Professor of Nerdlesque

We interrupt this regularly scheduled nerdlesque post to celebrate the fantastic achievement of Jinkx Monsoon and her win on RuPaul’s Drag Race. CONDRAGULATIONS! Watch this video to understand how this is just the beginning of what Jinkx has to show us.

Is this what fierce pride and intense jealousy feels like? It’s the pride of knowing she deserves it and will represent her Northwest family of drag queens, burlesque starlets and theater geeks well. It’s also the strange sadness and jealously of knowing we now have to share her the rest of the world. The second part I’ll get over. It’s Monsoon Season, bitches!

These are the reasons why I’m distracted from posting about nerdlesque this week: Jinkx stayed true to herself while also heeding the advice of performers she looked up to. Jinkx took seemingly obscure references, at least to her cast mates, and turned them into solid gold. From Little Eddie of Grey Gardens to Edwina Monsoon of Absolutely Fabulous, Jinkx has sashayed and stayed by not relying on the mainstream to develop her persona. When bullied by her peers, she still brought her camp queen realness and won. She giggled her adorkable laugh all through her high profile post-win interviews and even talked about her discovery of Ivy/Jinkx fanfiction. When she was quoted Us Weekly saying “she always looks like she’s about to cry, I wish someone would just kick her and get it over with” all the bookish nerds guffawed, knowing she was quoting Harriet the Spy and not just simply throwing shade on Gwyneth Paltrow. She’s won for all the underdogs – for the Jewish narcoleptic drag queen in each of us. Maybe this actually is on topic after all.

Jinkx, you big ol’ nerd, we salute you.

Upcoming:
If you were smart, like I was, you already have your ticket to the Jinkx Monsoon homecoming at Julia’s in Seattle on Monday. It’s entirely sold out.

Tonight in Seattle, from Midnight Menagerie Productions, there is a final production of Minxes of Middle of Earth, a Lord of the Rings inspired burlesque show. I was lucky enought to check it out last night and can report that the Balrog and Dead Marshes were especially epic but, per usual, Frodo steals the show.

I’m speaking about nerdlesque and geeky feminism at two, count em two, upcoming events. This weekend I’ll be at Western Washington University  at VikingCon on a panel with a professor from UW and a founder of GeekGirlCon (I’ll be playing the role of black sheep). I hope to meet the Cigarette Smoking Man and get his reaction to the Burl-X-Files…..for SCIENCE!

The following weekend at a Seattle based Women In Theater event where I’ll talk about how burlesque is a performance field dominated by woman in all aspects of production. It should be an interesting conversation.

CONDRAGULATIONS JINKX! 

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