Monthly Archives: February 2011

can i be a drag queen, please?

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Last night I went out with coworkers from one of my jobs. We went to happy hour and then to a restaurant/bar to see their 9 o’clock drag show. This was the third or fourth time I’ve been to a drag show, though the first time at this particular restaurant. I love them. I think they’re fabulous. And I admit, not being a part of the LGBTQQIA community (I might consider myself A, and I certainly have friends in the other categories, but I can’t claim to really be an active member in the community), I don’t know a whole lot about the history, the culture, the intent, and the psychology behind drag, but I think I do get it a little more than the average layperson who has never been. I would really like to experience one in a bigger city, where maybe they sing instead of lip synch, and where the crowd is a little more diverse. But still, I had so much fun, and I keep thinking how I almost wish I could be on the stage, or at least that I could take sexy lessons from some of the queens, and last night while I was watching, I was trying to figure out why.

One thing is that I think gender play and gender bending is really interesting, fun, and really important in a society where gender is so normalized and binary. At the museum where I work, there is constantly a conversation that in some way leads to “But boys won’t like that” or “We need more girl toys in the gift shop,” and I hate it. But at the same time, I get it, because girls just won’t buy dinosaur puzzles, and boys won’t buy butterfly wands. And even things that should be very neutral at least in its commercialism is totally gender-ified, like a molding kit that you have to buy two of, because one is a brown box with dinosaur moldings and the other is a pink box with flower molding. And much as I like to think that toys should be gender neutral, they aren’t marketed that way, and so kids won’t choose to see them that way. And I’m one to talk, because even with my very liberal parents, who never bought Barbies or Disney stuff, I was still far more interested in cooking and dressing up than I was in trains and dinosaurs. So when people are able to get past the way they were brainwashed and explore other identities and forms of expression, I think it’s awesome. I think a lot of the reason I find it awesome is probably because I don’t really have the confidence (or personal interest) in doing so. I might be hard pressed to remember to put makeup on in the morning, but I love wearing dresses and probably appear to be pretty cisfemale. Because there is no real way to control for nature and nurture when you’ve already been nurtured, I’m not sure how much of that is just the person I was predetermined to be or whether, even with conscientious parents, I was still socialized into being that way. It’s probably a combination of both. So anyone who can overcome socialization is, frankly, awesome, just because that takes a lot of self awareness, confidence, and creativity.

Confidence and creativity are the other things I adore about drag shows. From where I’m sitting, at least, they seem like such an empowering environment. I love to sing and belt, but I’m more apt to be found blending in with a choir than be found with a microphone AND a sparkly dress being loud and solo. I even love karaoke, but I require alcohol and my eyes to be closed to sing out. And I’m only half joking about the sexy lessons. I was very confident as a child, but it didn’t take long for my more shy and self conscious side to take over. Having gigantic breasts and a mother who couldn’t do your frizzy hair will do that for you. I’m very, very happy in my personal bubble and find very few reasons to break out of it. Sometimes I do, but it’s usually when I’m in a hypomanic stage anyway, and I feel crappy about it because I go over the top and can’t stop talking. I think my personality is more suited to being a quiet, introverted person (though most people I know think it’s hilarious to think of me as shy), but sometimes I miss being the girl who was a natural leader (because ever since eighth grade, I’ve lacked the charisma to be seen as one by my peers), who wore crazy colorful dresses (it took my sister to point out that I own almost no shirts that aren’t a solid color or a band, and most of my dresses are solid colors as well), and who would dance or sing for anyone for any reason. And drag queens exude a confidence beyond a regular performer. I think there’s something about the fact that not only are they being confident in the sense that not everyone can get over stage fright, but they’re also performing gender and turning social normativity on its head.

The audience interaction is better than a lot of other performers’ audience banter. Some singers are just awful at sounding natural in the in-betweens at concerts, and it just hurts to hear them try. I love that drag shows are interactive, movable. I love that you tip the performers and perform the tipping ritual in a way that both mimics and makes fun of how you tip strippers, and that again is a form of play with gender identity, social customs, and sexual objectification. I love that people play with the boundaries of appropriate touch, and so far in my experience, no one has felt truly, debilitatingly uncomfortable with that, even if they didn’t expect to have their breasts shaken by a strange man in a wig. I love that the queens come out after the show, in various states of undress/gender re-integration (if that is an appropriate, acceptable made-up term), and just hang out and talk, and unlike many celebrities, are happy to show you that they are real people, not just stage creatures.

Then there’s the simple fact that, at every “normal” club I have been at, the music selection is at best subpar, and at every gay club I’ve gone to, the music selection is awesome. Last night was no exception. Great mix of music both for dancing and lip synching. Singing or lip synching, since you’re probably just singing with low volume anyway, is such a sensitive, emotive, self-exposing thing to to do. So when somebody is able to be that comfortable with exposing themselves in a variety of socially uncomfortable ways, I’m drawn. And I’m jealous.

woolf, the bechdel test, feminism, and fiction

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Today I finished reading A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. I can’t say that I loved it, or even that I thought it was particularly relevant to women today, or that it was sensitive to working class women (because she says many times that working class women cannot have talent, let alone develop it). But there are some things she said that made me think.

