Aunt Jemima is no more, Uncle Ben is now just Ben, and Eskimo Pies are as offensive as the Frito Bandito and have been banished from corporate America. All Native American named sports teams are under fire for names, logos, and mascots. How long until kids’ cereals are stripped of anthropomorphic animals due to their improper depictions of real, live animals? Are Snap, Crackle, and Pop racist? Will Charlie the Tuna be removed next?
Given all that “woke” offence taken by leftists, what if I told you there is an ongoing popular TV show whose emcee is right out of the old “minstrel shows” and that show is on cable and has been since 2009? “Mr. Interlocutor” is the Master of Ceremonies, and various people perform in costume, sometimes dancing and lip-synching. It draws in millions of viewers and fans. Instead of the exaggerations of racial characteristics portrayed in the old minstrel shows, we have replaced it with exaggerations of gender characteristics played for laughs and entertainment.
Men in Drag is being celebrated as an art form: part of the LGBTQ self-expressions we all must queue up to laud and praise. But have you ever stopped to look at any of the Queens? They exaggerate every element of being a woman until what appears is a very cartoonish version of a woman. Marge Simpson looks tame compared to the performers at RuPaul’s Drag Race and Drag Queen Story Hours. How is this acceptable?
The sight of these “girly men” calling each other Queens and traipsing around in exaggerated poses, spouting sexual double entendres, and attempting to emulate female celebrities is not entertaining. It reduces women to their surface characteristics, even more than some other offensive caricatures in popular culture. We are more than boobs, butts, eyelashes, fingernails, and puckered lips!
How is it that a young white girl can be castigated on social media for “cultural appropriation” by wearing an Asian-inspired prom dress, a non-Hispanic caught wearing a sombrero will be hounded by outraged progressives, but any male person who dresses up as an extreme version of femaleness not only gets a pass, but gets praise and is encouraged to parade to show Pride?
I challenge any drag aficionado to defend drag with an argument that, if “drag” was replaced by any other group or ethnicity, the argument would not fail their own self-imposed righteousness regarding unacceptable depictions of persons due to race, ethnicity, cultural designation or other attribute.
Instead of banishing this exaggeration of womanhood as offensive, we create TV shows about it and invite these “performers” into our libraries to interact with young children in Drag Queen Story Hour to normalize these images. We are lectured about tolerance and inclusivity, but apparently that only applies to images and exaggerations that the Left has approved of. If all the images at the top of this article are now problematic and must be removed from public view, why not the ones here? Inquiring minds want to know.
