BY SALLY SHEKLOW
Et Tu, Tutu?
Having a ball with gender bending
H
ere we are at that crazy time of year when hordes
of consumer-maniacs clog the roads and malls
and their arteries in the name of the Prince of
Peace. Otherwise sane people act as if they can afford
to compound their already mounting debt, splurge on
expensive gifts and buy tickets to The Nutcracker.
You won’t find me in the holiday ballet crowd, and
not just because my budget is limited or because I don’t
do red and green. I have to stay away for other reasons,
reasons having to do with tutus and tights and my family of
origin.
When I was a kid, my parents competed in an annual costume contest. They
rarely left my brother and me with a babysitter and not just because of that time we
locked her out and nearly burned down the house. But once a year they hired our
teenaged next-door neighbor — whom, I have to imagine, they paid very well — so
they could dress up and go out. I mean really dress up and go all out.
For the downtown holiday masquerade party, our normally normal, unflashy par-
ents camped it up big time. They say they were just in it for the cash prize, but it was
more than that. Those two did themselves up in High Drag decades before anyone
had even heard of RuPaul.
Mom and Dad, both more than 6 feet tall, were a striking and somewhat serious
couple, but they surrendered all dignity on their dress-up night. My brother and I
would tear our TV-addict selves away from the Mouseketeers to sit on our parents’
bed and watch the magical transformation. Our workaday mother and father would
help each other into their costumes and inevitably succumb to the giggles, espe-
cially if the costume involved getting Dad into a pair of tights, which it almost always
did. No TV program could top our folks cracking each other up till they cried.
Who can forget the year they cross-dressed as Raggedy Ann and Andy?
Products of the Great Depression, our parents were very innovative, making do with
whatever we had on hand. They striped their red tights with masking tape for
candy-cane stockings and painted eyelashes and smiles on their faces with my wa-
tercolors. Mom strutted her stuff in homemade button-waisted blue pants while Dad
minced around in his white-aproned frock. I doubt they were intentionally advocat-
ing freedom of gender expression, but I got the message that it was not merely OK,
but way FUN, to step outside the norm.
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heir pièce de résistance was the wigs.
Mom had Rit-dyed two cotton mop heads until the strands turned good
and red. Not only did Raggedy Ann and Andy win Best Costume that year,
but those wigs topped off their ballerina outfits the next year, too.
That was the all-time best. My big, tall, usually serious parents decked out in pink
tights and leotards topped off with bright red mop hair and acting like total goof-
balls — you can’t beat a show like that.
Mom and Dad kissed us kids goodbye and wished the babysitter luck. They struck
a pose in the doorway so I could snap their picture with my Brownie camera. Dad
dipped into a demi-plié holding the edges of his stiff, pink, froufy tutu while Mom
raised her arms high in a gallant fifth position. She wore more or less the same out-
fit as Dad, but, instead of a tutu, had wedged a couple pairs of Dad’s socks down the
front of her tights. Who knew from codpieces?
My parents’ delight in flouting strictly enforced gender stereotypes had a pro-
found effect on me, resulting in both my advocacy for gender expression self-deter-
mination and an utter inability to watch ballet with a straight face. My cultural
growth was stunted, never to appreciate Nureyev or Baryshnikov. I definitely can’t
watch the Nutcracker Prince’s number without cracking up — you know that guy has
somebody’s socks in there.
Award-winning writer Sally Sheklow stays away from the ballet in Eugene.
WHO YOU GONNA BLAME?
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DECEMBER 21, 2006 7