WWJWD?

Maybe I'll just make this a monthly blog. :)

So last weekend Mr. Man and I went to Honfest with a couple of friends. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Honfest is a marketing scheme for Cafe Hon a celebration of Baltimore's "hons," those bygone, beehived queens of kitsch who peer through cat-eye glasses and say stuff like "how you doin' hon?" Actually, everybody in Baltimore says that.

Anyway, in spite of the wicked heat, Honfest was a-buzz with hons and non-hons alike, enjoying crab cakes, pit beef, smoothies and beer, and treating themselves to summer dresses, t-shirts and kitschy souvenirs. For those who were inspired but lacked the know-how to rat up their own hair, there was an on-site, open-air salon serving up beehives on the fly.

One Bawlmer resident was quite noticeably absent. Mr. John Waters, arguably Charm City's most famous living resident (Mama Cass was also from here, Cal Ripken probably still enjoys greater fame in most circles) thinks Honfest is bullshit. Waters thinks the festival is a place for middle-class suburbanites to come and make fun of this working-class stereotype.

You know, the stereotype he's been exploiting for years.

The stereotype that he sold to New Line Cinemas so that they could dress John Travolta up like a fat drag queen, because I guess there aren't enough fat drag queens out there that they could find one to play Mama Turnblatt--oh wait, maybe Mama Turnblatt could have just been played by a fat woman--there are lots of those, too, but I guess that wouldn't have insinuated that fat women are as attractive as drag queens, an insinuation that is totally fucked up and offensive to fat women, trans women, and the people who care about them.

It kind of reminds me of how Perez Hilton likes to lambast Sherri Shephard or whatever her name is and people like her who air their uneducated opinions on trans issues, even though he himself makes fun of trannies incessantly (at least he did when I quit reading him). I'm not saying that all white gay men are hypocrites--they're not--but these are two relatively high-profile cases of the big fat (or creepy skinny) pot calling the kettle black.

Whatever, bitches.

Adios, Amigo

Yesterday, Mr. Man had an assignment (have I mentioned that Mr. Man is a schoolboy?) to write a bunch of aphorisms. In the midst of digesting the fact that Lambda Legal, a self-described LBGT legal defense fund, has ads running on Perez Hilton (who I've finally decided is too ignorant and transphobic to read anymore--read on), he decided to write some about the unspoken "lessons" one can learn about our culture from visiting Perez's site. Here's how our our gchat went:

Mr. Man: ow lambda legal is advertising on perez

me: omg

fucking idiots

!!!

???

that's cuh-razy

right?

3:26 PM Mr. Man: ya- it's crazy- but not too surpising

me: ya

no it's kinda smart

but not really

Mr. Man: there go the raises for thier employees....

me: pretty fucked up

no shit

not to mention who they're endorsing by their presence, and who they're targeting

3:30 PM Mr. Man: i am writing aphorisms inspired by perez hilton

me: haha yay

3:34 PMMr. Man: Things that could be learned from reading perezhilton.com

1. The young are the powerful, because they are beautiful, but the old can have power too if they get plastic surgery and/or have money.
2. Some women who are not transgender look like transgender people, and this is shameful.
3. A worthwhile cause is only worthwhile if it is endorsed by a celebrity.
4. What the rich and famous do is more important and meaningful than what everyone else does.
5. Everything is secondary to visual beauty.
6. Celebrity pop culture is nothing more than sensationalized mundanity.
7. Sarcasm is the best way to both make fun of and idolize people at the same time.
8. People who used to be celebrities, but aren't really any more are both funny and pathetic.
9. Appropriation of a radical queer style is okay if you are gay man, even if you are pretty mainstream, aside from your gay-ness.
10. Subscribing to strict gender roles is important is you want to be a celebrity- it's okay to be gay, but not too gay.

In one of my very first posts, I mentioned Perez Hilton and how I hated to love him but couldn't help it because he shared my love for Beth Ditto. Even back then, Mr. Man (the rascal who got me hooked on celebrity news, darn him) and I had noticed a disturbing habit Perez had of making fun of trannies, but we kind of just cringed and shook our heads in that "I'm disappointed but not really surprised" way, the way we did when that dumbass Dave Letterman (who I've always loved more than Conan or Leno) disappointed me so much a few weeks ago. Sometimes I'd post comments about how fucked up it was that PH would be such a hypocrite, not because he's gay, but because sometimes he champions the rights of trannies (or pretends to), most recently in response to Letterman's insensitive and trans-phobic remarks.

I should acknowledge that it's pretty fucking ridiculous that we visit this site at all. The whole celebrity thing is ridiculous, and although I like to tell myself that I need to know this stuff for work, or to better understand the mainstream, but I would have to admit that part of me enjoys it, in spite of being totally disgusted. It's like Diet Coke.

It's not just the trans stuff, either--Perez makes fun of people like Tina, the young girl who PH made famous for videos of herself dancing to pop music in her bedroom, who did appear to be homophobic, but is just a kid (who seems to have a learning disability of some kind). And he definitely tends to humiliate women much more than he does men...which is not so surprising, as that's kind of what people do in our culture.

PH often compares femme bio-women with MTF trannies, to insinuate that the bio-women are not femme enough, and therefore ugly. Nice. Sometimes, these bio-women are "villains," like Paul McCartney's now-ex, Heather Mills.

Today, he compared Ms. Mills to "Jeremy the out of control trannie," a homeless transwoman who recently crashed her car into a lingerie store who'd denied her application for a job. To get to those facts, I had to click through to the page where that expanded version (the post that lives on the main page is two pics with a teaser) lives, which is also the comment page. I tried not to read them, because Hilton's readers generally seem to be a shallow, xenophobic bunch, and they say some pretty offensive shit. Of course, today was no different, although there are a few people who chimed in to chide PH for his transphobic bullshit. He'd added his own commentary to the newspaper article he'd lifted, saying how no homeless person he knows has a car. I bet he knows a ton of homeless people. What a fucking idiot.

And that did it. Enough is enough. I'm through with you, Perez. I'll find some other mindless entertainment to rest my brain on when I need a break from being a productive person in the world. In fact, you can go fuck yourself Perez Hilton, and continue to be a hater and exploit the insecurities and prejudices of your (generally speaking--not us!) immature readers. It's not your fatness or your gayness that makes you ugly--it's the shit that comes out of your mouth.