- Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer
Nicole Taffe, mother of three, posed for the cover of her own magazine, 'Back-Dat-Up'.
Germaine Smith, Staff Reporter
NICOLE TAFFE is not your typical mother of three. In fact, most mothers would tremble in terror to even think about doing what she does for a living. At 28, she runs a magazine dedicated to showcasing the fleshy and flashy side of the black female exotic (go-go) dancer.
Not an ordinary job in itself for anyone, but for a woman, this is an even rarer feat.
Born and raised in Canada, earlier this year she relocated here and stepped into a world which has been traditionally dominated by men, scorned by conservatives and condemned to the fiery depths of hell by Christianity.
Feminists adamantly argue that exposing the female body in explicitly sexual ways reinforces the negative stereotypes which men have of them and that it facilitates the view that women are only objects for sexual gratification.
Taffe, however, disagrees, and is one of few who openly discuss what she does. She is bold and unrepentant about it and is seeking to inject some amount of professionalism and respectability into the shady and sensational world of exotic dancing.
Her magazine, Back-Dat-Up, features full close up images of bulging breasts, lascivious legs, thongs, thighs and bikinis. It features profiles of exotic dancers from different clubs, graphic sex stories from its readers, sex quizzes and sex advice, plus a profile of a popular dancehall entertainer each month.
In the very first edition, in April 2004, Taffe boldly struts her stuff on the cover in a bikini, with her right index finger sensuously placed in her mouth, her tongue half-way out.
She tells The Sunday Gleaner that she posed for her own magazine to earn the trust of her subjects, who feared she only wanted to exploit them.
LABELLED
She has been called 'sodomite' for the saucy stories in the magazine, which often feature multiple women with one man, but she shrugs that off, remaining firmly focused on the vision of where she wants to go with her life.
She could easily be labelled as a peddler of pornography, but Taffe insists that what she does is not porn. She says that she deliberately tones the magazine down and forces it to be as artistic as
possible. This, she claims, allows her to cater to a particular market which she sees ballooning in Jamaica.
She fiddled with the idea for years while living in Canada, but solidified it five years ago after reading a popular spicy tabloid sold mostly on the streets in Jamaica.
"I wanted everybody to read it, not just people who are sexually oriented. People should read it and get entertained. I wanted to give it a wider extent of readers," Taffe said.
One of her reasons is actually to show that dancing is not dirty and that exotic dancing is a healthy way to earn a living.
"Because of people that I know who are dancers and a lot of people don't know that they are dancers. I see them on a daily basis and they don't do anything different than anybody else," Taffe said.
Strangely, although exotic dancing is perceived to often go hand in hand with prostitution, Taffe abhors the concept.
"Prostitution shouldn't be legal anywhere," she emphasises. "I don't think women people should have to sell their bodies for a dollar."
Rather, she has two words for them. "Go strip."
Even prostitution's milder side, she notes, where women are content with sitting back at home and collecting 'maintenance' cash from the men they have casual sex with, is just as inappropriate.
"I have one daughter and I don't want her to grow up that way. I was not grown that way, believing that a man is supposed to support me. I was grown to know that you do things for yourself and then to support your family, so I do my own things my way," she said.
Her peeve is with Jamaican men too. She is single and has not found the man who is comfortable enough with her independence and motivations to approach her yet.
"Jamaican men like to back you in a corner," she says. "They don't want to give you any space to say what you want to say, they just want to pin you down. When someone tries that with me I just walk away from that; you don't even get the time of day with me."
RUNNING SCARED
"A lot of men are scared of what I do as well and I don't want a man who is ashamed of what I do, that is going to be ashamed to walk down the street with me... I just stay by myself, not until I find that person for me," she said.
In terms of her children, who are in Canada, Ms. Taffe tells The Sunday Gleaner that although society harshly judges her based on her job description and criticises her morals, she keeps things honest with two sons and daughter, ages 11, 10 and five respectively.
"My older son has seen the magazines... I have never inclined them to open the magazine or anything, but one thing between me and their fathers is that we don't hide anything from them, because we noticed that the children nowadays are growing up too quickly and they come home with certain things," she states.
For the future, Taffe's goals resembles anyone else's who runs their own company.
"I intend to do it until one of my children takes it over," she jokes. "It's something that I am looking into long term. My other dreams include actually looking into working with children for educational programmes, plus a television show. I have already documented details about the programme, but I just need some fine-tuning."
