And that’s not even up for debate. Rupaul Andre Charles was born on November 17th 1960, during the year of the rat. And with his recent refusal to budge on the issue of avoiding inappropriate transgender slurs on his highly popular tv show, he has shown himself to be someone who lives up to every characteristics of a rat.
He is not some aspiring, struggling, queer artist so desperate for attention that he needs to resort to using fowl language to be noticed. At least, not anymore. He’s the first lady of drag. And as such, he should conduct himself with a little more class.
From a legal and judicial point of view, the T-word is equivalent to the N-word. If somebody beats the crap out of someone while shouting one of these words, it will be recognized as being a hate crime. Regardless if one term is more culturally acceptable than the other.
As a drag queen who also happens to be trans, I’m a huge fan of Ru-ru. To the point that he’s pretty much become a religious figure to me. Seriously, I must have read his biography at least 6 or 7 times. And the part that really clicked with me, was that he identified himself as a nicer, southern queen who avoided living up to the stereotype of the vitriol-spewing, audience-mocking, toxic drag queen. I guess he’s turned his back on that philosophy, big time.
[n]
NATNOTE: Personally, I’m willing to give Rupaul a second chance, that’s why I’m still following him on twitter, and why I’ll continue watching the show.
*******UPDATED*******
As it turns out, Ru-ru and Logo did finally see the light, apologized, and agreed to stop using inappropriate language on the hit show “Rupaul’s Drag Race”. I personally believe in forgiveness and turning the other page. I actually felt kind of bad about the way I approached that subject myself. I was planning on amending some of the harsher comments I had voiced in this article, but I was beaten to the punch. Nevertheless, I made sure to remove some of the harsher paragraphs originally posted in this article. This site doesn’t have that much visibility, so I’m doubting Rupaul’s feelings were hurt, but regardless, I regret resorting to mud-slinging to make a point. Sorry Ru-ru!
Realistically though, I don’t think it’s physically possible to make Rupaul look bad, even when resorting to using a mouse-eared caricature. He is that fabulous. It’s not humanly possible to make him look awful, the only thing that he projects his visual glamour. I’m sure he could make wearing a lumberjack shirt with heels look stunningly divine. Plus he very handsome as a guy too.
In an effort to redeem myself I want to talk about the outstanding characteristics of people born the year of the rat. That sign is the #1 sign in Chinese astrology, and for good reasons. People born that year seem to excel at absolutely everything. And there’s no doubt Rupaul is the full package. Beyond the obvious goddess-like good looks, he’s got everything else going on. A great sense of humor, a great voice, an unbeatable stylistic and artistic flair, as well as compassion and grounded sense of humanity. He’s my idol for a good reason.
Now I’m not even sure I want to keep this article posted. I honestly think the piece I drew is cute. And actually, I draw all celebrities as their Chinese astrology animal, but regardless, I’ll have to think about whether I’m keeping this article online or not.
SCREEN-FREE WEEK 2.0
SCREEN-FREE WEEK is from may 5th to the 11th this year, and I intend to take another stab at it. Media addiction is real, and in some extreme cases, it can ruin careers, relationship and even families. I’m not advocating for people to go out and smash their TV’s to bits in their driveways. But what I’d like to do, is have a dialogue on the subject.
It’s a good idea to be aware of how much time per week, that we’re spending just sitting there being idle, just absorbing screen-fed, infotainment content, like some digital baby being fed virtual nourishment.
Over-consumption of media is like a run-on sentence. Something that starts off feeling good, but drags on for so long that it might end up making you feel nauseous. Throughout my life, I have binged on media. Whether it was watching 8-9 hours of tv a day, everyday, as a kid. Or playing some 10-12 hours of video games in a row, during the weekend as an adult. Great storytelling has a tendency to grab me and not let go. And I’m not the only one out there. Left and right, I’m hearing stories of people doing some time travel after getting Netflix, or some other streaming service. It’s early afternoon, they start off watching an episode of a tv series that ends up being better than anticipated, and next thing you know, it’s now late at night. Time-travel in action.
I’m not going to go entirely offline and screen-free during that week, because realistically, I have no control over what content I’m shown at class. What I am planning to do, is to seriously reduce the amount of digital media I devour. I’m not going to play video games, or watch movies or tv shows, or surf the web for a week. But also have to be realistic, I am going to answer my cell if it rings, and I am going to check my emails quickly everyday, since I am job-hunting.
To me, SCREEN-FREE WEEK isn’t about being media-abstinent as a show of willpower. It’s about meditating on how much of our personal time we’re willing to give to absorbing other people’s stories, and how much we’re willing to invest in living out own lives, and in the process, living out our own stories.
[n]
-UPDATED May 13th :
I may have fumbled a few times ( I played some ps3 ), but I consider my SCREEN-FREE WEEK as at least, a moderate success. It was hard not to watch any tv shows & movies. Not being able to surf the web and check facebook made me feel disconnected at first. But then it felt great to have all that extra time to work on my projects, and to go outside. ^_^
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Posted in COMMENTARY, TEXTUALS WITH VISUALS
Tagged getting screwed, idle, mass media, media addiction, Netflix, screen devices, screen-fed, SCREEN-FREE WEEK, SCREEN-FREE!, SFW, streaming service, TV TURNOFF WEEK, virtual baby, virtual nourishment