casual appearance.  This year, I pressed my edge and went full out - a black 1940's hourglass dress with patent leather pumps, a purple hat with a feather sticking out, white vintage gloves and a jacket with faux fur cuffs. Looking in the mirror, I felt fabulous and gorgeous, but was surprised to also be feeling a little anxious. I mean, people get dressed up on Christmas, but not really this dressed up. It was pushing all my buttons of the messages I received as a child about how a woman "should" look. Reverent and humble was the name of the game, not  flamboyant and flashy. Was I being inappropriate? I mean,  who was I to be wearing something this glamorous and daring? Could I really pull this off?


It reminded me of when I was a child. There was a married couple in our Church whose daughters would come to visit over the holidays. I believed they were from New York City, because they always dressed with a certain panache and sense of style totally foreign to our tiny town.  I looked forward to seeing them every year at Mass, as I felt like I was catching a glimpse of what was possible for me as a woman once I grew up and got out of this small town life (which I now appreciate, but couldn't wait to abandon in my youth).

So I went for it, tossed my reservations aside and charged on in the name of extravagant beauty, a daring kind of elegance, and the risk being looked at as a wacko wearing a costume instead of clothes.  A tribute to the girls I had once admired, and had now become.

As I walked down the stairs so we could make our way to Mass, vindication arrived as I received the best compliment I could imagine: watching my 5 year old niece insist upon wearing her pretty Spring coat instead of her bulky winter one, her summer sandals with a tiny heel instead of her winter boots, and asking her Mommy if there were any gloves she could wear with her coat that might look like mine.

So, to answer the question of  "who am I to be wearing this?".  That's simple. I am Kitty Cavalier.

Adoration - A Tribute to My Body

In honor of what I like to call "Happy, Healthy Breast Month", a.k.a. Breast Cancer Awareness month, I decided to write a tribute to my breasts.  Loving up my body, to me, is the most valuable kind of health insurance I can think of.  But once I got going, I thought, why stop there? The following is a tribute to the miracle of my feminine body, and to yours too. 

 

Adoration by Gil Elvgren

I adore My Body. 

It is so scrumptious and delicious, I just want to gobble myself up.

I love my legs. They are like the most elegant champagne flutes. I imagine that if they were a food, they would taste like lady fingers drizzled with chocolate and whipped cream.

I love my arms. I love the way they taper delicately at the wrist. I love their shape as I hold onto the subway rail. I love the way my muscles flex as I sway from side to side.

I love my breasts, they are like the ripest plum, hanging on a vine in Tuscany, warm from the sun.

I adore my hips. Their curves, the way I can grab the flesh on the bone. They give me a sense of home, like a crisp, brown Christmas turkey cooked with butter under the skin. Yum.

I love my Belly. I love the roundness of it, I love the density of it. I love how it stands by me, day after day. I love how authentically feminine it is.  I love having it massaged in a warm bath with oil underwater. I love how the Goddess lives in my belly, my center, my strength.

I LOVE my shoulders, my clavicle, and my decollete.My clavicle is like an Olympic ice skater. Graceful, elegant.  A perfect ten. My decollete, smooth like the frosting on top of a birthday cake. My shoulders, like the pillars in the Sistine Chapel, holding everything together with strength, grace and beauty.

I love my tresses. Like warm amber honey. Smooth, lustrous, sensuous. Perfect on their own, but also the perfect complement to my gorgeous face.

I love my face.  My eyes, like looking down an endless beach.  My lips, like perfect velvet pillows you just want to sink into. My skin, like the creamy froth on top of a cappuccino.

I love being a woman.

I love being me.

In the words of Doris Day, "I enjoy being a girl".

My Secret Weapon

Okay Darlings. You already know how much I love to share my hot little tips. But this time, I'm really gonna give it up. I'm introducing you to my Secret Weapon:. The Legend. The Bombshell. The Icon: Miss Veronica Varlow.

I first met Veronica in her Spellbinding Burlesque class at The New York School of Burlesque. From the moment you meet this woman you are under her spell. You can sense her magical qualities the instant you catch her sparkling, soulful, expertly lined eye.

Veronica is a master at seeing the beauty and power in every woman, and showing her how to embody that power in everything from eating cereal to dancing onstage. Her Charm School is designed to crank up your bulb from 40W to 100W in just a few short hours. One of our assignments in class was to write a love letter to ourselves, as if we were a famous writer describing his favorite muse.  For some reason I felt compelled to put mine on the internet.

My dearest, most darling inspiration,

That which inspires my every breath. That which reshapes me every moment.  That which lets me know that God, Goddess, Heaven, the Angels, are all alive and well.

I want you to know that every drop of you, every breath, every heartbeat, every thought, every word you speak is steeped deep in Divinity.

When you awaken, the Angels cry out in rapture.  When you retire, the moon takes it's slow, sweet time, as it doesn't want to miss a moment where it gets to caress your skin. 

Do me a favor.  Never go fast.  Go slow.  Take your time.  Do everything with this deliberate knowing of your magnificence. If you do this, we will all be OK.

I adore you.

