This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

28th February 2009

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It’s tempting to give The Fat Black Women Sing a glib tag such as “an urban Zulu Vagina Monologues” or “the Sex in the City of Jozi” – for, like these metropolitan precursors, the show celebrates the female body while reclaiming and affirming its sexuality. To do so, however, would be to neglect its African diasporic and local South African inflections.

Firstly, writer-director Napo Masheane has been inspired by Caribbean poet Grace Nichols’s collection Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984), from which the production takes its title and some of its content. The mythical-archetypal character in these poems has been described by critic Terry Eagletone as “deliciously inert and self-contented”; she “mocks oppression by the scandal of being herself”. She demonstrates the vacuity of ‘western’ conventions of beauty (white, slim) and asserts her autonomy – independence from men, despite centuries of patriarchy.

Secondly, Masheane’s script is a response to specific South African realities: the continued subjugation, even abuse, of women in the name of ‘culture’ or ‘tradition’.

This might sound like heavy going, but The Fat Black Women Sing is quite the opposite. For the most part, it is comical – sometimes witty, sometimes bawdy, sometimes humorously poignant. The fat black women in question (Nomathamsanqa Baleka, Nomsa Buthelezi, Tumelo Moloi and Simphiwe Zungu) share a playful but tender rapport; even when they are fighting over a plate of cheesecake, these women evince a close bond.

We observe the foursome preparing in a cluttered dressing-room – changing outfits, smoking, bantering, bickering, making frequent visit to the fridge – and the show culminates in their performance “on stage”. They are joined by keyboard player Sheilah Katende, who is young and slim and acts as a physical-emotional foil for the ‘fat’ characters. Apart from providing musical continuity, Katende functions as a kind of narrator, sketching her relationship with the singers and commenting on their interaction.

She also joins in the singing – and these women certainly can sing: their voices are powerful (although, in the lower ranges, they tend to drop off) and the harmonies are crisp. Occasionally, the segue between dialogue and song is clumsy or the relevance of a particular song questionable, but for the most part the singing complements the spoken drama. 

Along the way, the characters recount stories detailing the difficulties that accompany the trifecta of being fat, black and a woman. These range from the comparatively innocuous, such as their adolescent anxiety and incomprehension when they first started menstruating, to the outrageous – such as being told by an affronted man, “I bet your fat poes stinks!”

Here, of course, the audience is insulted (as the character was) by the crass mentality underlying such a malicious put-down, rather than by the fact that it is related onstage. There are, however, other aspects of this show – which does not shy away from explicit references to sex and sexuality in word or gesture – that will probably offend some audience members’ sensibilities.

This it no doubt intends to do; provoking a shocked response, the play is an affront to the verbal prudishness that Masheane and colleagues consider an accomplice (or a manifestation) of dangerous gender stereotypes. In South Africa, despite traditional practices that emphasise female sexuality in physical, non-verbal ways – such as the Zulu Reed Dance, which can include genital display – when it comes to actually discussing sex, we tend to resort either to euphemism or to vulgarity. This awkwardness is associated with male discomfort regarding the female body, and with the adoption of this ambivalence by women themselves.

The problem is, of course, that a vindication of female sexual desire can often simply foreground the role of men (and the male penis) in gratifying that desire. This occurs on more than one occasion in The Fat Black Women Sing. Despite the fact that Buthelezi’s character is a lesbian, hinting at the possible exclusion of men from female sexual gratification, the other characters continually relate the achievement of a positive self-image to sex with men (this is unintentionally endorsed in a line from the performance of Whitney Houston’s song “I’m Every Woman”: “Anything you want done baby, I’ll do it naturally”).

Moreover, it could be argued that rubbing hips and cupping breasts and otherwise sensually portraying the buxom, busty, bulky female figure simply perpetuates the objectification of the body that is one of the forms of oppression – stemming from “the male gaze” – that this show ostensibly undermines. This is far removed from the tenor of Nichols’s poems.

But such an argument represents, perhaps, a pernickety interpretation of The Fat Black Women Sing. After all, though it addresses serious subject matter, the show does not take itself too seriously. Nonetheless, in this light-heartedness, it makes some important claims about the relationship of self to (judgemental) society. As one of the fat black women states: “I’m beautiful because I decided that it should be so”.

* The Fat Black Women Sing is at the Market Theatre until 22nd March.