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their pelvises to rap. All in all, it was the last thing I 'd come to expect from sleepy, buttoned-down, church-going little Apia. "So this sort of thing goes on a lot here?" I asked a couple of Samoan women next to me who had been squealing approval. "Oh yes. Fa'afafine have been a part of our culture for thousands of y "Thousands?" "Hundreds, maybe," she shrugged. "But we adore Cindy. " Back at the bar, the men were no less into the show. Tusi was bel lowing compliments I later learned included faipopolo ("hanging balls") and ga'au tele ("big tu be"). "Isn't she beautiful?" Tusi grinned. His girlfriend cried: �� to grow up to be ju st li ke I Samoans may seem vague on the history of fa'afafi ne, but Western anthropologists ha interest-after all, ever since Margaret Mead wrote her 1920s tome Coming of Age i ies on the islands' sexual habits have been an academic cottage industry. It seems that are tapping into a key island tradition. Before the arrival of missionaries in the 1830s, jokes about sex were part women performed nighttime shows in the villages, full of raucous, Benny Hill-style ga crude references. (Observed one appalled British consul: The flower-garlanded girls beha demons let loose from below.") These village shows allowed for erotic contact between helped educate young men about the mysteries of the flesh . But once the puritanical portcu llis of Christianity fell on Western Samoa, women were to be demure and virginal in public. Banter died out. The elaborate courtliness of Samoan socie extended to cover sexual matters: Anyone who made an obscene joke in the presence of a man's sister, for example, could now expect a crack over the head. (In private, sexual mores were rather less stri ct, although hardly the orgiastic free-for-all Mead imagined.) Enter, in a roundabout way, the fa'afafine. Since the 1970s-with increasing urbanization and Western culture exposure-transvestites have resurrected the exhibitionism of pre-Christian women. Th can pass obscene jokes between the sexes without offending anyone's honor. And spectacles such Cindy's might be seen as a revamp of the old village shows. Only these days, the fa'afafine often ta the sexually expressive "feminine personae" of the Madonnas of the world-using Western i brought in by TV, video and bikini-clad tourists, which are theoretically too risque for Samoan w "It's an ironic social commentary on modernity, " "---- Jeannette Mageo, an anthropologist at Washingto University in the US. "Western cultural images obviously h attraction, but they are also potentially threatening. Samo playing with what they see-accepting a part of one image, ing another. It's not really a return to the past, but a histo process: cultu res are always going some place new. " And having a good time on the way, she adds. Sitting there beneath the stars, watching Cindy's gals bump and grind in golden tutus, all the heady social theorizing did seem a bit remote. Between sets, I dropped back to meet the sta r herself. Cindy had a sculpted figure, almond eyes, and the th roaty voice of a Polynesian Tallulah Bankhead. Like many in this peripateti c island nation, she was raised in New Zealand, where she participated in cross-d ressing shows more high-tech than Western Samoans could then dream of. Three years ago, she brought the bright lights to Apia. She's delighted that she has become an institution so quick- �. "They adore me, " she sa id. batting ner long lashes .. And why not? Aren ' t I fa bulous?" II