I need more rouge if I really want to compete.... to say nothing of bigger hair

Those drag queens down at Darcelle's in Portland... they're larger than life. I mean really.

We did the Brides with Queens thing on Saturday night. It's the first time I've ever been to a drag review, and there are two things that stand out: the size of the performers and the number of brides-to-be in the audience. Now it has to be said, a number of those ladies (the former) are getting a bit long in the tooth (Darcelle, herself, is 78), and with age frequently comes a certain amount of girth. But even the relatively young, relatively slim ones were very large people. Oh yes, of course, they were wearing four inch heels, but so was I, and even in all my fleshiness, I looked positively diminutive next to these creatures. That poor guy that they pulled up onto the stage could have been swallowed in the undergarments of one of those gals.

But the brides, I mean, the brides...... There were only five in the audience for the 8:30 show (me at far left in my purple flutter dress), but every fifth woman in the throng waiting outside to get in for the 10:30 show was a feted bride, complete with veil and mini-penis festooned tiara indicating a recent gleeful purchase from the Bachelorette Super Store or the House of Bachelorette.

How very primal, all this bridal obsession over the phallus. I never would have thought I could write these words, but it almost makes me long for the feminist fantasy of the "Golden Age" of female goddess worship, when the phallus was relegated to rather a back seat to the ripe pudendum of the Great Mother. I mean, come on... where are the bachelor boys running around all over town wearing Venus of Willendorf t-shirts with "Property of Jennifer" emblazoned in rhinestone across the chest?

Parade of penis veils
You can just make out that there are two brides with different permutations of the penis tiara captured in this picture.
A line-up of phalli all heading for her cranium like so many sperm rushing for an egg.
My friend Susan and I encountered this gal in the ladies room sans tiara. Susan asked, "Where's your tiara?" Bride -- who seemed a little slow on the uptake, possibly because of one too many really bad Cosmopolitans -- replied, "Well, it kind of hurts my head, and I really don't much like pink, anyway."

Oh. So that's the problem with that thing. It's pink.

This gal went for the tastefully understated and far less primal silver bauble antennae.

And, of course, let's not forget the Queens....
Come to the cabaret, old chum
My favorite feminine archetype: The heart-broken boozy floozy
The perennially elegant, Miss Diana Ross
Miss Darcelle, herself, in all her 78 year old, taloned glory

How could I possibly compete?

Bacheloretting

Ms. K and the girls have been putting their heads together to think up some sort of bachelorette party scheme. Upon consultation with me, the idea of going to a drag review has been more or less settled upon.

Why do brides and drag queens go together? Because they are both about hyped and jacked-up femininity. Frankly, I love drag queens. I think they serve a very useful purpose to womankind; they de-essentialize femininity. If a man can come off as more feminine than any 'natural born' woman, then it just goes to show that femininity is not about some inherent biological quality, but about cultural trappings. As far as I'm concerned, that relieves the pressure. So what if I can't undulate doing Nia like the other girls (although, I have to say, I do it better than a lot of them)? It's really no reflection on the degree to which I am a "real" woman, clearly.

Of course, if I really want to be stereotypically feminine, me and my gal friends will all dress up in bedazzled t-shirts indicating our roles in the bridal party (mine will say: "the Future Mrs. Munoz" or "Property of David"), and we'll go out, get tight and kick about the streets yelling "woo HOO!" out in high-pitched gurly voices.

Ms. K and I considered that for a moment, then moved on to drag queens.