People have things to say about sex at the Fringe this year, and there’s a noticeable shift from male narratives to those of women and non-binary performers. Chloe Petts, who is delving into the subject in Big Naturals, wasn’t aware of others doing the same, but it makes sense to her. “I think there must be like a weird zeitgeist that we imperceptibly tap into,” she says, “and we’re thinking about the same things at the same time.”
Big Naturals is about “sex and relationships and honesty”. While sex is the “bouncing point”, Petts is ready to be more honest with everyone in her life, including her audience. “It’s something I haven’t really spoken about on stage before and I find it really challenging,” she says. “Maybe this year I might have got closer to possessing the skills to be able to do that in a way that isn’t embarrassing to me or my audience. And I just hope it makes me a bit more vulnerable on stage as a performer.”
The show’s title refers to a time when images of women’s bodies were less accessible. Petts says, “it’s funny to look back on the 90s and 00s, when ‘big naturals’ was a popular phrase, as a more innocent, quaint time. And I kind of crave the days where the only message we had to worry about was stuff like Page Three. Now it feels like the misogyny exists in more dark, visual ways in the far-flung corners of the Internet.”
Poppy Jay and Rubina Pabani, the duo behind the podcast, and now live show, Brown Girls Do It Too, have similar concerns about the Internet and mass media. “I think mainstream media needs to get its shit together,” Rubina says. “The options you have are pornography, which is a fantasy, designed for male pleasure, and even when it’s drama, like Normal People, not all of us can look like Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones. It needs to get a bit more real and just normal.”
It’s their first time at the Fringe and they promise that the live show is even funnier than the podcast. “Edinburgh is gonna be wild,” Jay says. “And in terms of comedy, it’s the pinnacle of us being writers and performers.” Pabani agrees: “It’s been so freeing because talking about sex is one thing, but through the prism of comedy, it just gave us so much more space to be really silly.”
Sex is a taboo subject in the British Asian community, but they believe conversations are slowly changing. “I think what #MeToo showed us was the power structures in sex,” Pabani says. “It became very apparent who’s controlling the mainstream media, and how we view it and how we consume it, how we feel about our bodies. Once you then see where the power lies and know that you can dismantle it, that’s incredibly freeing.”
Jules Coyle is the writer of Managed Approach, a play about the UK’s first legalised red-light district in her hometown, Leeds. She has seen a shift with the rise of OnlyFans as a space for sex work. “I’d like to think that views are changing in terms of stigma,” she says. “I’m 21, so after ten years of learning about #MeToo from the Internet, and coming from Leeds, it was then interesting to be able to set my opinions of what was happening in the area on the backdrop of these discussions.”
Her play is “not about sex work as much as it is about the women that live in the area,” which includes sex workers. Their verbatims are interspersed amidst a fictional story about a mother and daughter. Through their relationship, Coyle presents different views on the Managed Approach initiative, while not favouring one over the other. “I think [the play] tries to root a bigger issue in the minutiae of fish and chip Fridays between a mum and daughter, and the sort of conversations that can come out of that,” she says.
Coyle has used some of her own mother’s experiences in the play as she “wanted to take some of the experiences she had when she was younger, living in [the era of] the Yorkshire Ripper, and how that has impacted her views on women’s safety now.” She hopes that more representation in film or on stage will lead to fewer taboos and more support for those who are vulnerable. “So it’s just about putting these stories on, in a way that I think the Fringe is really helping people do”, she says.
Equally inclusive, Jay and Pabani don’t want the title of Brown Girls Do It Too to put non-Asian audiences off. “I think so many people would walk past the poster and think it’s just for South Asian women, it’s not for me, but we talk about what it means to be a woman,” Jay says. “And if you’re coming and you’re not South Asian,” Pabani adds, “I hope you leave thinking that we’re just like you.”
Petts wants her audiences to have a good time, but if they feel affirmed or like they’ve learned something, that’s a bonus. “I have to see it as enough just being on stage and being honest about my experiences,” she says. “Because voices like mine haven’t been heard throughout history. And packaging it in a funny way is also enough because that’s how you talk to people. People don’t want to be lectured by a comedian.”
Brown Girls Do It Too: Mama Told Me Not to Come, Underbelly, Bristo Square, 30 Jul-24 Aug (not 11), 4pm
Chloe Petts: Big Naturals, Pleasance Courtyard, 30 Jul-24 Aug (not 13), 7pm
Managed Approach, Gilded Balloon Patter House, 8-24 Aug (not 15), 1.40pm