Maia Tassalini Debuts "I Was 22 and Stunning" at Edinburgh Fringe

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The Pleasance Comedy Reserve show blends stand-up, cultural criticism, and Monica Lewinsky as muse.

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Finalist in the BBC New Comedian of the Year 2024 and a member of the prestigious Pleasance Comedy Reserve 2025, Maia Tassalini will bring her debut hour I Was 22 and Stunning to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026.

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Ever served so hard you almost toppled a government? Maia Tassalini channels the muse ( Monica Lewinsky ) to boldly ask the question on everyone's lips: is there anything more cursed than being 22 and stunning?

At 13, an ageing drag queen told Maia Tassalini she looked like Monica Lewinsky . It permanently altered her brain chemistry. Wildly funny, literary and unexpectedly tender, I Was 22 and Stunning uses Monica Lewinsky as both muse and mirror, tracing one woman's lifelong obsession with the most publicly humiliated woman of the 1990s. Blending stand-up, cultural criticism and theatrical confession, Maia spirals through sex, shame, body image, internet cruelty, desire, gossip and the terrifying human need to have something, anything, happen to you.

In an age of endless discourse, viral pile-ons and constant reappraisal, Maia brings a Gen Z lens to the 1990s - unpacking body image, beauty standards, autonomy and the strange cultural obsession with endlessly rebooting women's lives. Like spending an hour with your friend's cool older sister who loves to gossip - if she also had immaculate references and excellent jokes.

Maia Tassalini said: "I think a lot of women secretly grow up believing that if enough people look at you, you become real. Monica Lewinsky was the first woman I saw who made humiliation look mythic. This show is basically what happens when that idea lodges itself in a teenage girl's brain for fifteen years."

Before comedy, Maia worked as a plus-size model, giving her firsthand experience of the strange contradictions of female visibility: being looked at constantly while rarely being fully seen. In her show, Maia examines body politics, autonomy and the pressure to conform to shifting beauty standards, questioning whether the cultural expectation for women to aspire to narrow ideals has ever truly disappeared.

At a time when conversations around public shaming, online judgement and women's autonomy continue to evolve, I Was 22 and Stunning invites audiences to laugh, reflect and reconsider the cultural systems that shape what we consume, share and judge.

Maia Tassalini: I Was 22 and Stunning performs 5th to 30th August (not 18th) at Pleasance Courtyard's Bunker Three at 18:00.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/scotland/article/Maia-Tassalini-Will-Make-Edinburgh-Fringe-Festival-Debut-With-I-WAS-22-AND-STUNNING-20260611)._