Annie Sprinkle

Annie Sprinkle

My first encounter with Annie Sprinkle was in an unlikely place – the second-hand ‘bargain bin’ of a Dundee comic shop, where I found an issue entitled ‘Annie Sprinkle in the Adventures of Miss Timed’, a hardcore comedy time-travel tale with Annie drawn more or less as herself. I still have the issue and it’s now falling apart (having been stored badly and long-forgotten until I came to write this), but the one thing I remembered, more than the art or the story, was the cover (Annie as a Boticelli Venus, converged upon by a number of kinky male ‘angels’) and the several pages of earnest writing by the creator and Annie herself: advocating safe sex and responsible sexuality at the height of the AIDS crisis (the comic was published in 1991, the year I left school). I had realised at the time that this was someone who operated not only in the sex industry, but also took her position seriously beyond a mere entertainer and sex icon.

            Now, having become familiar with her more recent ‘ecosexual’ work, one phrase stands out from that writing of 30 years ago:  “Make love to the earth and the sky and they will make love to you[1]”, clearly the earliest thoughts of what would go on to inform a serious body of performance art and collaboration, fusing female sexuality and erotic potential with chthonic nature and mystery.

            Speaking to a fellow lowbrow comix creator recently on Deviantart.com about my plan to interview Annie as part of my current research, he replied: “Great, glad to hear she’s still around!”[2] She very nearly wasn’t, thanks to her breast cancer diagnosis through 2005, during treatment of which she continued to make breast-themed porn/art (a dark follow-up to her 1980s ‘Tit Prints’) using her diseased body in a manner not unlike the unluckier Hannah Wilke. This dedication to milking every potential out of any possible situation, no matter how grim, inspired me greatly, and forced me (no doubt like many others) to consider the strength of mind to create art from illness, creating ‘morbid erotica’ of the most vital (and perhaps terrifying) kind – presenting a body in a state of pathology, which may be one of the last possible taboos available to the sex industry, yet fulfilling her own long-held beliefs (which correspond to my own) that any owner of a body, no matter how ‘abnormal’ or ‘grotesque’, has every right to portray themselves in a positive, even sexual, light, and to seek others who appreciate them for what they are. Sprinkle had previously worked in porn with burn victims, AIDS sufferers, amputees, dwarfs among others – all persons who would be classified as ‘obscene’  in an erotic context by US lawmakers.

            Her extremely liberal forwardness in presenting herself has made me rethink my own tentative steps in a similar direction, not just in utilising my own low-key contribution to the adult entertainment industry as a basis for PhD research (and the reversal of our own trajectories, she going from porn performer → artist, and me, the other way around), but two converging practices incorporating “new passions for feminist politics and performance art into...[a] career as a sex worker[3]”.

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[1]  A. Sprinkle, ‘Annie Sprinkle in the Adventures of Miss Timed’, Auburn California, Rip Off Press, 1991.

[2] Name of John Howard (see: www.artofjohnhoward.com), a contributor to ‘Hustler’ and cover artist for ‘Screw’ magazines. As an ‘adult’ comix artist who also produces ‘shemale’-themed art, this practitioner is on my interview list for contributions to my thesis.

[3] M. E. Buszek, ‘Mothers & Daughters, Sluts & Goddesses: Mary Beth Edelson and Annie Sprinkle’ in H. Munder (ed.), ‘It’s Time for Action (There’s No Option), About Feminism’, p249 (publisher data not advised)