The Big Picture

Bri Hammond

series by

by Brodie Lancaster

@brodielancaster

Brodie Lancaster is a writer and critic from Melbourne. She is the author of the 2017 memoir No Way! Okay, Fine.

From the second-wave Ms. magazine crowd to the Riot Grrrls of the 90s, history is filled with groups of women who got together in groups to talk and plot change. Through sharing space and experiences, they found common ground, and great art inevitably followed.

Born out of a feminist book club in Melbourne, The Clams are picking up the mantle – and doing it in waist-deep water.

A group of non-professional performers, “Melbourne’s least-professional feminist water ballet team” is made up of all manner of women and non-binary people: creative types as well as those who don white collars by day, and white swimming caps by night.

Co-founder Francis van Beek, who was a member of Aotearoa’s Wet Hot Beauties troupe before moving to Australia, was drawn to the community spirit of the book club in late 2016. “At the time there was a real groundswell for feminism: Trump had been elected, MeToo was about to take off in a big way. Personally, I joined the book club because I knew I needed to know more about feminist issues. The feeling increased to: I don’t know that this is enough. I want to do something. But what?”

The action she and her fellow Clams found was in a mode of “joyful activism” – one rooted in inspiring conversation and lessening stigma. And turning the female gaze on the infamous, often-ogled red one-piece bathing suit in the process.

Their hilarious debut show was called Crimson Tide. With tampons crafted out of pool noodles and dozens of metres of red tulle floating around them, The Clams performed a cheeky journey through the phases of the menstrual cycle. “Prior to hiring choreographers Holly Durant and Gabi Barton to work with us, the book club got together and we mapped out our emotions when we menstruate,” van Beek explains.

In the show, audiences watch as Clams swim and dance in synchronicity – itself a play on the idea that people who menstruate will eventually synchronise if they spend time together. They embody all the happy, horny, sorrowful, bloated, angry and – eventually – relieved waves that come as we surf the crimson one.

Following the success of Crimson Tide, The Clams put their shells together again to conceive of two more shows, which photographer Bri Hammond was on-hand to document. “Better Wetter came next, a show celebrating sex, masturbation and pleasure,” Hammond says. “Then there was Grow Your Own Way, a celebration of body hair and a person’s individual right to choose to keep it or not.”

While van Beek is aware of the camp silliness inherent in The Clams, she says the troupe wasn’t expecting the response they first got from audiences. “We were surprised by the amount of laughter; we didn’t realise it was as comedic as it is. I hear anecdotally that people cried while watching us. I can only guess that’s about the community aspect: they can see we’re a group of very normal women and non-binary people that come together to create something. It’s a rare thing.”

In those clamtastic red bathers

Crimson Tide Like two clams in a shack

“We were not so great at reading the same book at the same time, so it became a longstanding joke that we try water ballet instead,” says Francis van Beek

Luci Everett

illustration by

Anita G sells The Big Issue in Melbourne.

If things don’t improve, I’m going to end up like Beryl next door. The old dear is watering her plastic tulips and won’t let her white cat outside “in case he gets dirty”.

It’s 1990 and Mother is at it again. “No, Natalie,” she says to my three-year-old daughter, “you will wear the red dress and not the other one because I say so.” Her house, her rules. We’ve just moved in with her – Natalie and I – to make ends meet. I’m late for work, no time to intervene. Natalie glares at me, her tiny hands clenched into fists.

Things didn’t work out at the creche. It broke my heart. Natalie was often left unsupervised. The baby boy in the next bed chewed the corner of his dirty bunny rug and cried all day. Toddlers and older children roamed around, and Natalie often came home with a different virus, or bite marks.

I am tethered to poverty. It’s a life sentence. We’re in the depths of a recession, and I must keep working. The only alternative to creche is to let my mother look after Natalie, which she is eager to do. I have misgivings. She is going to steal my baby.

