Profile - Big Top babe

Going to those big, traveling circuses has lost its appeal since you found out that the lion tamers tranquilized their beasts and that you can’t really ever get all of the elephant poop smell out of your clothes. But Christy Hawkins and her high-flying, fire-eater friends with Atlanta’s 3-year-old Circus Equilibris have put the “human” back in “humane circus.”

As if flying on a trapeze and hula-hooping with a ring of fire wasn’t cool enough, Christy rode her bike across the United States, France, England and Ireland by herself.

On bicycling solo out West: “The shadiest part was in an Idaho town with a population of 16. There was a gas station/bar with trailers around it, and all these guys were drunk at 10 in the morning.”

Used to be a bicycle messenger.

A circus performer by night, Christy spends her days in the throws of domestica, as a nanny.

Makes balloon flowers that she sucks in through her nose and pulls out of her mouth. “It always amazes me that people actually want them ... It’s so weird.”

Grew up in the suburbs of Biloxi and used to go see punk rock shows at a residential trailer/music venue called The Little House. “People always wanted to play there just because it was in a trailer park.”

As a child: “I liked Wonder Woman a lot, and I danced around in my Wonder Woman Underoos for my friends and family.”??