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Some of these Trad Wives believe they should be submissive to their husbands (who give them a monthly allowance) and "spoil them like it's 1959", such as Pettitt, who left a high-flying marketing job to join the #TradWife movement.

"It was all kind of, let's fight the boys and go out and be independent and break glass ceilings. But I just felt I was born to be a mother and wife. What I really related to were the old shows of the 1950s and 60s."

"I like the role of a traditional wife and my husband being traditional in his role too," says Katy* from Shropshire, who discovered the Trad Wife movement by watching Alena's YouTube videos. "Being a Trad Wife to me means being a person who stays at home and looks after the running and upkeep of the household."

Katy joined the Royal Navy aged 17 and stayed in the role for almost five years before working on a dairy farm part-time. Now, the 34-year-old lives with her husband and three children and has undertaken the role of a Trad Wife.

"I have set tasks every day such as hoovering, washing, making the beds, preparing meals. I then have extra bits like polishing, cleaning windows, cleaning the bathroom and food shopping," she adds. "It seems to be a natural balance in our house, there are no arguments about who is cooking the dinner or whose turn it is to clean the bathroom. They are my tasks and I enjoy doing them. My husband is not expected to do any of the housework or cooking, he goes out to work all day doing his job and I stay home doing mine - it works for us."

Katy acknowledges the criticisms and says that being a housewife is just as difficult as going to work. "I think some people would consider us lazy because we don't go out to work all day and aren't contributing financially to the household but we're not lazy, we fill our days with various household jobs and tasks.

"I definitely think more women and men should embrace these traditional values as long as it is a mutual decision between both of them. It worked for a lot of married couples in the past so why shouldn't it work now? We are all equal but our strengths lie in different places."

But Katy believes the Trad Wives movement is grossly misunderstood and is not linked to the Trad Wives in the US. "The TradWife movement in the UK is very different from what it is in America," she says. "I don't think it's anti-feminist, it is a group of women sending out a message to other women saying it's okay to be a housewife, you're valuable too.

"I exercise my right to stay at home and care for my family as much as the next woman exercises her right to work full time, neither is wrong. They are just different. We all submit to one thing or another whether that be another person or a company who you work for. I submit to my husband as he submits to me, it works both ways."

Hannah* agrees and says she loves the feeling of ease that comes with keeping her home "beautiful" and welcoming. The 30-year-old from Cornwall gave up her retail career to be a housewife. "I realised I wanted to spend all my days being a wife and mother in my beautiful home. Being a TradWife came very naturally to me. I'm so content with cleaning, cooking, taking care of the children and visits from loved ones, knowing they'll leave with a belly of freshly baked cake."

But she makes it clear that her arrangement with her husband is mutual. "He's happy if I'm happy and I know he feels satisfied after a long day's work coming home to the smell of dinner, a well-kept home and happy children."

Lauren receives a £400 monthly housekeeping allowance from her husband to buy groceries, toiletries and items for her children. She also receives £200 for her mobile phone and anything else she wants to spend it on. Lauren is clear that the backlash the movement has received is based on misunderstandings.

"The biggest misconception is the whole attitude towards husbands. He doesn't make me stay at home, he doesn't demand, he doesn't expect. He works long, hard hours.

"I make him lunch because it saves him time and money at lunchtime, is healthier and tastier, and is a little way I can show him I love him. Nobody is making me do that. It isn't submitting to 'men', it is just giving my husband the lead in things which are more important to him than me."

On whether the TradWives movement contradicts modern feminism, Lauren says she sees staying at home to raise her own children as a "political act of rebellion against the oppression of women".

She adds: "Modern feminism should mean that we are all feminists: men, women, non-binary, married, single, polyamorous.

"Femininity has different definitions and mine isn't the only one. For me, I only ever wear dresses. I don't look good or feel good in trousers. I nearly always wear red lipstick. Before having children, I always had red nails and liked wearing high heels."

She adds: "I hope women for who it is a good fit will embrace it. For women who do not want to live like this, I hope it will pass them by. I would not want to be forced to go to work because someone else thought it was the right thing.

"You can be a #TradWife and be FOR all women and their choices. You can be a #TradWife and be politically engaged, informed and active. We're not vacuous just because we vacuum."

* Some names have been changed at the interviewees' requests.

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"We're Not Vacuous Just Because We Vacuum": Inside The World Of The Real #TradWives Of The UK

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Some of these Trad Wives believe they should be submissive to their husbands (who give them a monthly allowance) and "spoil them like it's 1959", such as Pettitt, who left a high-flying marketing job to join the #TradWife movement. "It was all kind of, let's fight the boys and go out and be independent and break glass ceilings.

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What exciting trends are happening in the matrimonial sector?
Kara, by email
A thrilling new trend has emerged, and it's as seismic as the New Look was in 40s fashion, or the emergence of Mediterranean cooking in 90s Britain: it's called being a housewife.