I come home knackered and feel like an interloper. Mother cut Natalie’s hair without telling me and it sticks out in tufts. Things are getting worse.

One night, I am trying to give Natalie a drink of water during dinner.

“Don’t do that,” Mum yells at me. “No drinking during meals.”

“But she is thirsty!”

“You don’t know anything!”

Before putting her into bed I start taking her jumper off.

“It’s too cold, leave it on!”

“But Mum, it’s only cold outside. We have the heater going.”

“Leave it on.”

Natalie is becoming distressed and uncontrollable; I take her to a psychologist.

“A child can’t have two mothers at odds with each other,” the therapist warns. “Stop this tug-of-war. Move out or keep the peace.”

I try to imagine what moving into a share house would be like for Natalie. Strangers traipsing in and out all day. Not safe. Must keep my mouth shut and act in Natalie’s best interests.

The child has cabin fever. She hasn’t been outside for days. Mum is protesting: she says it’s too cold and windy. I scoop Natalie up without a word and we go rollerblading and kite-flying.

Maybe being dysfunctional is in my DNA. When I want to check if I really exist, I look at a photo of my paternal grandparents. They sit at far ends of a park bench; their coats piled high in the middle to protect them from each other. When we return, I read Natalie a story and rock her in my arms.

“You are keeping that girl chained to you,” Mother protests. “You need to work and if you’re not careful, she won’t let go.”

The woman is looking at Natalie with hungry eyes. In the early days she never got to mother me. With her entire family murdered in the Holocaust in 1944, including my father, she was destitute, so she left me at an orphanage until she could afford to claim me. I picture her lingering outside, desolate, her arms empty.

Mother is not trying to take Natalie from me. She is clinging to my infant doppelganger, the one she never got to mother. I decide to back off, no matter how much she provokes me. Peace at any price.

Okay, I can do this, except I can’t. The white fury returns every now and then, but I can keep it under control. How long can one do this until one disappears?

It’s important to keep Natalie grounded, to be terra firma in her life. Without earthquakes.

Sometimes I go for a walk by myself to keep some perspective. I pass the coin laundry where people wash their miserable, meagre lives out of their clothes, sprinkling soap powder over them. A snow job. You can’t wash away poverty.

I drop into the Chapel Street Mission, where you can get a hot meal and see paintings on the wall by people who suffer from mental illness. Lurid colours, jagged lines, images of anguish for sale, some for only $25.

I feel guilty over having unkind thoughts about my mother. To her I owe my love of literature and music, not to mention my very life. I can’t cook a good meal, even from the finest ingredients, while she makes a delicious soup from scraps. Maybe I deserve her criticism.

My daughter no longer loves me and feels abandoned. I read books about child rearing; it’s like learning a foreign language. “I” for “Inept”. Are those experts really experts? Where have I gone wrong? I see cold mothers being worshipped by their children.

It’s hard to reward Natalie. She hates chocolate and brushes me off when I approach her. I walk on eggshells; you practically hear them crackling. What’s maddening is that my mother can reach her in ways I can’t. It must be magic.

As Natalie develops, I feel myself atrophy. I can’t remember what it’s like to be a child. My mother is playful while I’m a boring killjoy. Must stop trying to impress Natalie. She will prefer my mother every time, no matter how hard I try. Perhaps I should stop trying.

I tell Natalie to keep experimenting, to take risks. She is getting the message and instructs the cat to take more risks. The cat appears to be listening and disappears for three days, returning ragged and ravenous.

“I’m so proud of you, Kitty,” Natalie says. “You dared to run away.”

I visit the toy library, remembering that these items must be returned. More things Natalie can’t keep, along with the aborted music and ballet lessons that I can’t afford.

Today it’s Natalie’s fourth birthday. My mother baked her a cake with pink icing. Mother is laughing and crying at the same time because she finally got to mother “her” baby. Natalie is looking content.

My peace plan seems to be working.