F*D & Blessed - Rotana's liberating journey to demystifying sexuality & discovering the truth

Words & Interview by Sunayah Arshad

Rotana describes herself as a “human being, an artist, an erotic being, a liberator, a daughter and a sister”. Meeting her for the first time via Zoom, it felt like catching up with an old friend. I was welcomed by her warm energy and radiant smile, which, after a long day, was just what I needed. While holding a ukulele in her arms, we discussed her journey as a musician, her inspirations and influences, and the making of her explorative, hilarious new IGTV series, F*D & Blessed...

Born and raised in Saudi Arabia, Rotana, of Saudi-Palestinian heritage, was set to follow the trajectory of her family whilst working at the well-known oil company, Saudi Aramco. Though content and comfortable with her daily routine, she began to experience an overwhelming feeling which led her to question herself, her beliefs and how she seeks to exist; “I started to acknowledge that I had a dream of being a singer and performer and being in rooms with people”. Similar to many hopes and dreams that are often dismissed, Rotana continued living life as usual. A year and a half later, she succumbed to her gut feeling and made the decision to move to the US to break new grounds. “I knew no one in the States. I had no contacts in the music industry. I'd never written a song in my life. But there was a gut feeling…It was the first time in my entire life where I had used my body and intuition as a compass”.

After tracking down a vocal coach that she’d seen on TV while in Saudi, she began her transition into the artist we now know her to be. With her first live rodeo at a karaoke bar called The Brass Monkey, Rotana went on to release a music video singing a cover of Lorde’s single, ‘Team’, in response to the Saudi ban on women driving which quickly went viral. “That was the first moment where I was like, ‘oh, my voice does something. There's something that's happening here”.

Committed to the game, Rotana found herself aligning with other creatives who assisted her in learning to write, sing and make music videos. Describing her music video ‘Sin Again’ as a big turning point in her career, she touched on the sacrifice that comes with speaking her truth as an artist, a creator and an Arab woman. “I knew that it was going to be the end of a lot of ties culturally. I think that for those of us that are really committed to our truth, these moments of no return are inevitable and necessary”. Rotana uses her personal experiences as a source of inspiration for her music, whilst also using her music as an outlet to heal and express the emotions felt from these experiences. Her more recent track ‘Stuck in America’ explores the dreams and challenges of being a Muslim woman and immigrant in post 9/11 America.

‘Stuck in America’ - Directed by Corrin Evans

As the driving force behind her art, Rotana is dedicated to sharing her truth, no matter what the outcome may be. “I think so many of us come from environments that create this kind of double life, and a lot of things are kept in the shadows. I'm really excited by the truth of things. I'm excited by getting down to the raw humanity of everything and putting shame aside”. As a self-proclaimed sexually liberated woman, Rotana also raises the issue that comes with being both a sexually empowered artist and Arab Muslim woman. “I think so much of my art is really created as a result of the tension between who I feel I truly am, and where my culture is in accepting that. I reached a boiling point where, for a very long time, I was battling two inner realities. One where I understood that sexuality was a gift and a blessing. And the embrace of sexual energy was one of the most powerful forces in the world… At the same time, I thought I was the worst person in the world and I was going to hell, that I was disgusting and hurting everybody I knew”.

Then came ‘F*D and Blessed’. Born out of curiosity, Rotana decided to create her own online show as a platform to explore sexuality and the human body. “I spent about two years really diving into sexual energy, learning my anatomy and learning how to be in communication with my body; all of these different things that no one had taught me, but I knew I was deeply curious about. Over the course of two years, I was like, ‘there's no fucking way that I'm not going to tell people things that I've found out because they're bare minimum basics that I literally had no idea about”. When asked about the title of the show, Rotana recalled a moment shared with her close friend a few years back, “We were just tired of how every time we want to express ourselves or experiment, there's such gruesome negotiation. There are such big consequences. So as we were talking, the name ‘fucked and blessed’ came. It's this idea of, you know, we feel very fucked because we come from such a difficult background at times - that's very restrictive and carries a lot of shame and consequences, but we also feel so blessed because of the intentionality behind everything that we've learned to practice, that’s sometimes lost here in the West”.

