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This Week's Guest: Gilda Wabbit
What's the future you want to see? My guest this week is drag queen Gilda Wabbit, who experienced a strange moment of internet fame thanks to a photo of her riding the subway in full drag next to a Muslim woman. What that photo didn't capture was Gilda's background searching for her voice -- literally, as for years she struggled as an opera singer to find roles that felt right. Turns out putting on a wig and a dress helped point her in the right direction.
This Week's Recommendation: Giant Woman
Thanks again to Gilda for joining me. You can find her on Twitter @gildawabbit, and you YouTube where you can see her singing Do it for Her from Steven Universe.
For my recommendation this week, check out another Steven Universe song: Giant Woman. You don't need to be familiar with the show to follow along -- thought it helps to know that it's a song song by a character who wants his friends to get along, rather than fight, because when they do they can combine to become a giant woman.
I recommend this not just because Steven Universe is the most beautiful and pure television show ever made. But during a recent livestream, viewer FreeKillZero pointed out to me that becoming a giant woman is essentially what performer do when they get into drag. And although it might not have been the meaning intended by the show, there's a lovely parallel between the magic fusing of Steven's friends and the magic transformation of drag.
Drag is something you wear on your outside but it's something you feel on your inside. It's a fullness, an achievement of inner potential that nobody could see until the wig and the makeup came along.
It's why, no matter how popular it become, drag will never become "mainstream," because it's an intensely personal, individual, political and rebellious act to declare that person everyone sees is wrong and persona that you feel is right.
Clips of Stuff we Talked About
Music
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/