Now you might think: "Ummm, that doesn't sound THAT new to me." But all fashion trends are rehashes, and "tradwife", as this one is dubbed, is housewife with a social media spin. It's like bringing back 90s style, but swapping that brown eyeliner for contouring makeup. It's just so much more zeitgeist, you see?

So a "tradwife" is a woman who doesn't work so as to look after their children, their husband, their home and then talk non-stop about how great this is on social media. Who knew being so traditional was also so modern? And so busy! Last week alone, there were interviews with tradwives in the Daily Mail, the Times and on the BBC, This Morning, Victoria Derbyshire and, for all I know, piped 24/7 across all channels. I'm afraid that - being both non-trad and a non-wife - I am less plugged in than these women.

But I was especially taken with one trad wife. Her name is Alena Kate Pettitt, and in between showing TV crews how she lovingly irons her husband's shirt and shops for onions, Pettitt runs something called the Darling Academy, which is a newsletter and YouTube channel that "celebrates British etiquette". Initially, I assumed this meant reviving all that mad Nancy Mitford U and non-U stuff, and, let me tell you, as an American wannabe snob, I am VERY down with that. But no, Pettitt is "harnessing the best of what made Britain great, during that time when you could leave your front door open and know that you were safe, and you knew your strangers in the street."

Mmm, isn't it funny how whenever people evoke a specific time when Britain was great, the time they invariably evoke is their own childhood before they were aware of the pressures and anxieties of adulthood? And I'll be honest, every times Pettitt talks about her husband "taking care" of her, and that is pretty much her No 1 subject, she sounds more like she's talking about her father than her husband.

The tradwives have been keenly giving interviews about how they are the true feminists in choosing not to work, to which anyone with a modicum of knowledge about feminism would say: "We gave women the choice - that's the point! Bake banana bread until the sun comes up, if it makes you happy!" Whether they are still the true feminists in suggesting that "husbands must always come first if you want a happy marriage", as Pettitt has tweeted, feels more debatable. Also unacknowledged is that, as much as the tradwives think they are being renegade rebels by not working, their rebellion is based on their husband earning enough to support a whole household. Whoa there, little rebels!

But this isn't actually about fighting the system: this is about women fighting against their own insecurities about their lives. And because of these insecurities, they then insist they are the oppressed ones, the brave speakers of truth. In other words, it's another pointless culture war to chuck on the teetering pile in between Spiked Online and Laurence Fox.

And it's also about something else. Rather awkwardly for the British tradwives - who like to suggest their movement is just about dressing in Cath Kidston and letting their husband choose where they are going on holiday - in the US and elsewhere it is very much part of the "alt-right" movement. It is especially popular among white supremacists, who are extremely down with the message that white women should submit to their husband and focus on making as many white babies as possible. British tradwives insist this has nothing to do with them: "Someone even said, this type of housewife was promoted by the Third Reich. And it's like: 'Really?! I didn't even know that!'" Pettitt told the BBC, sitting underneath her union jack bunting, musing about how "we don't even know the identity of our country right now".

Now look, clearly being a happy housewife does not mean you are a Nazi. But also, maybe it's time to dial down a notch, tradwives, for your own sake? After all, if you're constantly posting videos to YouTube about how to press your husband's clothes, and talking to Phillip and Holly about how you love to flirt with your husband, how do you have time to do any tradwife-ing?

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'Tradwives': the new trend for submissive women has a dark heart and history

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What exciting trends are happening in the matrimonial sector? Kara, by email A thrilling new trend has emerged, and it's as seismic as the New Look was in 40s fashion, or the emergence of Mediterranean cooking in 90s Britain: it's called being a housewife. Now you might think: "Ummm, that doesn't sound THAT new to me."

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- PANTOMIME OUTFIT
- SAW THIS ON DRAG RACE AND FELL IN LOVE AND FOUND SOME AMAZING INSPIRATION THROUGH THE DESIGN

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- in love with her over-exaggerated take on female women
- dominatrix AESTHETIC

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Journal Information

The mission of Art Journal, founded in 1941, is to provide a forum for scholarship and visual exploration in the visual arts; to be a unique voice in the field as a peer-reviewed, professionally mediated forum for the arts; to operate in the spaces between commercial publishing, academic presses, and artist presses; to be pedagogically useful by making links between theoretical issues and their use in teaching at the college and university levels; to explore relationships among diverse forms of art practice and production, as well as among art making, art history, visual studies, theory, and criticism; to give voice and publication opportunity to artists, art historians, and other writers in the arts; to be responsive to issues of the moment in the arts, both nationally and globally; to focus on topics related to twentieth- and twenty-first-century concerns; to promote dialogue and debate. The journal, which welcomes submissions from authors and artists worldwide and at every career stage, is published four times a year in spring, summer, autumn, and winter by the College Art Association.

