#17 - The time we went to Hunk-O-Mania

And I sulked the entire show.

Hi! I’m Hima Batavia - a writer, cultural producer, artist, and community organizer based in T’karonto and the great infinite. I’m here for justice rooted in embodiment and abolition, juicy conversations, exploring new ways of relating, contemplation and practice towards enlightenment and TikTok. Multitudes people!

You can learn more about me, my social location, and this newsletter here.

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The last time I descended into JFK, Prince had just died. I was on my way to a bachelorette for a bride-to-be who was reluctant to have one but was gently overthrown by her insurgent friends. After all, we all needed a trip - an excuse to warrant a female gathering with a price tag, and a justification to cut through the crust of unsolicited guilt that came with three days away from families, partners, careers, kitchens, and unfolded laundry. And this was before anyone had kids.

The bride was fashionably modest, wholly uninterested in frivolous and performative tradition for the sake of it, but with impeccable taste when the spotlight did find her. We promised her that the weekend would be ‘tame and chill’ with no matching apparel and only a few penis-shaped ephemera - a cursory persuasion tactic in response to a weekend still known for gendered and heteronormative displays of wildness. Or as Jenny Slate put it, ‘a luxury gifted to women by the patriarchy.’

Within three hours of landing, I had three shots of tequila in my body and a tattoo on my right side boob. Tame is all relative in the long tail of bachelorette culture, where not remembering poor decisions and losing someone in the pack is the bar to hang your medal on. We did eventually return to chill — going out for long brunches and nice dinners, strolling aimlessly on dusty New York City streets until someone wanted a snack - street peanuts, a flat white, or gelato - in-between meals. This would have been entirely satisfying if not for a vague pressure to be wild, reckless, or rather, to satisfy a need to disrupt the ho-hum of daily life, even if the hum-drum was enjoyable.

On a whim, we booked tickets to the Hunk-O-Mania show - fulfilling the bachelorette playbook of teetering on the boundaries of the impending, cagey institution of monogamy. ‘It’ll be hilarious,’ we nodded shifty-eyed, ‘it’s for the story,’ we convinced ourselves, unwilling to fully submit to the playbook, but starved for alternative ideas. The show would be a real-life re-enactment of the 2012 comedy, Magic Mike, we imagined - the film that would unwittingly become Channing Tatum’s legacy piece. Just a bit of harmless, topless dancing. No big deal. Similar to feminists like Roxanne Gay, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Jennifer Weiner who are avid, almost obsessed, watchers and tweeters of the Bachelor - a long-standing television franchise with consistently high ratings despite it being reductive, cheesy, shamelessly objectifying, and lacking diversity - I decided Hunk-O-Mania would be the ideal societal case study for endless sociological and cultural analysis. Yes, of course, analysis.

The website is exactly what you might expect from a company called Hunk-O-Mania in 2016 - straight-shooting white serif text on a black background, a rotating gallery of topless men shot in low-fi, mostly white or ethnically ambiguous, crowded with SEO-friendly words and video clips, and a haphazard bullet point list of all the information you need with none of the frills of parallax scrolling, matte tones, and emotional poetic pretense. ‘The Ultimate Ladies Night!’ the website banner screams. ‘Now there is a reality where women’s fantasies become a reality…. you've been working hard in the workplace, you've been working hard at home catering to your boyfriends, husbands, and kids... now it's your turn to let your hair down, and let our gorgeous male strippers cater to your every need!’ the long paragraph sales pitch reads.

Destinations like Hunk-O-Mania, which has branches in 19 states across the US and was a multi-million dollar business prior to the pandemic, hardly needed to do much selling. In well-known bachelor(ette), stag and hen party destinations, like New York, Barcelona, Montreal, and Vegas, and others like Prince Edward County, Nashville, Miami, New Orleans, and Venice and that go in and out of style, routine party itineraries become embedded in any possible search word configuration. Despite the genuine desire to create a unique experience for a dear friend, bumping into other bachelorettes while on a bachelorette is highly probable (and sometimes starts and ends with high-fives and pictures). On a different trip to Prince Edward County for an actually chill getaway, dinner at the Drake Devonshire was muted by the shrill of six tables of bachelorette parties. ‘You didn’t know, this is the new Niagara-on-the-Lake,’ the server tipped us off bitterly when we struggled to submit our order. Though I couldn’t locate the total market size for bachelor/ette parties - the average cost of a destination trip is about $2,000 - a boon for airlines, hotels, clubs, and restaurants who rely on this source of tourism. With the pandemic dramatically shifting live events and travel, including weddings and bachelor/ette parties by proxy, couples are opting to downsize out of necessity. Some predict the trend of small to no weddings may sustain itself well after the pandemic as part of the collective recalibration of our personal and financial priorities, and not to mention bracing for years of economic recovery.

