“C” is for Cookie.
“C” is for Cut You, Bitches.
Remember the Days when life got you down and you took a walk by the Mayberry fishing hole with your Pa? The days when you got dumped in Junior High and got on your Banana Bike and drove for what seemed like a bazillion miles even though you could still see your house in that little handle bar mirror? The days when you climbed up into your “NO Girls Allowed” treehouse with all your Spider-Man comic books, or hid out in your backyard “NO Boys Allowed” Barbie Castle with nothing but one of those giant gum ball Jawbreakers, and you swore to never ever come out until it was gone? That’s how you got your mojo back.
Then we got a little older, and someone decided that we needed “our” song and Self-Help books instead of Spider-Man, and prozac instead of Jawbreakers.
Then you (not me, notice…) got even older and someone else decided to invent Life Coaching, giving anyone who watched Oprah, or met Oprah, or ever heard of Oprah the opportunity to tell the rest of us how to fix our Hot Mess of a Life. Fixing things seems to be too much work now. How do you decide what to do to make it all better? How do you choose? It makes you want to scream Halleloo for help. Can’t anyone come up with the answer?
Careful what you wish for, because someone has. We’ve been looking everywhere and the answer was always right in front of us. The answer turns out to be a simple recipe created with all the comfort foods from our past sloppily dumped into a Cuisinart 5 speed, spiced up with some Unicorn dust and BAM…Problems Solved.
Take a Uhaul full of that pink Barbie, the club remix version of your favorite song, a Joanne’s Fabric Warehouse full of Superhero Spandex, lots of prozac, lots of bananas, lots of inappropriate Jawbreakers, that “NO Girls/NO Boys” attitude and a little Oprah and you pretty much have RuPaul’s DragU. Oh, and add your Pa…except this time instead of overalls and that stupid hat with wormy fishing lures dangling from it, he’s wearing a sequin cocktail dress and pumps.
Boom Goes The Dynamite.
Drag Queens are the new black. And it appears to be an extremely tight fitting, glittery, sparkly, shiny, duct taped black. RuPaul’s Drag Race has again spun off into DragU Season Two, and neither the ratings nor the Queens themselves show any signs of sagging. The basic premise is pretty simple, and has been used on most every network (except ESPN I’m thinking…) since the dawn of broadcasting. You take someone down on their luck and mentor them back up onto their feet. Simple enough. Hallmark Channel. Lifetime. Been there. Done that.
This technicolor production, however, puts a slightly different high heeled stop, pop a hip, look over your shoulder, and spin on the premise.
You take three slightly down on themselves frumpy woman, who look a little like men, and bring them to DragU. There they are paired with three faaaaabulous men, who definitely don’t look like men, who become their Drag Queen mentors, so to speak. And now the men who look like women are charged with making the women who look like men look more like Drag Queens, who are really men looking like women.
Try to keep up, please.
Each episode prior to meeting their mentors, I’m going to assume that the woman are sprayed down with the same air freshener that Barney’s New York pumps into all their stores, because the Queens are on them like a 75% OFF designer sample sale. These women don’t stand a chance. Ru, as the It crowd refers to him/her, has a seemingly endless supply of Queens to choose from his faculty, so you never know who is actually going to be called up for active duty each week. (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Wear Pearls With Plaid.) And don’t be looking for any Queen named Susan or Ethel. It’s a requirement that the name be as fierce as the outfit.
And the fiercer the better, Miss CarlottaGottaGetMeSomeOfThat.
It’s a little bit like The Facts Of Life, where Mrs. Garrett had to groom Tootie and Jo and Blair. (Natalie was a lost cause.) Ok. Except that it’s nothing like that. Though every Queen does seem to have some Tootie DNA in them. Harvard should do a study on that one. Girrrrlll….I am not sure how that happens.
If you use your acrylics and claw your way thru the boas, weaves and MAC spackle foundation, there is actually an occasional glimpse of trying to help the frumpy women feel better about themselves. It’s a well meaning show, but the warm fuzzies don’t last too long before someone is stealing someone else’s butt padding or throwing shade. (Google it…I don’t have time.) The make up budget alone could feed a small nation, second only to the wardrobe budget. A close third place is probably the on site medical staff, who no doubt attend to constant cases of whiplash and tennis elbow based on the number of “Oh No She Din’t” head wags and finger waves. That has got to wear on a girl after awhile.
DragU is a little bit like that crazy lady on the subway platform that you stare at every week. Way too much makeup. Nut job hairdo. Party store costume. Wearing every accessory she owns. Can’t be explained, and shows no sign of going anywhere soon.
And you would just totally die if anyone caught you watching.