Publisher Information

Founded in 1911, the College Art Association... Promotes excellence in scholarship and teaching in the history and criticism of the visual arts and in creativity and technical skill in the teaching and practices of art. Facilitates the exchange of ideas and information among those interested in art and history of art. Advocates comprehensive and inclusive education in the visual arts. Speaks for the membership on issues affecting the visual arts and humanities. Provides opportunities for publication of scholarship, criticism, and artists' writings. Fosters career development and professional advancement. Identifies and develops sources of funding for the practice of art and for scholarship in the arts and humanities. Honors accomplishments of artists, art historians, and critics. Articulates and affirms the highest ethical standards in the conduct of the profession. Authorization to photocopy texts for internal or personal use (beyond that permitted by sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law), or for one-time, limited-term nonprofit educational use in coursepacks or closed-access academic course Intranet websites, is granted by the College Art Association without charge. For other uses, please first contact the individual author and/or other rights holders to obtain written permission, then the College Art Association.

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Sex into Sexuality: A Feminist Agenda for the '90s on JSTOR

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Journal Information The mission of Art Journal, founded in 1941, is to provide a forum for scholarship and visual exploration in the visual arts; to be a unique voice in the field as a peer-reviewed, professionally mediated forum for the arts; to operate in the spaces between commercial publishing, academic

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TRADWIVES!!! WOMEN IN THE MODERN CENTURY WHO STILL SUBMIT TO THEIR HUSBANDS!!!

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TRADWIVES!!! WOMEN IN THE MODERN CENTURY WHO STILL SUBMIT TO THEIR HUSBANDS!!!

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Celia Hempton - Biography - Robert Fontaine Gallery

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Celia Hempton (born 1981, UK) makes abstract and figurative paintings, sculptures and installations and sound works that often explore the human form and the places and landscapes it inhabits. Hempton has had numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, and much of her work plays with the graphic and se

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THE NEW AGE OF DRAG - ELEMENTING SOME SURREALISM AND FURUISM

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THE NEW AGE OF DRAG - ELEMENTING SOME SURREALISM AND FURUISM

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"Peter was very charismatic and charming in various ways, and very complicated," curator and photography critic Vince Aletti recounts of Peter Hujar. "He was somebody that a lot of people fell in love with very quickly."

Speaking over the phone from his home in New York's East Village - where, in the 1970s and 80s, Peter was a neighbour and close friend - Vince recalls meeting the photographer in the early 70s and bonding with him over art shows and photography in fashion magazines. (Vince is a renowned collector, his apartment famously filled with magazines, books, photography and ephemera he has compiled over the decades and, in 2019, he released , a history of photography in fashion magazines drawn from his vast collection.) "I was obsessive about buying every new magazine, which Peter was not, but whenever we got together for dinner, typically before dinner or after, we would end up at my apartment looking at magazines."

This era of Downtown New York is fabled: the artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians who populated its streets went from boundary-pushing, underground creatives to cult icons. Peter captured the lifeblood of this decade and the city's burgeoning queer culture. His career, marked by exacting, exquisite photographs, was bookended by times of change in the city. Post- Stonewall in 1969, the 70s were marked by the first annual Gay Pride marches and increasing queer liberation movements. The 80s saw the onset of the AIDS epidemic that devastated the LGBT community (and ended Peter's own life in 1987). Peter documented the city with an uncompromising approach and singular vision, his subjects including his cohort of fellow underground artists, members of emerging subcultures, animals, nature, cityscapes and himself.

Peter's portraiture - famously published in Portraits in Life and Death (1975), the only book released during his lifetime - extended beyond the studio he set up in his loft apartment. In a new exhibition at Maureen Paley, among self-portraits, shots of fellow artist and friend David Wojnarowicz, and his celebrated studio portraits, a selection of photographs takes us backstage at the theatres, clubs and cabarets of New York. It's here that Peter would venture to capture performers before or after shows, doing or undoing makeup and getting into or out of character.

Vince explains that Peter found the underground theatre culture flourishing at the time very compelling. "Peter was kind of fascinated by what was, in a sense, the casualness of downtown theatre - it had a whole other aesthetic than Broadway. I think he enjoyed the artifice but also the playfulness of companies like Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Going backstage at those events, Peter took that artifice even further by letting us appreciate how theatre works even if we're not on stage." Ludlam and other avant-garde artists of the Theatre of the Ridiculous dared to subvert the conventions of performance, and incorporated elements to both shock and stimulate audiences: from freewheeling improvisations and gender-blurring costumes to satirical plots played out in surreal settings. "The shows were often very slapdash and very casual, but very witty," Vince says.

