Remembering Camille 2000

The Girl for Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, and My Birthday Twin

Above: Camille’s final performance in 2019, accompanied by Whitney Ward and Bambi The Mermaid.

While getting to know my elders whose heyday took place over 40 years ago is a joy and a blessing, it can also be challenging and heartbreaking. Over the past several years, many of the burlesque legends I’ve known and loved have passed on, and it never gets easier. On my birthday, I’d like to remember my fellow Leo and birthday twin, Camille 2000, who rocked on over to the other side in 2019.

Camille 2000, known as “The Girl for Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow,” was a performer no one could forget. She was one of the first burlesque queens to introduce Aggressive Art to burlesque with her tribute to Marquis De Sade. She was a star who posed for elite photographers, traveled with trunks of costumes and props, and once had a Japanese television crew follow her, reality TV-style, long before that genre became popular. Her 20-year career includes acting roles in movies and television shows — speaking roles alongside Burt Reynolds in B.L. Stryker, 13 episodes of Miami Vice, plus appearances in Porky’s II and Alan Carr’s remake of Where the Boys Are. Her emotionally powerful fan dance at The Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekender in 2011 marked her return to the stage for the first time in decades, and her S&M-themed act with Tigger! made the audience roar at the Weekender in 2012.

I don’t assume that any of my elders identify as sex workers, especially since I didn’t hear the term myself until the 1990s, but they are my cultural elders nevertheless.

Camille and I bonded over a mutual love of fetish aesthetics. She was famous for having changed her image from a naughty girl to that of a very bad girl, in her tribute to the Marquis DeSade.

Above Image Source

Above Image Source

Above: 20th Century Camille 2000

Above Image Source

Above: 21st Century Camille 2000

As I got to know her, she became increasingly mischievous. One of her favorite tricks was to sneak up behind her friends and shove red-hots candies down the backs of their pants. If they crept below the tailbone, the sensation was startlingly sharp. The red dye could last for days.

When she found out she had cancer, the neo-burlesque community came to her aid with fund-raising and hands-on care. When I first spoke to her after her diagnosis, she cried, “I’m so scared! I don’t wanna die"!” and I did my best to hold space for her terror and grief. Over the next few months she became more accepting, saying she just wanted to make sure she got to “go on that stage one last time.” And she did.

The act at the top of this post is from her farewell performance, created with her loving friends Bambi The Mermaid and Whitney Ward, who made sure she had the best of everything for her final show.

Every year Camille and I made sure to say Happy Birthday to each other. And still every year I remember her voice and her fierceness and her lovingness and her sense of humor and her devotion to the stage.

Happy Birthday, Camille.