IMdB describes Wanita herself as a renegade, which in this industry – the sex work industry – is slang for a worker who is independent. And Wanita is. Screen Australia describes the documentary I’m Wanita as an “odyssey to live out her childhood dreams to be a country and western star.” The Guardian says: “an irresistible portrait of Australia’s ‘queen of honky tonk’.” They gave it four stars, with the lede: “This jaunty film, about an artist you’ve most likely never heard of, shows us life dreams do not have to disappear as youth fades”, quoting Wanita: “it’s insane, all of this is insane” – which is “an accurate description of the contemporary human condition”, according to journalist Luke Buckmaster, who also describes Wanita as “Flighty, squirrely and eccentric”.
Wanita describes herself as autistic. She can be quoted from the trailer for I’m Wanita stating “Fuck yous all, fuck everyone, fuck everything.” and “Take your hands off your genitals, the queen is in your presence.” Luke Buckmaster’s best description of Wanita in his review is that she has an “unpredictable tongue”. He describes Wanita’s existence as “the highs and lows of living life outside the prescribed boxes and definitions”, and how that reads to me as an autistic worker myself is: having lived experience as a marginalised person.
Wanita is from Tamworth, a small rural town that hosts the annual Tamworth Country Music Festival. Wanita is a beautiful country singer. I am especially enamoured with her song Rhinestone In The Rough. The spunky lyrics pack a punch, and I can really relate to the lyric “sometimes you’re best when it isn’t good enough”. If you happen to be in Tamworth this January from the 17th - 26th you might just catch Wanita performing there, she is a regular on the line up. I myself have a Tamworth Country Music Festival t-shirt I thrifted because it was emblazoned with the words “Hoe Down” in the layout of a Jack Daniels label. I have never attended the festival myself, though some day, maybe.
I have had the pleasure of sharing a stage with Wanita. I’d not heard of her nor the documentary she starred in before I had such a pleasure. Wanita went AWOL before her set to grab a glass of red wine before she got up to sing, the producer nearly having a pink fit. I watched this documentary immediately afterwards, as soon as I could, in the spare bedroom at my mum's house with the volume down low lest anyone know or hear what I was consuming, lest I out myself. I was in town for a fringe festival and it was incredibly validating for me to see a sex worker from a small country town taking a big swing at her ultimate dream.
Having made my so-called Australian performance debut the year before, I had already been diagnosed with Autism and ADHD and I remember crying as the scenes unfolded, bearing witness to this woman’s journey. As Wanita’s husband describes her, she “always goes her own way”. Wanita is unapologetic about the source of her income. She is asked by a photographer if she would like to remove the towel off the bed she is having her portrait taken on, but she declines, uncaring of the indicators of sex work in her professional pictures. Wanita says she started out at Sydney’s iconic Kings Court and never looked back. She faces the hardships of working in remote areas with verve. Like many of us, Wanita is using her work to fund a passion – fulfilling and actualising a dream.
The documentary explores being in a long term relationship with an artist and a worker. Wanita is using her sex work career to get to Nashville, the home of country music, where she wishes to record her next album. She wants a big, authentic, unapologetic country sound on the recording. She says of her plan she hopes to “not look like a fuckwit”. And *spoiler alert* in my humble opinion, she achieves it.
I'm Wanita chronicles the trials and tribulations of a rural sex worker and artist on a pilgrimage whilst also managing to address the complexities of being a worker and a mother. This is what Luke at the Guardian refers to as “some meaty themes under the hood”. The documentary’s director Matthew Walker captures Wanita on camera, beautifully discussing wanting to go out the way Hank Williams did. According to Wanita’s mother, Hank died from singing.
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