Drag was prominent in these heady spectacles. "In one of Peter's pictures that I like a lot, you just see this guy's legs in high heels and stockings, these very hairy legs. That sort of disjunction: the humour of it, but also kind of the sexual, erotic quality is really interesting," Vince says. "These were people who played with gender and identity in a way that I think Peter was always interested in. This is the mid-70s, so it was early on in this kind of gender questioning, and I think that's why a lot of the work looks very right at the moment."

Peter often explored drag in his photography and would shoot certain performers time and time again; names like Ethyl Eichelberger and John Heys, who were synonymous with the era. In the Maureen Paley exhibition, we see Mario Montez, Larry Ree, Charles Ludlam, and The Cockettes in playful, intimate portraits, sometimes backstage and sometimes in the studio. These members of the theatrical vanguard subverted gender conventions (or, in the case of The Cockettes, the San Francisco-born troupe whose roster included John Rothermel and Hibiscus, completely trashed them). In the 1970s, the shows were niche, relying on close-knit groups of performers and audiences, and only a decade later would their style start to gain traction beyond the enclaves of downtown New York theatres. Off-stage and through Peter's lens in those early years, we see another side of their vital art.

These backstage photographs and portraits of performers in various stages of character make for interesting dichotomies. Where does the show begin and end? Vince notes that the photographer sought to "transcend the facade" of his subjects, and these are no different. "I think all portraiture involves a certain kind of performance and Peter was very interested in getting beyond that - seeing people for who they were through the makeup, through the costume, through whatever attitude they might have." The director and actor John Heys, who starred in groundbreaking 1970s shows like the Palm Casino Review alongside the likes of Warhol Superstars Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis, was often photographed by Peter. "I knew I couldn't fool him. I couldn't put on the artifice in front of him. He could see right through me," John said in 1989.

A compelling corner of Peter's vast photographic output, the portraits also epitomise what curator Joel Smith says is at the core of his work. "Hujar's photographs monumentalise moments, beings, lifetimes, and subcultures that might otherwise have disappeared into time," he writes in Speed of Life, the book published to accompany the celebrated touring exhibition of the same name of 2018. "His subject is those who live - whether out of animal simplicity or fatalist irony or supreme indifference - at the speed of life, in present tense, undistracted by hope, anxiety, or nostalgia." Or, as Peter himself put it: "I photograph those who push themselves to any extreme and people who cling to the freedom to be themselves."
Peter Hujar was due to open at Maureen Paley on 8 February 2021, but new dates are being confirmed due to lockdown restrictions. Credits
All images courtesy The Peter Hujar Archive LLC, courtesy The Peter Hujar Archive and Maureen Paley, London

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No one photographed New York's drag scene like Peter Hujar

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"Peter was very charismatic and charming in various ways, and very complicated," curator and photography critic Vince Aletti recounts of Peter Hujar. "He was somebody that a lot of people fell in love with very quickly."

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- literal women depicted as objects
- sex doll like (lifeless and without a conscious or voice)

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- finding the beauty in the 'ugly' and overexaggerated
- repulsive beauty as she denotes it as

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FANTASTIC ARTICLE ON JOHN WATERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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FANTASTIC ARTICLE ON JOHN WATERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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John Waters holds royal status in the world of queer cinema. He is the Prince of Puke, the King of Bad Taste and the Pope of Trash. Queer festival program notes and film reviews regularly cite movies as reminiscent of Waters in their 'camp-ness' and humour: including But I'm a Cheerleader (Jamie Babbit, 1999), First Period (Charlie Vaughn, 2013) and Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! (Todd Stephens, 2008). Often, however, these films are criticised for not matching the grossness of Waters's work: nothing seems to come close to watching Divine (Glenn Milstead) eating dog shit and licking his lips in Waters's Pink Flamingos (1972). In reviewing queer cult classic But I'm a Cheerleader for instance, Roger Ebert wrote that although it "seeks the general tone of a John Waters film," his work would have been "ruder and more polished."

Yet it is not grossness alone that makes a queer film akin to Waters's work: politically disruptive humour is a prerequisite to this rudeness. Contemporary queer cinema holds the potential to reach the dizzying heights (or is it lows?) of Waters's aesthetic through the utilisation of camp humour to disrupt conservative ideologies. His oeuvre has greatly shaped contemporary queer humour, and while his distinct humour plays an important disruptive role, I argue it has mostly been homonormalised. This will be demonstrated in references to films such as Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! Some films, however, attempt to maintain Waters's original purpose, such as First Period and Babbit's films. While commentary on Waters's humour usually centres on his emphasis on grotesquery, I draw upon Kenneth Burke's notion of "perspective by incongruity" to identify how the disruption of the dignified homosexual/bad queer binary is just as quintessential to Waters's exploitative aesthetic. In other words, this humour forces a realisation for the artificiality of normal identities. It is through this direction that contemporary queer comedies can be labelled "Waters-esque," even if they sadly lack a drag queen eating dog shit.