Soon after purchasing the tickets to Hunk-O-Mania, we piled into taxis and pulled up to a discreet door on a main street, not dissimilar from the aura of high-end New York clubs, flanked by bouncers in all-black. The bouncers may have been wearing black glasses, but that also could be me recalling my life like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. We were searched and directed to sign a waiver - a suspicious requirement for a harmless dance show. Like most T&Cs, I skimmed through the details until I found the line to sign. Our IDs were checked and we were given two free drink tickets.

The space was like most nightclubs - a smoky nondescript black box animated by lights, bodies, and bottles. Since we had opted for the cheaper ticket option, we had to find general seats in the rows of flimsy plastic chairs lined behind the VIP tables about 100 metres from the stage. We nabbed the first row as groups of women started to file in with matching t-shirts, veils of all lengths and colour coordinated outfits; our gradient of brown skin separating us from the pack. Almost immediately, I became tense and awkward in the unfamiliar space as we sat shoulder to shoulder with our legs crossed in unison, mild regret setting in from betraying our pledge of hosting a ‘tame and chill’ weekend while dragging the anxious bride along. On cue, my natural skepticism surfaced from its dormant state - of patriarchal power dynamics, heteronormative pre-marital rituals, and a general unwillingness to affirm ‘attention-seeking men’. I acted like I didn’t want to be there, despite being an active participant in the spontaneous plan.

‘Let’s get a drink,’ someone suggested to soften the stiffness - we had two tickets after all. At the bar - the tickets were exchanged for rail classics like vodka and soda and rum and coke, except instead of a single or double shot, half the glass was filled with alcohol. My suspicion grew. ‘They are trying to get us drunk,’ I remarked slyly. When we returned to our seats, a parade of topless men was hovering close by. ‘What’s your name?’ one asked in a soft, lagging tone, swaying like pampas grass while making direct eye contact. ‘How are you feeling today?’ they continued. I declined to respond, rolling my eyes and taking my seat. ‘Well, she’s no fun,’ he darted with sass to my neighbouring friend. ‘No I am not,’ I responded, now seething. Anger filled me. I grit my teeth aghast at what I decided was a violation of my personal space, emotional manipulation to upsell lap dances, and gaslighting my obviously righteous disgust by making me out to be a prude.

When the curtains parted, the electronic beat dropped in sync with blinding lights, and a stream of sailors rowed in on stage. Me, now the hypervigilant watch person. Hunk-O-Mania, now the panopticon. I stared shamelessly, at the Asian woman saddled limp on a dancer in front of me, at the hefty blond woman to my left shouting so loud she fell off her chair and at the cloud of mass hysteria and submission to this banal and worn performance of seduction and sexual desire. The brides-to-be were summoned to the side of the stage, slowly brought up, and subjected to the whims of the male dancers, our (poor) bride included. When I saw the hands of a dancer slide up a woman’s skirt, illuminated by the still blinding lights, I considered all the ways I would sue Hunk-O-Mania for non-consensual acts complicated by the pressure of the stage and audience.

Clearly, I regarded myself as too smart to lose my senses to sweaty body rolls, to abandon my feminist virtues when tantalized with oiled, bulky six-packs and buckle for a formulaic display of (toxic?) masculinity. Not being that kind of woman afforded me a self-constructed power that depended on a framework of comparative nobility. Here I was at this 120 min show at what became a routine crossroad, desperate for sisterhood, to be fun, spontaneous and demonstrate that I too had won feminism by becoming sexually liberated from the shackles put on our mother’s and grandmother’s vaginas, but completely unable to let go of seeing the world as broken, and a project to be fixed. I would participate in group agreeability - sure! sounds good! let’s do it! while often screaming inside, wanting to clarify, ask questions, say no, set a boundary, yet severely afraid of being annoying, resistant, and difficult. I had very little sense on how to compartmentalize what mattered and when, drowning in the audacity of blatant injustice, wanting to find some singularity in the world where my integrity could exist. No one tells you how to live in a world that devalues your existence at every corner - that would be too easy. You’re expected to figure it out while being positive, visionary, and excited. ‘Just focus on what you can control,’ a white colleague once conveniently advised. I never did a very good job of covering up my inner fuming, wearing it as forehead creases and blank face, but I tried. Inevitably, my truth would boil, flood my throat chakra until it emancipated itself as a sharp email, messy argument, or aggressive opinion.