This letter is the essence of what I love about Burlesque. Cultivation of your own self love and self- appreciation is not only approved of in the burlesque community, it is the price of admission. There aren't many places where you can celebrate the beauty, glamour and sheer frivolity of yourself from head to toe, but Burlesque, and specifically Veronica's class, is certainly one of them. So,  "if you're hot and you know it, and you really want to show it": run - don't walk - to the original Danger Dame.

Veronica's next session of  Charm School takes place on Sunday, September 19th from 12-6pm. Click here to enroll. Tell her Kitty sent you!

From Tightey-Whitey to Grown Up Goddess: A Burlesque Dancers Lingerie Love Story

Leave it to Beaver 2. Not exactly what you would expect to hear as a woman's earliest association with lingerie shopping. Particularly when the woman is a Burlesque dancer like me. Yet it was while watching this (mostly unmemorable) early 90's sitcom, sitting with a fold-up TV table at my lap and eating dinner, that I became aware that someday, somehow my ten-year-old girl body was going to transform into the body of a woman. And that it would require accessories.

In this particular episode of the show, Beav's tomboy daughter suddenly finds herself ready for her very first bra. Mom and Grandma take her to the department store for a virginal white trainer. Mayhem ensues as the girl's best friend tries to sneak two more-ahem-"adult" bras (red lace and black satin) into the dressing room.

When the show ended, I remember mustering the nerve to ask my mom when that day would come for me, while awkwardly trying to conceal my anticipation and excitement. Her response (a roll of the eyes and an "oh Lord") let me know this was a topic she'd been trying to avoid for as long as humanly possible. But a year or so later Mom and I made our own trip to the department store. I was dismayed to find that my expectation of a boutique filled with plush furnishings and padded velvet hangers was traded in for a square display of thin cardboard boxes filled with white cotton wonders. Still, I took what I could get.

When I got home from our shopping expedition that day, I quickly sequestered myself in my bedroom, and a whirlwind of feelings ensued as my white trainer and I shook hands for the first time. The elation of trying on not just a new piece of clothing, but a whole new body. The disappointment that there was no fanfare like beads or lace, just simple white cotton. And-in spite of the plain-ness-the shame of loving it just a little too much.

Four years later, I had added a few variations of the same into my collection. By now, my little white trainer and I were inseparable. It had become a second skin; a blanky of sorts. Until the day my best friend Tess and I were trying on back-to-school clothes at the mall, and she not-so-gently suggested I get measured for a new bra. I recall her exact words being something like, "You are popping out of that thing!!! What is that, a training bra or something?" Reluctantly, I followed her into the posh, pink, unimaginably sensuous Victoria's Secret. After a fateful encounter with sales girl and her measuring tape, my 34-A blanky bra, with its well-loved pilled fabric and ring around the under wire, was promptly cast out for a flashy, decadent new 36C.

As I think back on that day, it is incredibly significant to me that I could be walking around in a bra two cup sizes too small. That I could be so ignorant of my own body's development. And yet, it makes so much sense. I knew that as long as I held on to that bra, it meant I could hold off on becoming a woman. On going through the inevitable awkwardness of adolescent sexual discovery I knew was coming. If I didn't have a fancy bra on, I could never allow a wandering hand to sneak under my shirt. If I could pretend I didn't have breasts, I would never have to face the vulnerability that came with having them. Or face my anger and shame at being born a woman, in a body that was sinful, dirty and wrong.

Performing "Diamonds Are Forever"

Burlesque for me serves one purpose: Reclamation. Reclamation of the parts of me that are most powerful, and most sacred. There is beauty everywhere, in every woman. Burlesque, like lingerie, is a secret garden for celebrating that beauty. Burlesque finds beauty in the perfect and the imperfect. The flat bellies and the round ones. The 32AA's and the 42 G's. Beauty in the eyes of a performer as she spills over with determined confidence, or in the way an all-sequin dress can make a big, juicy round bottom sparkle. "Flaws" in Burlesque are never hidden. On the contrary, they become one's greatest asset. Sexuality is not only celebrated, it is flaunted. The more a woman loves herself onstage, the higher everyone goes. Even my training-bra-buyin' mom loves to come to my shows. (Me and my mom's evolution is quite a story, one I'll save for another time.)

Now I understand that lingerie is a way of approving, celebrating, and flaunting that innate beauty every single day. A way to make love to my delicious curves; not because I am perfect. Not because I earned the right to wear something sexy by fitting into a Barbie doll body (which is what I used to think had to happen for someone to deserve to wear La Perla). I indulge my body in lingerie simply because I am a woman. And it is my birthright to feel flirtatious, sexy and sensual. Lingerie reminds me not to take life so seriously. The right bra and panties can turn grey skies blue for any girl. Whether her last name is Cleaver, or Cavalier.

What about you readers? What was your first bra shopping experience like?

This article was originally written for my dear friend Margaret's fabulous company: The Lingerie Diet.  Check her out at http://www.thelingeriediet.com/ (Only click if you are interested in feeling like a Goddess, adoring your body, and becoming a more sensuous woman.)