Queer Perspectives of Incongruity

Representations of marginalised queer identities in popular culture have a tendency to be presented in opposition to normative culture. In her analysis of Will & Grace and Queer as Folk, Rachel E. Silverman employs Kenneth Burke's conceptual framework of perspective by incongruity to examine the depiction of both gay and Jewish identities. In a mainstream media landscape dominated by Christian and heterosexual identities, gay, lesbian and Jewish characters are typically rendered as Others, and often through tragic circumstances. This perspective by incongruity approach for Dustin Bradley Goltz "offers a critical tool that is useful for approaching and theorizing queer practice as a comic corrective." Silverman reads characters on both shows, as I read Divine, as existing beyond the tragic binary of victim/villain. Conversely, these shows utilise comedy and camp-ness to 'correct' the normative assumptions of heterosexual and Christian perfection. Silverman co-opts Burke's ideas to illustrate the framing of reality: by granting one orientation the status of normalcy, another is rejected, "inevitably creating limitations and hindering the capacity to operate outside a selected orientation." Perfect orientation occurs when a particular ideological framework is deemed the norm, thus relegating society's 'abnormalities' within a tragic frame. Comedy in Waters's films have the power to dismantle this tragic frame and, in doing so, have emancipatory power for the audience.

Silverman utilises this perspective to examine how these Othered characters challenge their traditional scapegoating status within the American social context. According to Burke, binary way of social thinking positions the Other as immoral. Through Hollywood's historical penchant for demonising queer characters, "the moral myth of normativity is strengthened." For Silverman, "the creation of scapegoats works literally and figuratively to cast out portions of society by constructing them as victims, villains, or both." This constructs these Others as "inferior to normal members of society and therefore as deserving of unequal rights, hatred, or pity." This can be seen in the LGBTI's community's push for equal rights in various aspects of civil society. This tragic frame of Otherness can be challenged through the Burkean comedy corrective, which challenges this notion of 'perfect' orientation. Perspective by incongruity uses "the process of comic reconstitution" to challenge the notion of us/them "so that their opposition no longer exists."

Silverman's research here can be applied to consider the role humour plays in Waters's work. While she demonstrates the power gay and lesbian characters have in challenging a heteronormative media landscape in her case studies, I argue that here instead Waters's humour challenges a homonormative one. For Lisa Duggan, homonormativity does not contest "dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them," which results in a "depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption." Michael Warner articulates this tension in The Trouble with Normal (1999), noting that the relationship between alternative sexualities and mainstream culture is about sexual shame and the stigma that is attached to it leading to a situation where "gender conformists and monogamous couples in the suburbs" are considered as more successful or worthwhile members of the LGBTI community. This realignment of norms simply shifts who is marginalised in this new hegemonic order. I argue that both the grotesque and camp nature of Waters's films challenges the orientation towards the 'respectable' homosexual; this is a disruption of the new hegemonic order. The following analysis of the Waters' aesthetic will therefore identify the role camp humour can play in challenging homonormative politics.

Waters's exploitative aesthetic

"I never took politics too seriously. I went to all the riots and stuff, but just to meet good people. It wasn't like I had any deep political convictions." - John Waters

Waters's cinema demands an analysis of both marginalised cinema and an analysis of the history of America's relationship to - its attitudes towards and desires around - queer culture. Mainstream Hollywood of the '60s and '70s often celebrated films that presented tragic homosexuals, comedic pansies and lesbian vampires. Mainstream audiences could not accept films that presented outrageous queer inversions of both traditional sexuality and Hollywood cinematic form. This reflected wider media coverage on the gay and lesbian community as well, as demonstrated by Alwood's historical study which charts intense transformations in media coverage. For example, in 1950s' news coverage, homosexuals were habitually denoted as 'perverts', 'sex deviates', 'fags', and 'child molesters'. In the 1960's, they focused instead on the idea of the 'sad gay life', while in the 1970's they were a 'militant' gay minority. This was largely because "gays and lesbians, until recently, were rarely addressed directly as an audience."

"Loathsome cinema" directly challenged these conservative ideologies. Harry M. Benshoff contends that the this category was indicative of changes happening within the industry when "foreign, countercultural, and/or queer Influences" were adding to the alteration of "the syntax and meaning of Hollywood filmmaking." The critical backlash to these films forced mainstream Hollywood's avoidance of such queer characters and styles throughout the 1970s, such as Joseph Losey's Boom! and Secret Ceremony (both from 1968 and starring Elizabeth Taylor), Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Russ Meyer, 1970) and Myra Breckenridge (Michael Sarne, 1970). Underground cinema in 1960s downtown New York was also "booming with the new voices and radical visions of the likes of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol (and the Factory), Paul Morrissey, and others." Waters thrived on these films while attending New York University, as well as Scorpio Rising (Anger 1964), Un Chant d'Amour (Genet 1950), Thundercrack! (McDowell 1975) and the films of the Kuchar Brothers. These bore the marks of exploitation cinema: they were low-budget, independent films that relished topics forbidden by the Production Code, and exhibited in theatres not affiliated with major studios. This environment carved out a space for a whole new generation and mode of filmmaking, a milieu that significantly influenced Waters's aesthetic. For Waters, it was his ability to capture this in his work that his cult status was achieved. Variety labelled Pink Flamingos "one of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made". It seemed that key to Waters's celebration of bad taste was his reveling in grotesquery.

