The Silicone Diaries

At The Cultch until Feb. 25

Tickets: 604-251-1363, thecultch.com

The Silicone Diaries, produced by Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, is only tangentially about performance artist Nina Arsenault’s sex change from male to female. Not content with looking like an “ordinary” woman, Arsenault has spent years pursuing what she perceives to be perfect feminine beauty: big boobs, wasp waist, bodacious butt, full lips, perky nose and much more. In this mesmerizing monologue she documents the more than 60 injections and surgical procedures she’s undergone in her quest.

Beginning with Arsenault in a transparent plastic dress slithering snakelike through fog onto the stage, Silicone Diaries would be appalling were it not so sad. Arsenault risks life, for example, when she’s injected with 18 syringes of illegal silicone into each butt cheek. What price a perfect ass—whatever that is?

Obsessed with plastic perfection, Arsenault is her own self-absorbed work of art—and it’s still in progress. She could have stopped when she looked like a cute, fresh-faced young woman but that was not enough.

Silicone Diaries is disturbing but an interesting penny dropped for me: in the process of undergoing a sex change from male to shemale, Arsenault fell prey to the expectations society has of women—that they conform or make some attempt to conform to the prevailing idea of beauty. Arsenault is just way off the end of a spectrum that begins innocently enough with a little dash of lipstick, a bit of blush on the cheeks.

Long, lustrous strawberry blonde wig removed and bald head revealed at the end of the show, Arsenault pensively acknowledges that looking hot may not be possible forever.

Silicone and surgery can only delay the ravages of time; they can’t stop it. The irony is that as she grows old Arsenault may find herself free at last to join the ranks of women who age gracefully—one might even say beautifully.

joled@telus.net