I am an amazing person

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We are often told that self-esteem is important.  In the words of my spiritual master RuPaul: “If you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

 

 

I sense, however, that the modern American capacity for self-esteem has gone hog wild.

 

 

Some years ago, my boss (this was several bosses ago) completed her MBA over a period of two years or so, studying on nights and weekends.  This is a very worthy things to do, and I congratulated her when she got her degree.  She smiled humbly.  “Thanks,” she said.  “It really is an amazing accomplishment.”

 

 

Ding! Self-esteem activated!

 

 

Here’s another one: a few years ago, I was having a brief orientation meeting with a new employee.  I noted the long list of publications and other accomplishments that accompanied his resume.  “That’s very impressive,” I said.

 

 

He smiled.  “Thank you,” he said.  “I know.”

 

 

Ding ding!

 

 

And, finally, this, from just a few days ago:

 

 

I was on the University shuttle.  Two medical students were sitting behind me, chatting noisily.  One had been, in his undergraduate days, a football player for a large school in the Pacific Northwest.  “People ask you for autographs all the time when you’re a college football player,” he told his companion, who was apparently really eating this stuff up.  “You know.  In restaurants and everything.  Some of the guys are really stuck up about it, they don’t like people talking to them.  I thought it was great.”

 

 

Later, the conversation turned to The Game Itself.  “There’s a lot more to playing football than people think,” Football Hero said.  “It’s complicated.  The playbook was like this – “ (He must had demonstrated how big it was with his hands; I wanted to look, but had no excuse for twisting around in my seat.)  “And you have to memorize the whole thing.”

 

 

“Wow!” his companion breathed.  “How long did it take you to memorize it?”

 

 

Football Hero mused for a moment.  “About a month,” he said finally.  “It takes normal people about a year.”

 

 

Ding ding ding ding ding!

 

 

I nearly blacked out.

 

 

Well, that’s all for today. 

 

 

(And, if I do say so myself, this is an astoundingly well-written blog entry.)

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RuPaul's Drag Race, season four

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I just need to check in with you on the new season (Season Four!) of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

 

 

Okay.  You know I love it, and I would love it even if it were awful.  So read on.

 

 

This season is different, in a lot of ways (and I’m only writing this after the third episode!).  The contestants are edgier, less pretty. Ru is exploring drag, I think; he’s exploring what it says about culture in general.  He mixes it up gloriously.  One of the celebrity judges on the first episode was the wonderful and very funny Elvira, Mistress of the Dark; on episode two we had two basketball players, Rick Fox and John Salley.  What does that say about drag and popular culture, to have two straight athletes judge a drag-queen show?

 

 

One of the contestants this season uses a man’s name for a drag name: Chad Michaels.  One of the contestants is a skinny queen with a “meth look,” with the piquant name of Sharon Needles.  We have Latrice Royale, a gigantic (and very nice) black man who’s been in prison.  We have Madame LaQueer, and you really have to be a gay man over fifty to understand how the reclamation of the word “queer” has been refreshing.  Ten years ago I had trouble listening to younger gay men use the word “queer”; now I think it’s wonderful.

 

 

A friend has told me that he doesn’t know if he likes this season yet or not.  Too early to tell, I told him.  But you know what else?  The winner of Season One, the very beautiful Bebe Zahara Benet, won $20,000.  This season’s winner will take home $100,000. 

 

 

Does the increase in the prize money tell you anything?

 

 

RuPaul is, in his very sneaky way, doing two things at once.  He is exploring drag and its relationship with popular culture; he is also creating a funny messy all-over-the-place reality show that anyone can watch, and that people (and sponsors!) are paying attention to.

 

 

And, ladies and gentlemen, that takes a lot of brains and skill.

 

 

And now it’s time to lip sync for your life!

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Television preview: "RuPaul's Drag Race," season four

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I am in withdrawal right now: RuPaul is on hiatus until next month, when Drag Race resumes.

 

 

RuPaul’s shows are delicious, and funny, and entertaining, and enlightening, and I will tell you why.

 

 

Drag, for some, is just peculiarity: people dressing up, outrageously; men dressing as women, women as men, et cetera.

 

 

But it is so much more.

 

 

As we have seen on past seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, there are lots of reasons to dress in drag.  Here are some:

 

 

-        As entertainers.  Why not?  Lots of Drag Race contenders have been drag entertainers.  That’s often how they pay the bills.  Take Manila Luzon, naturally funny, naturally entertaining.

-        As a political statement.  Stacy Layne Matthews, a plus-size contestant from the American South a season or so ago, is an example.  She was great – funny, engaging – but she was mostly there because she was a) black; b) Southern; c) heavy; d) young; and e) generally unaffected by the tidal wave of pro/con gay / Southern / body-conscious opinion in California and New York.   I liked her a lot, especially her chutzpah, and the fact that she was working against a lot of deeply-felt feelings and prejudices.

-        As a statement about gender.  I liked Nina Flowers so much: this funny charming queen was also a stocky muscular tattooed little man.

-        As a career / personal statement.  Take first-season winner Bebe Zahara Benet.  She was absolutely perfect – lovely, very self-possessed – and I was rooting for her, and I loved that a Cameroonian won the competition. But she’s a model: she dresses, and poses, and looks perfect for the camera.  Personality-wise, she is less than thrilling. I like her, but I do not find her stimulating. 

 

 

Is any of this important?

 

 

Not really.

 

 

Bring on the new season!

 

 

(You can see the new competitors here.  Take a look.  I have.  I already know who I like.  We’ll just have to see what happens.)