Waters's use of camp was decidedly queer in the first period of his career, which consisted of his early shorts, first features and his so-called 'trash trilogy' of Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble (1974) and Desperate Living (1977). When American gay cinema was predominately producing queer content as banal as The Boys in the Band (William Friedkin, 1970) or as offensive as Freebie and the Bean (Richard Rush, 1974), Waters offered audiences the power to experience queerness in all its extremities. His first two features were black-and-white amateur productions shot on 16mm. Mondo Trasho (1969) is a 95-minute-long feature without dialogue, driven primarily by rock classics rather than plot. The minimal storyline sees Mary Vivian Pearce as the Bombshell riding a bus reading Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon. She has her feet molested by a stranger in the park, then hit by a car driven by Divine, who later kidnaps and tortures her. Divine finally delivers Bombshell to Dr Coathanger, who amputates her feet and replaces them with monstrous bird claws.

His second feature, Multiple Maniacs (1970), had a more coherent plot, albeit more episodic than its predecessor. The film also established key members of Waters's Dreamland ensemble, including Divine, Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pearce, Edith Massey (my personal favourite), David Lochary and George Figgs. In the film, Divine is the manager of the Cavalcade of Perversion, a travelling sideshow that exhibits various obscenities. The show becomes a front, where Lady Divine robs and later murders her patrons. After leaving the sideshow, Divine discovers her boyfriend David (Lochary) is cheating on her, with both parties intent on murdering the other. The film ends with David killing the other members of the troupe only to be killed by Divine - who is then famously raped by a giant lobster. The film contains one of Waters most shocking scenes: a man actually shooting up on a church alter, something that Waters attributes to his Catholic upbringing.

Waters's next three films - his Trash Trilogy - established him as a counter-cultural queer director. These were key examples of the exploitation genre in the 1970's, and contested the "boundaries of conventional morality while challenging both American censorship and viewers' expectations." Pink Flamingos sees Divine imagined as a criminal operating under the name Babs Johnson, "the filthiest person alive." Babs lives in a trailer with her egg-loving mom Edie (Massey), her perverted son Crackers (Danny Mills) and fraudulent confidante Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce). When Babs' status as the filthiest person alive is challenged by her rivals the Marbles (David Lochary and Mink Stole), the film escalates into a series of outlandish situations that derive humour from a juxtaposition of everyday activity with Waters's trademark absurdity. For instance, in the "Eggs! Eggs! Eggs!" scene, Edie is dressed as a baby while sitting in a playpen crying out for breakfast. Babs lovingly speaks to her, as she would a child - "we still have some eggs; I'll put some on for you. Did you sleep well?" Edie's absurd appearance distracts us from this casual, commonplace dialogue.

Pink Flamingos also features the most notorious scenes in Waters's career. In the famous dog-shit sequence, the moment is filmed on a Baltimore street. With the sequence shot as a documentary long-take that confirms what we see is real as we hear: "You know somebody filthier? Watch as Divine proves that not only is she the filthiest person in the world but also the filthiest actress in the world. What you are about to see is the real thing." The scene features close-up shots of Divine licking her lips and Crackers and Cotton smirking. It is in this lowly space that he finds his authority. He scoops, sniffs and consumes it. Taking this grotesquery further, he swallows, winks, smiles and licks his lips - and also gags. Played over this scene is Patti Page's novelty pop song "The Doggie in the Window." While standing out as the grossest scene in the film, the humour is at the same time consistent with what has preceded it - everyday cuteness juxtaposed with obscenity.

The latter two films in the Trash Trilogy - Female Trouble and Desperate Living - continued to be more developed than their predecessors. Female Trouble sees Divine playing Dawn Davenport, a delinquent runaway schoolgirl who is sexually assaulted and becomes a single mother that is both a criminal and a model. After shooting an audience member at a nightclub act, Davenport is put to the electric chair and reads out an Oscars-style speech before the concluding act. The film pays homage to notable art house identities - Jean Genet's theory that "crime equals beauty" and Francois Truffaut's celebrated final shot in The 400 Blows (1959). The film also pushes boundaries of good taste, as Pink Flamingos did before previously: it features full frontal male nudity, Dawn is penetrated with hammers and pliers, and during her nightclub performance, she wallows in a playpen filled with dead fish. The film cemented Waters ideology and aesthetic. As Levy notes, "in the 1970s, attending a Waters movie was a combination of cultural event and ideological statement, going way beyond the set of particular ideas and images that made up Female Trouble as a film."