In my fury, I didn’t consider alternative possibilities - that Hunk-O-Mania could be a place for benign care-free respite, for respectable and challenging sex work (men can make between $40 to $1200 a night) and female joy not wholly constructed as simply a derivative of patriarchy but a choice in spite of it. Even though, I still stand by the questionable practices of the place. Justice at the highest centres of state and corporate power is unambiguous, but in the everyday life of people like you and me, the shades of grey are more than forty. We are simultaneously living, upholding, and dismantling systems at the same time, and it seems reasonable that it is sometimes a dizzying and confusing experience.

It’s unclear what the future holds for strip clubs, sex workers, and places like Hunk-O-Mania - which have been economically devastated by the pandemic and social distancing protocols, and are typically backed by heteronormative love. As Gen Z and millennials continue to disrupt gender norms, with 1 in 6 now identifying as queer and overall being unwilling to participate in any displays of old-world patriarchy, as well as marrying later (if at all), well after peak partying years, often opting for wellness and spiritual pre-marital rituals instead, its possible that places like Hunk-O-Mania may lose relevance. There are many parts of bachelorette culture that need to be discontinued altogether - like invading queer spaces, sacred spaces for LGBTQ2S+ communities to safely gather, for a show where folks can ‘engage in the fantasy of stuffing bills in a performer’s bra with none of the risk or stigma of actual same-sex sexuality’ - something I’ve certainly participated in before. The last bachelorette I attended, we met on Zoom for an afternoon of catching up, light trivia games, and a sharing of wisdom from everyone’s own experiences navigating romantic relationships in life and the pandemic - a far cry from previous experiences.

After formally getting engaged a few months ago, I have been flirting with all the pre and during marital rituals I/we desire, if any at all. The ‘marriage institution’ feels a bit like a vortex, an artificial container to hold the exploration and clarification of your values, spiritual beliefs and community, and how they of honoring and celebration.

In a long-standing WhatsApp group, a friend recently resurfaced our Hunk-O-Mania experience. My outrage still had legs as does the patriarchy, but I fondly reminisced our time together - of making time to celebrate female friendship as a pillar that consistently holds and supports the pursuit of heteronormative commitment, marriage, and love. Prince was the first face I saw when I landed in New York that weekend, splashed on screens with banners of his birth and now death years. His famous lyrics, ‘if you don’t like the world you’re living in, take a look around you, at least you got friends,’ pretty accurately sums up the trip.

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Source: Fader

One of my unnecessary/ absolutely necessary life goals is to have a closet only filled with Black and Brown designers. I am slowly collecting annual pieces; completely weakened at the knees at the impeccable cuts, textiles, and embroidery.

Here are a few of my favorites cause this list could go on forever:

• NorBlackNorWhite - obvious shout-out to Toronto duo Mriga Kapadiya and Amrit Kumar, who have been remixing traditional textiles with 90s aesthetics into timeless collections. And while I’m on Toronto, desperately need a Rashmi Varma sari-dress one day

• Nupur Kanoi and Saaksha and Kinni making my care-free brown girl boho dreams come true

• Not So Serious by Pallavi Mohan have the most impeccable and detailed embroidery on interesting silhouettes

• Brooklyn-based, Fe Noel, creates vibrant, luxurious Caribbean-inspired prints on flowy everything

• Rishta by Arjun Saluja and Bodice make casual cuts, with muted and effortless sophistication

• Anita Quansah wearable art is exactly that — each piece a channeled vision of beads

• I’ve loved Ka-Sha for so long, who uses handicraft, lots of tassles, and a regenerative process called Heart to Haat to create a new category of light-weight wear