Vanessa comes across as your average college student. But what sets the 19-year-old apart is a rather unconventional ambition – to achieve a breakthrough into the male dominated world of bouncers.
Her first stint with this was about two years ago. Vanessa was heading security at her college fest when she found some men commenting on women and their appearance in an unacceptable manner. “I had to throw them out of the fest. I realised that I enjoyed doing this work, and that I could too,” Vanessa tells TNM.
She adds that she loves the black suits bouncers wear, and the authority they have.
Since then, she’s been actively interested in being a bouncer part-time. The major hurdle, however, has been that no one wants to hire a woman to do that job.
Trained in basic boxing, Vanessa’s motivation to be a bouncer also comes from the incidents of street sexual harassment she witnessed. “It made me very uncomfortable. And because I can defend myself, I thought that I could defend others who would need it as well,” she says.
She also believes that having women bouncers in a city like Bengaluru, which has plenty of pubs and bars which women frequent, is no longer optional. “I think that being a woman herself, a bouncer would be able to understand and help a distressed woman at a pub better. We would not normalise the uncomfortable stares or unwanted touching due to alcohol or any other flimsy reason,” Vanessa asserts.
With these ideas in mind, Vanessa even tried to approach pubs to hire her. “One of them just told me that they don’t hire women bouncers. They didn’t really say why,” she shares.
In March 2016, news reports seemed to suggest that there was a high demand for women bouncers in Mumbai and that they were being paid equivalent to men. Vanessa hopes that Bengaluru wakes up to this requirement too.
Presently, she hopes to gather more experience and continues to do security for college fests. But she eventually wants to try applying to city pubs again.
While you may see Vanessa working as a bouncer at your favourite watering hole a few years down the line, you can meet her this Saturday (April 28) at The Lalit Ashok, Bengaluru. She will be working as a bouncer for an all-women audience at a Sridevi cosplay themed ‘Leddis Night’, organised by The Ladies Finger, an online magazine for women.
On her expectations for the night, Vanessa laughs and says, “Sure, men won’t be there on Saturday, but women can get pretty wild too! Let’s see what I’ll have on my plate.”
Leddis Night will also have a line-up exclusively of women artists, including standup comic Aditi Mittal, a Bengaluru-based all women dance troupe Dhurrii, to be rounded up by DJ Prarthana. Get your tickets here.
Note: TNM is the official media partner for Leddis Night.