 

 

Can I get a Ru-ha?

 

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Sunday blog: "Cover Girl" by RuPaul

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We are in the sad season of the year between the conclusion of “RuPaul’s Drag U.” and the reprise of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” 

 

 

I am a little in the dumps. 

 

 

But this song perks me up right away!

 

 

Cover girl, put the face in your walk /

Head to toe, let your whole body talk . . .

 

 

RuPaul_-_Cover_Girl.mp3 Listen on Posterous

 

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RuPaul's Drag U., season two

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Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch recently said that summer television is a) not gay enough and b) suffers from a RuPaul deficiency.

 

 

That all changed on Monday, June 20, 2011.

 

 

When “RuPaul's Drag U.” premiered last summer, I was prepared to sneer it off the airwaves. I liked Drag Race very much, but the “Drag U.” concept – having drag queens give makeovers to straight women – was too much. Add to that the conceit that this was a “university,” with “faculty” (actually, Ru pronounces it “falcuty”), and “deans” and “draguation” (!).

 

 

But the show won me over instantly. It was – surprise! - goodhearted. It reminds me of the old “Queen For A Day” show, on which tearful housewives told their stories in return for washers and dryers and blenders. But the real prize on “Drag U.” is self-esteem. The women dress up in Marilyn Monroe wigs and sequined frocks, and they do kindergarten-level lipsynch in front of a supportive audience, and you watch them realize that this is fun.

 

 

The first show of the second season was wonderful. The contestants arrived looking tired, uncertain, and bedraggled, and ended the show looking fabulous.

 

 

They're retooled the show a bit since last year. It's sillier and has more stupid jokes. But it has a lot more Lady Bunny, for which I praise all the Drag Gods. And, as I was watching the wrap-up of the first show of the season, it suddenly hit me that Ru (in his most elegant suit-and-tie drag) was wearing a white suit with a pastel Hawaiian print, with a lilac shirt and an iridescent lime-green tie.

 

 

He looked wonderful.

 

 

And isn't that the point?

 

 

It's only a shame that there can only be one winner.

 

 

Ru: can't you figure out a way for everybody to win?

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I'll take the low art, and you'll take the high art

 

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The Bravo Network had a new show this season called “Work of Art.” Its format is the same as that of “Top Chef,” and “Project Runway,” and “RuPaul's Drag Race,” for that matter: get a bunch of aspiring cooks / designers / drag queens / artists, throw them in a room, give them a box of crayons and a Taiwanese newspaper, tell them to create something interesting, and then allow a group of “experts” to evaluate the results. (Don't worry if you haven't heard of these “experts” before; you're just asked to assume that they're well-known in their fields. I grew up in the era when Marcus Welby was thought to be a real doctor, so I can go along with the gag.)

 

Jerry Saltz, one of the “Work of Art” judges, recently wrote an interesting piece in New York about his participation in the show. This evoked a blizzard of commentary from the readership – much of it revolving around two issues:

 

• Art is much too important to be the subject of a competition.

• Anything created in the context of a reality TV show can't be good art anyway.

 

(Some readers also thought that, as an art critic, Saltz was also somehow subverting the creative process. Well, subversion of the creative process is just what critics do. I should know.)

 

Let's take those two big points one at a time.

 

Competition. This is sort of a condition of life, I think. Artists, like the rest of us, compete all the time – for attention, for an audience, for money. Most artists make little secret of it. Beethoven wrote amazingly awful dreck because he needed money. Philip Dick wrote novel after novel at top speed, also for cash. Andy Warhol did magazine illustrations. The Italian Renaissance painters were intensely aware (and envious) of one another's work and success. Bach and his contemporaries challenged one another to, ahem, organ competitions, and fought and begged for patronage. Picasso said smugly to Gertrude Stein: “I will paint you one apple and it will be as fine as all of Cezanne's apples.”

 

Sounds like competition to me.

 

So much for that.

 

“Low art” isn't “art” at all. This is the root of pretty much every bit of snobbery in the Art World, even back when I was a schoolchild back in Ur of the Chaldees. In “The Red Shoes,” the dictatorial impresario Lermontov famously declares of ballet that “For me, it is a religion.”

 

Hats off to Monsieur Lermontov, but not everyone subscribes to his religion. Sometimes, dancing is just dancing.

 

This “low art = no art” fallacy takes many forms. When the Harry Potter books were coming out, people were alternately praising J. K. Rowling for getting kids to read, and worrying loudly that kids weren't reading “the right thing.” What is the right thing to read? “The Joy of Cooking”? “Crime and Punishment”? “Guns & Ammo”?

 

Another fallacy, more central to this discussion: you can't really produce anything memorable using a “low” medium like comic books, or TV, or graffiti, or reality TV. This is the main point of many of the critics of “Work of Art.” It's a reality show, and nothing good - nothing worthwhile - can come from a reality show.

 

Nonsense, nonsense. There's beauty and meaning to be found everywhere, loads and loads of it. And artists and cooks and drag queens and designers are working like gangbusters to create something new and worthwhile and unique.

 

And if it makes money and makes some poor zhlub on a cable show successful for a few minutes: fab-u-lous.

 

Those who disagree can go read “Crime and Punishment” or “Guns & Ammo,” or build a plinth in the backyard, or do a watercolor of the First Cuckoo of Spring, or whatever it is they consider to be a serious use of their valuable time.

 

I, in the meantime, will be watching RuPaul.

 

Because, as Ru says so pithily: Girlfriend, if you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?

 

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