To Wong Foo, Thanks for everything! Julie Newmar (1995)

This is the story of three drag queens who, on the way to a national drag queen of the year competition, get stranded in small town America, and bring a tired, backwater town to life.

The story opens with two drag queens, Vida and Noxeema, in New York tying for first place in a drag queen of the year competition, and as the grand prize, win two tickets to the national drag queen competition in Hollywood. As the two congratulate themselves on their victory, they come across one of their competitors, Chi Chi, crying in a stairway. Vida takes pity on Chi Chi and convinces Noxeema to let her go with them to Hollywood, so they sell their tickets and decide to buy an old, and questionably reliable Cadillac to take them to the competition. A sub story continuing throughout the film follows Vida and Noxeema telling Chi Chi the four steps required to become a true drag queen (as they called her a boy in a dress early on in the film). Before they leave however, Vida happens to spot an autographed photo of Julie Newmar saying 'To Wong Foo, Thanks for everything! Julie Newmar' and Vida steals the picture and takes it with them as good luck charm of sorts.

The journey seems to be going well until a racist sheriff pulls them over. he takes quite a liking to Vida and tries to sexually harass her... but is somewhat dismayed when he finds some extra parts between her legs, so Vida knocks him out and they drive away not knowing whether he's dead or alive. This guy will be searching for man-women for the rest of the film... will he find them I wonder. Their luck continues on this streak and their car breaks down a short while later. Chi Chi hitches them a ride to the nearest town where they have to wait for several days for the broken part of their car to come in.

The town they are stranded in seems to have a population of about 20, and they've never seen nothing like these 'career women' in their lives. Each person in this town has some sort of issue, alcoholism, domestic violence, self-esteem issues, douche-baggery, etc. and through the friendships and effort of our fearless hero(ine)s, each of these individuals overcome their personal problems and begin to embrace a life they seemed to have put on hold, or that they never truly started living. Trouble eventually catches up to them in the form of that sheriff (suspense killed), as the abusive husband tips him off to the whereabouts of these manly women. What will the town do when they find out the secret the girls have been keeping? Will they go to jail? And will they ever get to the national drag competition?!?!

I really liked this movie. I tend to like stories featuring cross- dressers or drag queens or transsexuals because it's a true story about discovering the self and choosing to follow your heart, despite the most definite censure you'll face from society, and your friends and family. This isn't to say that other soul-searching stories are not valid stories on the subject, but in that sense the whole 'finding yourself' theme is more about how you hold yourself back from being what you could be, it's usually assumed that others will come to accept your decision in time. Gender and sexuality is a very threatening subject for many people. Either they've been bred to ignorance, or they're not very self-confident or comfortable with their own sexuality and they find someone else's deviation from the social norm a personal attack. There are not very many things in life that are so constricting and taboo as how one defines themselves sexually. If you were born into a religious house hold, or have very expectant parents, you may be expected to follow a certain faith or enter a certain profession, but if you choose to deviate from that expectation, only a handful of people would be hurt, and since it is not an issue of life or death, they may even come to forgive you. If you tell your parents you're gay however, or that you felt that you were born the wrong gender, or that you only feel comfortable in clothes of the opposite gender, you'll have not only have (potentially, there are more and more open-minded people... or people who will just mind their own business if nothing else) your friends and family against you, but your society... and actually the entire world against you as well. It is the most publicly censured private affair in existence. So for a person to choose that kind of life is a very difficult and amazing thing, and is a more valid representation of the struggle of 'finding yourself' than a story about someone who doesn't know what kind of profession to pursue or whom to love.

Something else that really draw me to these sorts of films is that is seems like an innocent story of wanting to be accepted and beautiful, beauty not stemming solely from vanity and self-indulgence. It's kind of like watching a young girl's excitement as she dresses up in a fancy dress for a tea party, or for a day out with her friends. The pure joy one gets from indulging in 'girliness'. There is also a terror that someone will reject your joy, someone will spitefully spill juice on your brand new dress. Maybe this kind of struggle doesn't translate well for males, maybe that's why females seem to be more understanding when it comes to individuals of questionable or contrary gender/ sexuality. Because as girls, we've all known the difficulties and heartbreak that social acceptance can have, and we recognize that the societal 'other'. Who knows. All I know is that I like it.

Also, I never thought Patrick Swayze and Westley Snipes could be so feminine. The actors in this film definitely did an amazing job at capturing the essence of their roles. All in all, great film!

Luna: A Novel by Julie Ann Peters

This was a phenomenal story about struggle and rebirth. The story focuses on a transgendered guy through the eyes of his sister. And quite honestly I didn't go to sleep last night as I read it from start to finish.

The whole story is about how Luna (Liam's true self) is trapped within Liam, and Liam is a construction what the most acceptable way he can exist without revealing his true self turns out to be, which throughout the book we are told is like a shell of a person. Regan, the sister, has known from a young age that her brother is really a sister and devotes her entire life to keeping up the facade of Liam and dealing with Luna's problems. As a result Regan doesn't really have an identity. Both she and Luna are repressed 'Liam' Liam being society's rejection of transgendered individuals, and 'Liam' stifles those who know the truth to the point where the death of the individual wouldn't matter because the spirit, their soul, is already dead, crushed by society's rigid rejection. As depressing as that sounds however, this book is a phoenix rising out of the ashes story. For most of the novel everyone rejects Luna, even Regan and Liam as they are more embarrassed and wanting to keep Luna underground more than anything else. As the story progresses however, Luna decides that she needs to make herself known, she needs to break free, so she hesitantly goes about doing this, at first just recognizing this fact, than taking ever growing steps toward freedom. People accept or reject her as this process takes shape, but the only viewpoints the readers focus in on are Luna/ Liam's and Regan's. We never hear the final conclusion the other characters come to, which is appropriate as we can fill in our own selves or those we know into those characters, because this is very much an unfinished story as sexism still exists in a huge way today.

For most of the book Regan is just used as a lense through which the reader can learn about Luna and has no personality or character of her own, but she along with Luna, comes to the realization that she has no 'self' because of 'Liam' and though she doesn't act on it the way Luna does, she gets proddings from the outside world (in the shape of a new guy in school) to bring attention to her own life and not focus everything on Luna.

I teared up a few times reading this. Everyone has an inner self to let out, it's a struggle we all go through, some more so than others.