| At age 13 or 14, Kewpie used to sneak out to dance at the Ambassador Club, at parties, weddings, “or wherever I could move around”. These parties were where she met some of her good friends, who appear in many of the photographs. They included Mitzi Gaynor, Patti (Patrick Jordaan), Dolores Gray (Sammy/Samantha Gray), Liz, Brigitte Bardot, Carol Baker (Ralph Abrahams), Olivia de Havilland (Olivia Bromwell/Miss Vi), Shirley Bassey (Kendrick), Ron (Veronica), Julie Andrews (Angie/Andrew), Cora, Sowda Osman, Cliffidia (Cliffie) Tabaccan and Leslie Caron. (see Performance: Pageants, Parties and Personas about how the sisters adopted names of famous film stars) |
Rutger Street
Kogel Bay
c. 1960s
Mrs Biggs’s yard in Kensington
c. mid 1970s
Kewpie and her sisters were probably the most visible queer people in District Six, but there were many other people with diverse gender and sexual identities. Masculine-presenting gay men – the boyfriends and ‘husbands’ of the sisters – appear in the photographs but remain elusive in the broader historical record. Some of Kewpie’s friends had gender affirming surgery. There were queer women who identified as lesbian, such as Kewpie’s friends Ron and Cora who were lovers. Kewpie recalled that people in the wider District Six community were accepting of this relationship.
Many people supported the sisters at this time, primarily through providing housing in exchange for domestic work and childcare. Kewpie and others often lived with nuclear families headed by a heterosexual couple, where they were treated as daughters and sisters. The sisters also had ‘gay mothers’ – older sisters who would look out for them and school them on how to perform. Later in her life, Kewpie also became somebody who provided support and shelter to others: “she always used to open the doors to young gays like I was then at the time” (Ebrahim Faro).