Desperate Living is Waters's most female dominated picture with most of the prominent parts played by women, many of whom were not from Waters's acting troupe. Irrational housewife Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) and her maid, Grizelda Brown (Jean Hill), go on the lam after killing Peggy's husband. The pair are arrested and forced into exile to Mortville, a shanty town controlled by Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey). Many of the residents of Mortville are social outcasts and criminals. Peggy assists the Queen in terrorising her subjects, the latter of whom is overthrown by the populace. Peggy is later executed by being shot in the anus while Carlotta is served on a platter with an apple in her mouth. The film was emblematic of his use of an outrageous camp aesthetic to critique mainstream tastes.

Waters' Camp Aesthetic

I'd be so happy if you turned nelly... queers are just better. I'd be so proud of you if you were a fag and had a beautician boyfriend. I'd never have to worry... I'd worry that you would work in an office. Have children. Celebrate wedding anniversaries. The world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring life. - Aunt Ida, Female Trouble

Waters used camp aesthetics to critique both heteronormative and homonormative popular culture. His films do not make explicit political statements, but rather ideology is conveyed through humour. According to Levy, "in terms of screen representation, he has effectively redefined what's 'good' taste and what's 'bad,' what's beautiful and what's not, what's permissible and what's forbidden." Like many classical exploitation films, Waters relied on contemporary mainstream cinema for definition. His films demand an awareness of contemporary popular culture and politics to comprehend the onslaught of allusive and intertextual references. He deployed conventions that mainstream movies prepared audiences not to expect. Waters and his troupe revelled in outrage and gleeful vulgarity. As Levy quotes Waters in his study, "even if you hate my films, you have to at least say that I've created my own genre."

Levy draws on Susan Sontag and Barbara Klinger to define Waters's camp aesthetic. While Sontag focuses on camp as a phenomenon of pure aestheticism based on artifice and stylisation, Klinger draws attention to thorough knowledge of popular culture and a familiarity with the conventions of established genres to appreciate camp. Merging these two approaches, Levy sees Waters's use of gay camp as a countercultural attack on mainstream pop culture:

Gay camp usually relies on (or imitates) hyperbole of movies and pop culture through overstated décor, fashion, and cross-dressing. In verbal terms it's reflected in quotations, mimicry, lip-synching, gender inversion, put-downs, and witty puns. Gay camp is of real value to its practitioners because it enables them to demonstrate their insider status, their very cultural existence, and often their superiority over straight outsiders, who don't dig what they dig when they experience the same movie or TV show.

It's this quality that leads noted queer director Bruce LaBruce to critique Sontag's interpretation of camp, arguing that "her most crucial betrayal of camp comes in her statement that camp is 'neutral to content', and thereby "disengaged, depoliticized, or at least apolitical" as camp is "by its nature political, subversive, even revolutionary, at least in its most pure and sophisticated manifestations". LaBruce highlights the rise of a gay conservative camp aesthetic that arose alongside the development of homonormative politics in Western LGBTI social movements. For LaBruce, conservative camp postures that queer deviance wouldn't be necessary if a liberalised society reflected and included 'normal,' assimilated gay and lesbian citizens. This line of reasoning sees camp as an interpretive lens rather than as an actual object. For contemporary queer films to capture this Waters aesthetic, they would need to attack this conservative camp through radical humour because the conservative use of camp depoliticises its inherent power.

Waters's employs camp as an inherently political tool. Jack Babuscio classifies the four basic features of camp as "irony, aestheticism, theatricality and humour," but more importantly for Scott Long, camp violates the "boundaries between the serious and the absurd." It is through this violation that the use of camp finds its political function, where "it is the camp figure who will give rise to the shock, the man who represents camp: who strikes a camp attitude... (taking) on the burdens of society's contradictions." William Paul outlines how the gross-out film is a radical challenge to "taste and value," arguing that these films are about directness, vulgarity, festivity, playfulness, physicality, release and aggressive uninhibitedness, ultimately pushing limits of what is acceptable. Grossness is a key component of Waters's use of camp as it challenges conventional modes of behavior. In this way, the gross-out film has the potential to be empowering, freeing queer bodies from the constraints of respectable society. Gross-out films "endowed the people who patronized them with a kind of power - the power to find pleasure in material that was not only offensive to the elite but also excluded the culture of the elite." Here, camp's excessiveness is expressed through a culture of bad taste. Waters's films camp aesthetic therefore asks audiences to take pleasure in non-normative representations.