I believe that for the most part, good writers don’t sit and think about how the thing they’re writing will be taught in an English class. They don’t sit there, perfectly constructing symbol after turn of phrase after metaphor, thinking about how their story perfectly exemplifies a certain theme and makes a statement about this or that. But sometimes that might become clear in the writing process, or there may be certain goals a writer has in mind while just sitting there writing whatever comes into his/her head. Since I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my writing and very little writing of my writing, I’ve had a lot of time to work out more of the story and develop the characters, and some things have become clear. But I’m not the kind of female writer that Woolf would want me to be.

It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen’s day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that; and how little can a man know even of that when he observes it through the black or rosy spectacles which sex puts upon his nose….it remains obvious, even in the writing of Proust, that a man is terribly hampered and partial in his knowledge of women, as a woman in her knowledge of men.

I think I kind of do that. Whether it’s just my own preference or my unconscious socialization into white heteropatriarchy, I don’t really follow Bechdel’s rule , even though I consider it really important. The two novels I’m working on feature a male and female duo as main characters–in one story, the female is the narrator and protagonist, in the other, the male is the protagonist. Is that awful? Or is it just how these stories need to be told? Authors always say that characters tell them what to do, not the other way around, and that’s certainly true how these stories have developed. But what is wrong with me that I don’t find myself wanting to write about women in relation to other women?

Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer!…literature would be incredibly impoverished, as indeed literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women.

I think my personal interests, and the things that pop up again and again in whatever I write, are issues of culture, socioeconomics, popularity, and sexual tension (in no particular order), and that’s maybe more important to me than feminism, at least when it comes to writing creatively. But I feel like the fact that I am concerned with feminist issues when I am being a scholar means that I should have some inclination to do something with it in what I write. I mean, I’m also concerned with diversity, and that definitely comes up in my writing. So why do I not know how to write two women with a relationship based on something other than sex or a guy?

Women are hard on women. Women dislike women.

Okay, so there’s that. I’ve never had one best friend who was my total confidante, who knew every single aspect of my personality, and about whom I knew the same. My guy friends have remained steady, if casual, while my girl friends constantly change. My favorite friends are the ones I don’t see very often, because I get sick of people easily, and because I have trouble finding people who understand all parts of me. And since you write what you know, maybe that’s why I don’t write about groups of women. Then again, it’s not like I’ve never had a conversation with another girl that wasn’t about a guy. I have. But somehow it never comes to mind when I’m writing. And I hate that.

She wrote as a woman, but as a woman who had forgotten she was a woman, so that her pages were full of that curious sexual quality which comes only when sex is unconscious of itself.

Then again, if you go back to the idea that most of what you write is unconscious, and it’s just the mark of a good writer that all the cool literary devices are there. So perhaps I do write as a feminist.

the adulthood

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So I will have at least four Arizona W-2s for next year’s taxes, because I work so many odd jobs. And I swear I’m trying to save money, but I’m also stocking up on things I will need for grad school (a winter coat, dishes) and trying to thoroughly enjoy my hometown before I leave it in July (went to see the play Oedipus El Rey last night, want to go to Biosphere 2 and the Botanical Gardens, etc), so I’m not saving a ton. But in general, I would say I’m being fairly responsible. And today I’ve vowed to work on my scholarship applications. I’m determined to get a decent amount of grad school paid for so that I don’t need loans.

Anyway, I keep running into friends who ask me what it’s like to be out of school. And I have to say, even though I often feel mentally understimulated at one of my four jobs, on the whole I’m thoroughly enjoying this taste of adulthood. It’s nice to know that it’s not terrifying, since I’m not sure if I will go for a PhD or not, which means that three or four years from now, I might be looking at a job with benefits and a salary. And in the meantime, I work at great agencies and feel as if I am doing good things that benefit both me and other people, even if I make far less money than someone who works as many hours as I do at one job that pays them five figures. What’s great is that even though I’m hourly, I’m being treated as if I am adult with valid opinions and thoughts and ideas and qualifications. I’ve been offered job interviews in different states by people I’ve never heard of, I have people at my old high school encouraging me to apply for the librarian job even though I don’t yet have the degree….glass ceiling? What glass ceiling? It’s all air.

At my newest job, I had to attend orientation/professional development, even though a lot of the trainings didn’t directly pertain to me as an on-call, non-clinical employee. And throughout those meetings, I met people who assumed I was a professional, asked my opinions, took my lead, and cared about the job I had been hired to do. For all of those times when I think that my ideal life would be one in which I could just write books and make music and be famous, experiences like this solidify my decision to go for a career in which I can really effect change, teach, and influence. Even though I won’t stay in behavioral health after I finish my part-time tenure at this job, just being around other professionals who care and want to make changes (and just being around people who understand that college majors don’t have to be in so-called professional fields in order to make you a qualified, smart, capable careerwoman–unlike the people you meet who say “Creative writing? Spanish? What are you going to do with that?”) is invaluable and gratifying. Graduating early was definitely the right decision if it means I can do so much else and learn so much about life experience and get a preview of adulthood. Growing up is so, so awesome.