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  • Art-tits: Kirsty Kross aka Legs Akimbo

Berlin

Art-tits: Kirsty Kross aka Legs Akimbo

BOOB JOBS! A key figure in Berlin's electroclash movement as part of Team Plastique, Kross speaks of her transformation from tight-bunned turtleneck wearer to whip-heavy hot-for-teacher phenomenon.

Image for Art-tits: Kirsty Kross aka Legs Akimbo
Photos by David Ghione

Exberliner turns 11 this month! On June 15 at 10pm, we’ll be celebrating like it’s 2002 at the nearly brand-spanking-new Urban Spree. Team Plastique’s Legs Akimbo brings the lusty Legs Akimbo Show, Mary Ocher and Your Government will preside over the quirky kids and Elbee Bad’s badass self will keep it going. We’re running interviews old and new all this week to get in gear.

RSVP on our Facebook event.

Here’s a chat with Legs from issue #103, March 2012 for the boobs issue.

Part of the electroclash movement with the likes of Peaches and Chicks on Speed, Kross made her mark on Berlin more than seven years ago when her band/art collective Team Plastique moved here from Brisbane, Australia. Screamed commentary – plus an overpowering pair of exposed, buoyant 34Fs – put them at the centre of Berlin’s mid-last-decade underground.

A Jayne Mansfield enthusiast, the 37-year-old performer talks of her transformation from tight-bunned turtleneck wearer to whip-heavy hot-for-teacher phenomenon.

Let’s start at the beginning. When did your breasts first appear?

When I was 13, they grew over the summer, quite the surprise to the boys at school that year. I had this bra, my first bra, and I was having dinner with my family when it ripped open. My mum said, “Oh well, it’s just old. We will sew it up.” She did, but when I came home from school the next day I had these red marks all over my breasts. I had grown something like five sizes, and there were no bras to fit me in the shop.

My parents were very religious, Seventh Day Adventists actually. They believe that sin is everywhere; they just wanted me to cover up my breasts, and so I did for a period of time. I used to wear really baggy t-shirts, because if I wore tighter clothes older men would follow me, which was really freaky for a 13-year-old.

Did that make you want to get rid of them?

Definitely. Until I was about 19, I wanted to get them cut off. I had always planned that when I was legal I would get rid of them.

But then I went to North Queensland when I was about 18 on a holiday, and there was this Swedish backpacker who was quite a big girl. I remember her sitting on a rock in the rainforest on this kind of waterfall creek, and she looked fat, you know not how you are supposed to look, but she just looked so happy and comfortable with her body and all of these boys were completely in love with her. After that I just thought, “Yeah, that is the way to go…”

Do you think you have a fascination with breasts?

No, but other people do. And it is just the card that was dealt to me. I think it is interesting how your body makes your psychology in a lot of ways.

Can you explain that?

I trained as a teacher, and the first job I had was at a posh girls’ school. I was only 22. I really wanted to cover them up and not draw any attention to them, so basically I bought all of these really frumpy clothes, etc.

But then a couple of years later I met the son of the head teacher from that school and found out all the girls had just gone crazy over my breasts. They would talk about them, gossiping and making double-handed remarks; it really bothered me.

Later, I began at this school and I was friends with a librarian, and he would say that the boys had written something rude about me in the toilets, something sexually explicit.

Did stuff like that lead to prejudices about you as a teacher?

The head teacher really didn’t like me and she gave me a really bad report for my first year as a teacher, which was quite unfair. My breasts had a lot to do with it. She was upset that all the boys were so fascinated with my breasts. It was funny, because after that I thought, “Oh, fuck this.” I am not going to bother covering them up anymore. I am not going to wear Esprit clothes anymore. I’m going to wear what I want to wear and it is going to be tight and revealing. I became a really good teacher after that. I kept getting all of these classes of remedial boys that no one could handle.

How have you integrated your breasts into your performances with Team Plastique?

In a number of different ways. I used to smash pineapples with my breasts, but we never really had rules. I wrote a song called “Oral Fixation”, which was about breasts.

I had been reading about the development of the atom bomb. After the bombs had been tested they called them ‘bikini bombs’, derived from ‘sex bomb’ and this whole idea that if women were sexy they were deadly. In turn if you are sexy, people assume that you are stupid, and I kind of played with that over the years. I like pretending that I am stupid.

There is a real art to being stupid and it can be really funny, but people who are intelligent usually know that you are taking the piss, whereas people who aren’t as intelligent just believe that you are stupid. It is kind of a good way to divide people.

Do you have a boob role model?

I think Jayne Mansfield was so good at being ‘stupid’. I mean, she couldn’t have been that stupid. She kind of manipulated her stardom, she was desperate for fame and she was really funny. I wrote a song about Jayne Mansfield actually. It hasn’t been released yet but, oh shit, how does it go? [She begins to sing:]

I’m the number one star on Sunset Strip,

I’m locker room pin-up on an acid trip.

Wave to some fans looking un-dead,

I’ve got a neat bikini. Did you find my head?

Because, you know how she had her head chopped off? I am a bit obsessed with Jayne Mansfield. She is my breast role model. I think she is fantastic, and she had a lot of fun with her breasts.