‘They’ve had one in Wales! They’ve had a drag queen story time in Wales! We should have one!’
I was tasked with LGBT inclusion in the library, but I hesitated. It seemed a bit of a hard sell. Just because another library authority had done so, didn’t mean we should. ‘Why’ is a reasonable question. Childhood is brief enough without shrinking it further through sexualization.
A drag queen was found a few years later. When I saw the act, I was relieved. They’d booked a trained actor, firmly in the panto dame category. The sexualization I’d seen elsewhere, was not present and I was happy to promote it.
I love libraries. I request a book; a message goes out. Every library, from the huge to the tiny village branches, gets a list of all the books that have been requested from their shelves. Some poor bastard goes through the shelves, and they send their books around the county. I walk into my village library and the staff recognize me, tell me my books are in. I pay nothing.
But most people don’t know what their library has to offer or if they do, are reluctant to make the necessary enquiries. I’m the same now, my library has an impressive Makerspace (3D
printing, massive printers and engineering goodies) but I’m not sure where to begin. It is hard to encourage library use among those who have not grown up with libraries. There is a perception that public libraries require total silence (that’s a myth), librarians are humorless (sometimes), and libraries are outdated (they have a role in ensuring accurate information in an age of disinformation.
Core library services are hard to promote. Perhaps in desperation a monkey suit with a massive penis attachment might seem like a good idea. Yes, this happened in Redbridge.
Sorry, shouldn’t talk about dildo monkey, that was not a decision taken by any member of any library service. However, a huge great drag queen has an appeal in that it is eye catching and dispels those damaging myths.
But does it have a role in LGBT inclusion?
Homophobia hasn’t gone anywhere. In many ways it’s worse. Homophobia is unacceptable, but for kids who don’t conform – who are most likely to grow up gay, homophobia growls in the background. I wonder if, like misogyny, it’s more harmful driven partially underground. In some ways it’s easier to deal with what can be easily identified. If you tread a fine line in suspecting it, you may be gaslit. Little digs, undermining you here and there but not enough to confirm the suspicion. It builds up.
Thankfully there are books. The best loved books feature kids who don’t conform, girls in particular treasure the bold and brave girls of their childhood classics.
The lonely child is comforted in a library stacked with books about children who don't fit in, children like them. Librarians know this because, in many cases, they were those children.
Do drag queens do this? Think of Ant and Dec in drag.
As a four-year-old, I would have shat myself if I had been confronted with that in a library. There’s something sinister in the actual make-up, it’s like drawing severity, disapproval and sex on your face until it becomes a dehumanizing mask. There’s nothing soft there, nothing kind. The severity and thickness of the makeup creates a sort of war paint, needed because it takes a lot of guts to present yourself in this way to adults.
When it comes to dressing up, I think of the boy two doors down. He was a great kid. Of all the kids who lived on my street when I was four, I recall him vividly. This boy was an all-singing, all-dancing whirlwind. I can picture him in the paddling pool, throwing the water up in the air and singing ‘Singing in the rain’. Grinning from ear to ear. He would rush into our living room, dare to put on my dad’s headphones and shake his head to imagined music. He would go through the dressing up box and come out in my mum’s clothes from the 60s and 70s, take a lead on games of the imagination. He even had a go at choreography, lining up the younger kids (me included) and teaching us to march to, ‘hi-ho, hi-ho.’ And because it was him, we did it.
Then he moved fifteen minutes away, not far, but that was that. Sadly, that joy and enthusiasm is not appreciated for long. Kids like that had to mute themselves, particularly in high school. But then school is over, freedom beckons. I looked him up on Facebook and there he is, grinning again from ear to ear with his lovely husband.
I maintain that this boy knew that he liked singing, dancing, imagination and dressing up. I doubt that such a child would, unprompted, request that a drag queen come and read to him. I believe such a child would respond very positively to ‘Julian is a Mermaid’, precisely because he would not read much into it, beyond recognizing story about another child who enjoys dressing up. That is powerful and important on its own. If the child loves it, they will request it again. In quiet moments alone they may pour over the pictures, adults will know this when the book starts to fall apart. Go softly, all the serious stuff can wait. Childhood is brief.
If, rather than inclusion, you are celebrating individual identities and personalities, why not Goth rhyme time? Rob Newman has already shown us how this might work in practice, and I think it’s fabulous.
Or Corporate Stooge Storytime? Find something like, 'Elmer the Elephant encourages the rest of the herd to agree a pay cut.'
Or the variety and diversity of the books themselves can work magic on their own. Let children see same sex parents, different cultures and practices. It will reflect the world around them. You don’t have to jab your finger on the page and demand ‘Is this you?’
I read a lot of books that presented versions of Judith Butlers theory of gender identity over biology. In many cases these extended to very young children Many of these books would use, as an example, the cultures that have a third or fourth gender. In all that reading, at no point did I come across a book that touched on the cultures that segregate in adulthood but see childhood as a period where any kind of sex segregation is unnecessary.
