Introverts and Extraverts

Renowned psychologist Dorothy Rowe divides the human population in to two categories; introverts and extraverts. What defines these two categories is our response to stress and how we recharge our batteries. Extraverts look outwards. They need to be around others to re-energise and in a stressful situation they will chat, giggle and need to express their nerves vocally and volubly. Introverts, on the other hand, look inwards. To restore their balance they need to be alone and when under pressure they become quiet, often sitting apart in a corner where they pray they will not be disturbed. Nowhere are these archetypes more visible than in the dressing room of a burlesque show.

As you might imagine, such places are often small, cramped and full of semi-naked women, stockings and glitter. The extraverts chatter away, the odd shriek piercing the tension, while the introverts skulk in front of mirrors and in corners trying to shut out the bustle and the noise. You might have guessed from this description that I am an introvert. When I arrive at a gig, the first thing I want to do is get all my technical checks done, hand over my music, and discuss my cue, set-up and pick-up. Then I want to find a corner of the dressing room, or a patch of mirror space and begin the ritual of putting on my make-up. I will listen to my music on my ipod, running through my act in my head and telling myself that all will be well and that I can do this. As my time on stage approaches, I get quieter, less communicative, more focussed on the task in hand.

But I worry.

I worry that everyone around me thinks I’m stuck-up, or unfriendly. I worry that the extraverts, who are all happily chattering away and making friends, think ill of me. I worry that I’m missing the opportunity to get to know people better. And I worry that I inadvertently snap or appear sullen when an oblivious extravert interrupts my solitude with their innocent high spirits.

That’s a lot of things to worry about when you’ve got a job to do. But I know that if I didn’t focus inwards, I’d fall apart.

So I began to look around me and I started noticing I wasn’t the only one hiding in toilets and corners. Then I mentioned it at a couple of shows and found colleagues who are also introverts, and who prefer to quietly prepare for their time onstage and not participate in the high-spirited buzz around them. And finally, I expressed the fear that I came across as moody and unfriendly, and was told that the opposite was true; warm, friendly and professional were the words used, which pleased me enormously, and set my mind at rest.

They say you will find all sorts of women in the dressing room of a burlesque show; the tall, the petite, the slender, the curvy, the blondes, brunettes and redheads. They all take their clothes off and bring a little magic to the stage but the rituals that get them there usually fall into two categories. Next time you watch a show, perhaps you will wonder who sat drinking white wine and laughing, and who hid in the toilet with an ipod and their make-up case.

http://www.missglorypearl.co.uk/

Guest Blogger: Miss Glory Pearl

Puss

I remember the moment last summer when I discovered my mother had kidney cancer. I remember my heart falling from my chest and hitting my stomach with a thud. I remember the flash of abject fear that suffused every cell with dread. And I remember fighting back the tears, swallowing the grief and trying to control myself because this wasn’t about me, it was about her, and I had to be strong.

I sat at my desk, phone in hand and listened as she told me everything. It seemed so cruel; only in the last year had our relationship approximated anything normal and now it was to be tested again and, who knew, even taken from us.

Cancer, the ‘Big C’, is a byword for suffering; a cruel disease that eats us alive and whose rapacious grief devours the lives around us. I heard the fear in my mother’s voice and I heard the fatalism. The second, I challenged. The first, sent tears stinging to my eyes.

That conversation was a catalyst in so many ways. For a short time it brought us closer together. Treatment on the NHS was painfully slow and frustrating and I found myself growing angry at my mother’s ‘don’t want to make a fuss attitude’. Colleagues would ask how she was and I would say that I didn’t really know because I was pretty sure she was keeping things from me. But that didn’t stop the dynamics of our relationship shifting back along similar lines to those that had marked my childhood; where she was the one that mattered and a whole conversation could be had without one question being asked about me, or me ever saying how I was feeling.

How I was feeling was an interesting question. My mood sank steadily and by the end of the summer a deep depression engulfed me. I felt useless and guilty and a total disappointment. At work, my manager grew angry with me; he’d already been pretty pissed off that I’d had time off to go and care for my mother after her surgery, and instead of thinking he should go fuck himself, I felt culpable and scared.

I, too, sought medical advice and was diagnosed with Type II Bipolar Mood Disorder – or manic depression, if you prefer. The effect of the diagnosis was akin to a landmine detonating under my identity and the sense of guilt and failure intensified. How, in all conscience, could I tell my mother of my illness when she had so much to deal with herself? Of course, inevitably, I had to tell her, because I wasn’t at work, and because my cognitive function was so impaired only a fool could think I was okay.

As the leaves fell and the days grew shorter, I worked my way through the canon of anti-depressants, dutifully checked in with the doctor every week, and felt equal guilt and gratitude for the good friends who surrounded me. Everything scared me. Everything. But some force propelled me along to a local burlesque show and in the interval I asked the compere if there were any open spots.

It was the first week in October when I first took to the stage as Miss Glory Pearl. That night, more than all the drugs and the therapy gave me a sense of myself again. I was utterly terrified, not least because my medication slowed me down and made me clumsy – two things you don’t want as a pole dancer – but I got through it and the audience loved me. My best friend cried, and I cried, too, because despite all the shit and the trauma, I did it and did it well.

From that point on, my recovery began in earnest and I discovered something I was born to do; take my clothes off in front of strangers and make them laugh.


Miss Glory Pearl creates genre-defying acts that blend classic burlesque, pole dance, static trapeze and aerial hoop with humour, sparkle, and a healthy dose of British self-deprecation. She teaches exotic dance for Cardiostriptease in Kent and performs regularly on the UK cabaret and burlesque scene, introducing audiences to Burly-Pole, her unique fusion of two great traditions. She has also performed for Burlesque Against Breast Cancer.

You can read more of Puss at The Pole Affair http://pole-dance-affair.blogspot.com