Over the course of 14 episodes, Rotana speaks to the camera sharing and reviewing everything she’s learnt in the past few years, and everything she wishes someone would have told her as a young woman growing up in Saudi. While countries such as the UK teach sex and relationship education as part of the national curriculum, it’s still very much taboo in others - specifically in the Arab world.

Through her witty and intelligent persona, viewers are enlightened on topics of pleasure, eroticism, consent, boundaries, periods and so much more. While a comedy show wasn’t the initial intention, it’s certainly proven successful, “It turned into a comedy show because I was so nervous, confused, clueless. Especially in some of the later episodes, I was experiencing a lot of trauma as I was making the show. There's moments where I look like I'm having the most miserable time because I'm releasing all of this drama out through my body as I made the show. I think that's what's really beautiful about the show, that you're watching somebody really stumble through it”. Inviting her audience to share her experience, we see Rotana in a more vulnerable yet relatable light. By humanising these taboo topics, she refreshingly makes them less intimidating and easier to digest.

Discussing the purpose of the show and whether it was created with an audience in mind, Rotana revealed, “I want girls, women, female identifying beings to feel seen. I want them to feel really, really seen. I want them to develop a curiosity about their bodies and their sexualities. And to develop the sense that their sexuality is sacred and their pleasure is so necessary for the health of this world. It's not bad, it's not wrong.” On the path to raising awareness and normalising conversations on these subjects in the Muslim and Arab world especially, Rotana addresses the role they have in everyday life, “I think that when we bring these topics out of the shadows, we become very empowered and the likelihood of sexual harm really goes down, because the shame and the secrecy around it is gone. I think we’re in a sexual revolution that we end rape culture and the shame around it. And I think a big step is just talking openly about it”.

Throughout the series, Rotana intertwines her English and Arabic dialect, with Arabic subtitles for her largely Arab and Muslim following. Recognising that some of her audience may not share the same privilege of being able to reveal and own their truth, Rotana explains, “A lot of people don't feel like they can embrace their sexuality. I think that everybody can embrace their sexuality. It's something that you can do in the privacy of your own room. You don't need a partner. You don't need anything. You just need you and your body and your breath, to be with your sexuality. So I really want to encourage people to understand that. ‘F*D and Blessed’ is really a show that is not about sex with a partner. It's about your sexuality, your relationship to yourself”.

Acknowledging the struggle that came with finding her truth, Rotana offers an important piece of advice to her audience, “Please don't wait for anybody to give you permission. Nobody gave me permission to leave home. Nobody gave me permission to love my body, to inhabit my body. In fact, every time that I pursued myself, I got punished and I lost things...One of the most healing things on my journey and the things that have propelled me forward is accepting death as a part of life. The death of different relationships, a death of a version of yourself. I think so much of our growth and our dreams are halted because we refuse to let things die”.

As the final leg of her journey to learning the ins and outs of sexuality and the body, Rotana has been training to become a ‘sex doula’. Curious as to what this is exactly, she tells me, “Essentially I'm teaching people how to come back into relationship with their sexuality and how to understand their sexuality. So obviously shame is such a big part of it. The idea is to get into a good relationship with shame and you do that through different yoga practices, through breathing practices, through certain tantric meditations. It ranges from practical to more spiritual tantric practices of how to circulate sexual energy and how to conserve sexual energy”.

Building a safe space for the community to share experiences, discover their truth and connect with their bodies, Rotana is redefining what it means to be a sexually-empowered Arab woman and we’re here for it.

Discover the full series of ‘F*D and Blessed’ on Rotana’s IGTV here

Created by @iamrotana

Director/Co-Executive Producer @claranovich

Executive Producers @betweeneast @zaidalasady @lenakhouri

Edited by Nour

Translation @bi7kijazz