Female magicians struggle for respect in a male-dominated profession whose audiences are used to seeing women as the assistant to be sawn in half
- Audiences are used to thinking of women as assistants to male magicians – not surprising when fewer than seven per cent of magicians are women
- US magician Kayla Drescher’s career shows female magicians are no less of a draw, and she says the profession needs calling out for its old-fashioned attitudes
Sitting behind a card table in the secretive Magic Castle, Kayla Drescher widens her eyes and nods exasperatedly when asked about being called a “female magician”.
“Yes, I am very, very sick of being asked what it’s like to be a woman in this industry,” she says. “‘Female magician’ feels like I’m being placed in a subcategory of magic … I’m being placed in a metaphorical box, not just an illusion.”
But while the label is “exhausting” and “annoying” for Drescher, “we still have such a small percentage of women in this industry – I think it does still need to be talked about.”
The stereotype of a magician in a top hat sawing his glamorous, sequinned female assistant in half endures among the wider public, who can rarely name performers beyond Harry Houdini, David Copperfield and David Blaine.
While the outfits have changed, still just seven per cent of magicians operating today are female – roughly the same proportion as the membership of the elite “Academy of Magical Arts” that calls the Magic Castle home.