I'm a therapist during the day and a burlesque dancer at night. I've learned that beauty is situational.

• Fancy Feast is the stage name of a New York City performer.
• During the day she's a therapist, but on weekends she performs in burlesque shows.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Fancy Feast, author of "Naked: On Sex, work and other burlesques." It has been edited for length and clarity.

I've always been into hussies, bad girls, and wayward women. Jessica Rabbit started it off. When I saw that cartoon back in the 80s, I loved everything about the way she embodied her gender. I thought, "That's what I want to be."

In my tenth-grade production of "Cabaret," I was able to slip into lingerie and do a chair dance in front of the audience. It was an aha moment. It may sound strange to say, but I had always been a sexually expressive child, enjoying my body and sensual movements. On stage, I was able to follow that interest and bring others enjoyment and entertainment, too.

Not long after that, a cool older friend brought me to my first burlesque show. It felt like all my wishes had come true. That sexy vibe, wit, and hedonism that I'd always been drawn to existed. They'd been adapted to modern tastes and anxieties. I knew I would do whatever I could to build my life around burlesque.

I tell people I'm beautiful, and they believe me

Four days a week, I'm a licensed therapist. But on the weekends, I become Fancy Feast. As a fat Jewish woman who is exploring her queer identity, I might not be what people think of when they imagine a dancer. But I've learned beauty is situational.

About three years ago, I was performing on the Lower East Side, interacting with a group of finance bros. I knew that if they passed me on the street in my day-to-day life, they would look through me as if I were an apparition. They wouldn't see me at all. Yet after the show, they were so enthusiastic about me, shoving money in my bra and asking me to pose for pictures.

That night, I realized that beauty is a set of choices that we make. I can choose my level of visibility. I wasn't inherently beautiful or ugly; instead, I had this switch that I could toggle on or off at will. When I perform, I choose to tell people that I'm beautiful, and it changes how they see me.

I've stopped chasing beauty ideals that can't be obtained

Beauty is also expensive and fleeting. It's always placed just out of reach. A lot of womanhood is a process of negotiating with failure and trying to get as close as possible to something that can never actually be obtained.

I think about my own childhood obsession with Jessica Rabbit. She inspired who I wanted to be, but I could never be that. Jessica is a cartoon, and there's no human way to fully achieve being like her.

When I understood that beauty was unobtainable, I had more peace around it. Striving toward beauty felt like a game I could choose to play rather than an obstacle to overcome.

Sex toys are no substitution for conversations

For a while, I worked as a sex educator for a feminist toy store. In that role, I realized how scared everyone is to talk about bodies, desires, and sexual interactions. We're never given any of the basic vocabulary for these talks. We're just expected to pick it up in the doing. But that leaves a lot of us lost in the wilderness.

Many people I spoke with didn't even know how to ask for what they wanted. I realized that lots of people were seeking toys that would mean they didn't have to communicate with their partners. Sure, a vibrator can help you enhance your sex life, but it's not going to help you have a deeper conversation about the type of touch or role-play you want. But talking openly with your partner can help you have the sex you desire.

Confidence isn't the most interesting thing about me

I've always moved with unearned confidence. That's only grown over the past 12 years, while crowded rooms cheer for me while I take my clothes off.

People get hung up on confidence a lot. It's as if confidence is a door you walk through, and you're in the promised land forever. I'm an extremely confident person, but even I know that doesn't account for the messiness of humanity. It doesn't take into account how lives and body image change.

Confidence is also not the most interesting thing about a person. I don't want only to read narratives about fat people who became confident. I want to know what happens next. I want the "and then."

That's a conversation I'm adding to with my book: expanding our limited archive of stories of fat people living life, having relationships, and doing something more profound than moving through the world with confidence.