42 jH M t a u t T febmary 15.2002
vi ti €i HS
Pink Flam ingos put Divine
on the countercultural m:
an one honestly hope to get
the real lowdown from a
biography written by the
subject’s mother?
This is the most obvious question
you’ll ask yourself making your way
through the pages of My Son
Divine (Alyson Publications,
j
2001; $19.95 softcover), a
^
hybrid of memoir and scrap-
r-'MmaEm
book devoted to the life and
times of the infamous 300-pound-
plus drag queen. His story is related through
the reminiscences of his mother, Frances Mil-
stead, who shares authorship with filmmakers
Kevin Heffeman and Steve Yeager.
Bom Oct. 18,
1945, Harris Glenn
Mtlstead grew up to
J? %
ivcom c the one and
only Divine, .tar of
J| ■
\
stage and many of
; | ^
director lohn
W
C
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Portland, OR 97114
503.231.39n
Wed - Sat
P R U L M ITCH ELL
11
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W iters'cinemaiiv
IB
attacks on gcH>d
taste (Pink
h'Lnningm, h'cnuiL•
Trouble.) 1 li.
M
mother's prosi-
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% te i>r.-w v
|H
duci ve tl > s, 111
j f f*
ological analy-
sis, but it’s easy
~~—
______
to pinpoint “little Glenny”
as one of the many doted-upon, somewhat
spoiled middle-class baby boom children of
Depression-era parents who were determined to
give their children the things they never had.
Glenn sang in the church choir (Southern
Baptist), acted in school plays and generally
hogged the spotlight. In addition to having a
tendency toward chubbiness, he was also effem­
inate, which caused disruptions in school—
especially in the later grades— following a pat­
tern that will ring sadly true to many gay men
who have faced childhood harassment.
Milstead paints a picture of herself as a
protective mother but a vic-
..
tim of her times. In
anecdotes equally
disturbing and
funny, she recalls the
separate occasions
on which both her
mother and the
L j| B
family doctor
K S | | expressed barely
%
I veiled concern
^B
about the likeli-
B A
hood that her
.
son was gay.
I
I
m
Milstead’s
^^B^B
naivete initial-
[9 K
W comes across
/ bemusing and
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old-fashioned
W m
but less so when
we learn that,
campy
ness that Divine so proudly
embodied. Instead, this book is
best seen as a window into how an
exceedingly “normal” person copes
with— and eventually incorporates
into,her sensibility— such a for-
L
eign, convention-defying fami-
ly member. It’s a glimpse into
an unworldly straight
a
woman’s experience of the
i
H
The mother
of the mother
of all drag queens
writes
a hook
^
by
v
C h r ist o p h e r
M c Q i a i n
"
W '
concepts of cross-dressing
and homosexuality.
That might not exactly delight the Divine
fan eager for a warts-and-all glimpse into the
queen’s family life, but Heffeman and Yeager
have more than
compensated by
aside from dressing as Elizabeth Taylor for a
teen-age Halloween party (and doing a fabu
lous job of it, as the
gw
accompanying photo
■
indicates), G lenn felt
obligated to
B P j
hide the
«
less-ordinary
f W aspects of
-
V
himself from
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E h
his family.
. m
Even after they
M
knew about his
# ■ films, for
instance, he for-
§ B bade them to see
A
the scandalous
■
early ones.
m
The book’s cen-
® ter is Divine’s rec-
f onciliation wirh his
family in 1981 after
’ T
;
a self-imposed nine-
, >
} I
WM
rpf
Jjl
* j
oversize-paperback,
tains more than
ing many from Mil-
lent her an issue of Life
featuring an article on
W7 _
That s Divine s mon
Waters.
,, , .
,
c,
,
,
normal-looking chat
bhe chose her
b
*
strange, newly discovered son over no son at
all, and the family was amicably reunited
until Divine’s untimely death in 1988, short­
ly after the release of his most popular
Waters film, Hairspray. (Milstead writes
ecstatically of attending the premiere.)
T he author leaves the ins and outs of her
son’s missing years to anec-
doles from h i s entourage,
t e ll . hi ' h . i u l ' i : |'n ifessi, .n.ils
uni tuns. T h is makes for an
interesting, often contra-
dictory picture but also
emphasizes the m ain reason
Milstead’s own text as biog-
raphy is dispiriting:
Although she’s an under-
standing, tolerant woman,
the sections directly per-
taining to Divine’s rela-
tionship with his family are
devoid of any of the messy
ambivalence that obviously
characterized the actor’s
feelings toward his origins,
if not the other way
around.
M ilstead is i leai h mak
mg 111 eft.at t.. do light In
her sen, hut the wav she
it I Is ins it. >r\ doesn’t do
lU'ii.e
lo die s p u n
of siil'
version and sexual other-
before seen by the
worth all of the
BpT >
.
!
j
C hristopher M c Q uain i is
filmmaker.
"
B B '
t |||f
' V 'i
' { * ' f l ’ki
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.
l the left, but who s that
.
’
t er arm.
m
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j
!
i
*
,
*
«H B B B B H
;
i
hooks word. ,md
then some
md
are often more
revealing than the
a Portland writer and
text. In fact, the
unlikely |u\l.i['osi
non of the rose-
colored ram bling
and I he seraph »ok
iiiin lde of snapshots
and publicity still.
from all stages of
. .
, ] £
the icons life
cumulatively lends
a mawkishly poignant legitimacy, transforming
My Son Divine into a camp artifact that Waters
and even Divine himself would be tickled to
have on their shelves. i n