Human beings did not, generally, cast their infants into a clearly segregated world of boys and girls. With neither money, nor TV nor toys, children are just children.
If children were free of sexualization, the safe space for gender neutral toys would widen. A safe environment where children are not expected or encouraged to declare any kind of identity. Why should they declare a fixed identity? They’ll do that in their own time.
If we burned everything made by MGA (Micro Games America, makers of Bratz, L.O.L Num Noms and Rainbow High) the chances of us accidentally depriving our kids of anything good would be nil. We would be depriving our kids of famine doll, collogen lips, randy toddler, cadaverous beauty queen, if-your-uncle-likes-this-doll-he-must-never-babysit (that could be useful) and Easily-groomed-and-loves-to-shop-doll. The fumes from burning all those dolls could be harmful so I suggest gluing them together and fashioning them into a string-of-sausages for the dog. If your dog ends up hopping down a field with an LOL doll sticking out of its arse, I’d call that a job done (once the doll had been extracted).
Not everything has to be made family friendly. I've been in a few bars in Brighton that I knew, too late, were not for me but I didn't want to be rude and leave immediately. Some spaces are exclusive for a reason.
When I was about thirteen, I watched Pricilla Queen of the Desert. Prior to watching it, I saw drag as something that was only ever done for laughs. Pricilla Queen of the Desert, while being gently funny, had an unexpected and brilliant layer of poignancy.
A little while later I heard a friend of mine singing ‘I’ve never been to me’, the first song to feature in the film.
"I've moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo
And showed 'em what I've got
I've been undressed by kings
And I've seen some things
That a woman ain't supposed to see...
I've been to paradise,
But I've never been to me..."
Here was a boy, who’d only ever expressed a love of grunge, singing it. He was not exactly doing it for laughs. A little later, he decided to wear a dress and a wig to a party. He seemed to do everything for the laughs he responded so well to. The clothes he wore day to day were drab but then, that was true of all boys. He was effeminate in a way he couldn’t escape, no matter what he wore. Getting the bus with him I remember some boys in my year pointing at him and demanding, ‘Is that a boy or is that a lassie?’
He made a lot of cutting remarks to girls. He commented on our clothes, figures and hair. Would tell me, an isolated and often anxious teen, that I had a ‘stuttery voice’. I didn’t have an extensive wardrobe and kept my favourite (and very shapeless) top for Friday. When he pointed out that I always wore the same thing I was embarrassed and didn’t ever wear it again. But nothing he said after that, ever bothered me. In that bitchiness was something too close to envy.
I knew if he swapped places with me, he’d find the invisibility of my existence a greater burden than being denied easy access to the bright lights of girlhood. He might think he wants it sometimes, but he doesn’t want to be permanently saddled with it. Femininity oppresses far more than it frees, but you don’t see that when you are on the outside looking in. Femininity is an act, so act it, enjoy it, make it absurd, make it huge. It’s yours as much as mine. It doesn’t make you female.
It could be coincidental, that a boy in his very early teens, considering his sexuality in a homophobic world still trying to see off Section 28, came out not long after watching Pricilla Queen of the Desert. I think it likely that it instilled in him the courage to express himself to some extent. For me, Pricilla had humanized characters and didn't expect to take so much to heart. This clip is lovely. Just. Lovely.
So yes, it does have a role but that doesn’t apply to very young kids.
If parents expect conformity, they are unlikely to take their child to a drag queen story time.
Around the age of seven, the cruelty of conformity sets in, if you are lucky, you might be able to push that back until the start of secondary school. That’s when these messages have meaning and purpose. ‘Be yourself’ is a pretty meaningless message to those who have only ever been themselves and can’t imagine an alternative. That’s every four-year-old I’ve ever met.
The compromise position I favour, would be to see a real panto dame, early in rehearsal, visiting libraries in their most deprived communities, doing a brief reading and giving one family tickets to the show. Panto tickets for the family can run into the hundreds. Here you are, showing a man dressed up, who knows instinctively how to talk to kids, giving one family a Christmas present those kids will remember for the rest of their lives. That would be a great tradition. The library service I once worked for, had the free tickets, but not the visit. We love panto dames because they look and sound funny. They fondly parody maternal figures, that’s fine too.
But many parents wouldn’t recognize sexualization if it stuffed itself into a large dildo and started humping the furniture. Neither it seems, can many library authorities.
That being the case, there is a simple test.
1. Are they wearing the kind of makeup worn by older women who once put notices in phone boxes? No
2. Do they look like sex dolls? No
3. Do they look like LOL dolls? No
4. Are they likely to scare children? No
5. Are they funny? Yes
So, libraries, stick to that test. If not, don’t be surprised if parents kick off. And remember the books themselves help nonconforming kids. Whatever entertainment you provide is merely the gateway. Don’t give parents an excuse not to take their child through it.
Childhood is brief.
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