The Rap of Tasmania

Backstage iphone snap while at a photo shoot for MX 

(look for it next week in Sydney and Melbourne.)

Costumes by Rose Chong's

*

My musical compatriot, Amanda Palmer, wrote a song called 'The Map of Tasmania' which is about pubic hair. Mostly it's about having pubic hair, and that having a big bush is great and shaving or waxing is painful and crazy and makes you look like an 8 year old. Those lyrics are funny, and thought provoking, and also necessary in a culture where the public pubic is mostly quite sparsely hirsute.

While we were on tour together I wrote a rap for the song, the rap evolved and grew and I got better at rapping - which I'd never done before. So when Amanda decided to release a remix album with a whole bunch of radtastic folks like PEACHES remixing her song I was happy to record my rap.

Here is my 'Rap of Tasmania.'

My Name is Gus helped me record and write the beats and grooves - he is awesome.

Lyrics:

Hey Amanda I don’t mean to be rude
but I think it’s kind of nice when it’s all slippery and smooth
Some women just don’t have a lot of hair 
and to say they all look eight years old is really unfair
Yeah, I dig the jungle, 
I dig the Rubyfruit, 
just like a pirate, 
I dig the boot-y.
You say you got the map, 
I say you got the treasure, 
your hair can mark the spot 
where I can dig for pleasure.
I like it fuzzy, yeah I like it bare, 
uh-huh, but most of all, I really don’t care.
So let me clarify what I’m trying to say: 
There’s a thousand ways to shape it, 
do it your own way.

*

And something I wrote for Amanda's blog about the song:

 I grew up around a lot of hippies who had an almost mystical belief in the power of the human body in its completely natural form. I don’t think anyone ever said this outright, but what I learned was that women should not shave or pluck or wax any part of themselves and to do so was an affront to nature. Women who submitted to popular beauty trends were seen as anti-feminists and idiots, subjecting themselves to the will of the patriarchy; all men who preferred their lady lovers with less body hair were porn obsessed pedophiles. The judgements were harsh and I was happy to look down from my hairy high horse at the idiotically smooth bottoms of the porn obsessed rabble below. Hair free legs were one thing, but leave the pubic mons as wild and free as nature intended. That was until I got an accidental Brazilian in Berlin (oh language barriers) which was the first step on a long road to the realization that I was a judgmental asshole who should shut the hell up about other peoples’ pants regions. We all have preferences and we all pick and choose which popular aesthetics to adhere to. 

Given my history, it is with a certain irony that my rap is in defense of the bare ‘down there.’ 

Body hair is political, but it’s also personal. And yeah, I like it all kinds of ways on all kinds of people.

You can read Amanda's blog about the remixes here: http://blog.amandapalmer.net/

Here is Amanda's fantastic and colorful original song and video:

Here's another Amanda video that Jim Batt made: