‘Moms Moms Moms’: Burlesque, comedy, and the chaos of motherhood

“We always end up talking about our kids. We say we’re not going to, but then we still do.”

Comedians known on stage as Your Mom Kathy and DD Brassiereare are in Calgary this week for their burlesque comedy show Moms Moms Moms. It’s a sexy, funny, and fearless hour of laughter and liberation, but also, yes, they’ll talk about their kids; because once you’re a mom, that’s how she goes.

Kathy has three kids, DD has one, but this show isn’t so much about the act of motherhood, rather the dramedy of finding yourself when the job shifts from constant care to on-call when the kids age towards adulthood. 

DD says motherhood came with a constant hum of self-doubt. “We worried if we were enough—if we looked good enough, if we were fit enough, smart enough,” she says. “Now that our kids are grown (and mostly healthy,) we’ve learned to loosen up and forgive ourselves.”

She says regardless of whether the world thinks they are attractive after passing the 40 year old milestone, “We love how we look — like we really love our bodies and being able to do that on stage and show to people… People don’t have to come to our show, but we keep selling out. So what’s that telling people?”

“People love to see it,” says Kathy. “One description of burlesque that I really like — it’s not people looking at you. It’s us looking at you looking at us, right? Because it’s not just typical beauty standards; what you’re going to see with us is a very radical honesty on a lot of levels.”

“We poke fun at a lot of things and ourselves,” Kathy adds. “But also, there’s nothing against women or people that live their lives in any way.”

If they are honest, DD says their one hour show is chaos. 

“For people that aren’t moms — we had a couple of local reviewers that were not moms,” she adds. “They were like, ‘Oh, it was too much.’ And the comments were, ‘No, that’s motherhood. You don’t know what happens next. You don’t get a chance to transition to the next scene. Like you are running into the room, still pulling your pants up. It’s a very honest look at how you function.'”

The one-hour burlesque comedy runs Nov. 13 at 8:30 p.m. at The Gulbar (636 10 Ave SW, Calgary). Tickets are $18. The show is for those 18+ as it has mature content.

More information can be found here.