Dawn Porter: Geisha Girl

Dawn Porter

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Following the penultimate episode of Extreme Wife on Channel 4, presenter Dawn Porter recounts her experiences in Japan as a geisha.

This week I have been involved in physical and mental endurance beyond anything I have experienced since starving myself for Super Slim Me. I'm in Japan undergoing a crash course in geisha. The process was tough, our schedule was tougher, and I began to understand why fatigue is used as a form of torture.

The geisha are swan like. They appear to be as graceful as anything, but the pain they have to go through to get to that state of calm is unreal. From simply sitting on your knees for hours at a time, to wearing a kimono that makes you feel like Rick Waller is lying across your rib cage, the process is tough and requires total dedication to the art to be able to cope with it.

Along with understanding more about this mysterious world, I intended to find the truth to the question as to whether or not these representations of Japanese culture sell their bodies as well as their art. And I have to say, that after living as one of them for a week. I challenge anyone to keep a man interested while you de robe from that monstrosity of an outfit.

I spend 90% of the week either getting dressed, or getting undressed. Neither direction was comfortable, and neither took less than an hour.

I was so excited about making this film because I knew it would be so beautiful. But I was more excited because I thought I would look so beautiful as a geisha. How wrong I was. My lolloping height, big feet, ski jump nose and ridiculously small head made me look more like a drag queen than the innocent little Maiko I had hoped.

I stuck out like a weather beacon, and as I wandered around Kyoto, hiding behind my new disguise. Locals looked twice as they crossed me in the street. Surprised at the not so pretty image they were so used to, and thinking that a big ugly alien was in town.

Despite Japan being one of the technological capitols of the world, the geisha district I was in was as traditional as you could hope for when visiting such a time-honoured culture. Yet in this small and seemingly untouched world, contemporary systems were easy to spot.

One that made me chuckle the most,was when I was sitting outside the Geisha House one afternoon contemplating how it would be to live in a world so unaffected by modernisation, when a young Japanese woman rocked up on a moped and delivered a big box of Yakult to the house.

I guess no matter how you live your life, and what the world's perceptions are of you. The truth is that it is what is inside that counts, and if you can make that even better with a jot of friendly bacteria, then why not.

This blog was originally uploaded on 6 May

Click here to browse Dawn's series of blogs for Broadcastnow