John Waters and Popular Culture

While made on the margins of Hollywood, these films can still be understood through the rubric of popular culture. In understanding Waters as a popular queer artist, I turn to Raymond Williams definition, where popular culture "still carries two older senses: inferior kinds of work ... and work deliberately setting out to win favour." Waters's early exploitation cinema was aimed at niche distribution circuits and audiences made possible by the shift from Hays code to the ratings system. His work excelled within the high/low cultural divide, where the low cultural status accorded to his early work undermines and destabilises classical cinema and embraces taboos. His films were deemed inferior, and thus pleased many of his targeted audiences.

Yet despite Waters's origins, I am cautious to label him a purely low cultural figure given his transition into popular culture over time. Waters's later films are decidedly closer to the mainstream, and the shock of his original work has been culturally absorbed. As Ray Browne has argued, rigid distinctions between elite, popular, mass and folk forms of culture are impossible to define as they overlap and affect one another. Waters's following films flirted with accessibility: Polyester (starring former teen idol Tab Hunter) was significantly lighter than his previous efforts, for example. And then there is of course Hairspray, which began his foray into audience-friendly comedies, with Cry-Baby (1990) and Serial Mom (1994) following. Hairspray was commercially successful, earning $8 million at the US box office, "which was more than the combined box office gross of all of his pictures until then." The film sees Ricki Lake play Tracy Turnblad, a Baltimore teen in the 1960's utilising her new fame from a local teen program, The Corny Collins Show, to triumph racial integration. The film was optimistic and notably Divine's final role in Waters' films. It has since been turned into a Broadway musical in 2002, with a film adaptation of the musical released in 2007. Waters's popularity has since seen him traverse through multiple forms of culture, from having exhibitions in New York to speaking at the Sydney Opera House. Waters is now a regular fixture of the upper echelons of the arts world. In defining popular culture as that which seeks to be liked - and more precisely, bought -Waters carved out a distinct audience and provided them with a product they knew and loved. Through the industrial, cultural and aesthetic formations of exploitation products, Waters found and held an audience. Popular culture is always and essentially aimed at locating an audience that will pay for it; the more people who buy it, the more successful it is. This can come at a price - a loss of his ideological punch that came with the gross-out, extremities of his early cinema

'Waters-esque' Humour in Recent Queer Films

This form of humour and its normalisation is evident in contemporary queer cinema. Waters's earlier films satirised the limits of good taste and all-American institutions. In his later films, grotesquery remained without the camp aesthetic. Waters is nostalgic for the 1970s "before independent film became institutionalised as an industry with its own structure, financial backing, distribution, and stars." His later films (such as A Dirty Shame, Pecker and Cecil B. Demented) were emptied of his earlier radical camp rhetoric. Likewise, there are many queer films on the contemporary queer film festival circuit that are labelled as being 'John Waters-esque.' For many, this is purely a marketing label to attract audiences that aren't interested in vanilla romantic comedies. Consider Allan Brocka's Eating Out, which spawned four sequels, as an exemplar of the kind of works described as 'Waters-esque' but that lack the requisite political grotesqueness. Distributor Ariztical even included a quote from a Gaytimes review, labelling it a "John Waters-esque farce full of fine, sexy performances." In Eating Out, straight college student Caleb, at the suggestion of his gay roommate Kyle, pretends to be gay to get closer to his love interest Gwen. Gwen, however, sets him up with her gay roommate Marc with hijinks ensuing. The label "John Waters-esque" is given due to the crude humour of the script, yet while the film is low budget like Waters's early films, the film is devoid of a camp sensibility. With the exception of the promiscuous (and delightfully named) Tiffani von der Sloot who makes a stronger turn in the fourth sequel Eating Out: Open Weekend, none of the characters are outrageous or perverse, and the male characters are the embodiment of homonormative imagery. They are white, more masculine than feminine, muscular and desiring monogamy. This watered down queerness hides a conservative ideology that is at distinct odds with Waters's early oeuvre. Without grotestquery, this comedy cannot disrupt a homonormative orientation towards the respectable homosexual.

Another Gay Movie and Another Gay Sequel have also been described as "anarchistic but commercialised, wild but formulated, outrageous but disciplined, rampageous but restricted." Gilad Pavda (2014) spoke of the commercial carnivalesque nature of a particular scene in Another Gay Sequel in particular: Andy (Jake Mosser), wearing a mop and giant sunglasses and dressed like a shark, is seduced into having sex with a man in dog costume thinking that it is his boyfriend Luis. "Hey Shark, wanna get fucked by a puppy?" the man asks. "Scooby dooby do me," Andy replies. The men begin to simulate anal sex only for Luis to enter the room. The man in the dog costume takes off his mask revealing that he is in fact Andy's bisexual father (Scott Thompson), and the three men vomit on the bed at the thought of incest. While this scene does push the boundaries of good taste and revel in grotesque humour, the scene "also reconfirms the sexual taboo on incestuous sexual intercourse." It therefore does not challenge or correct the orientation towards respectable queerness (one can only imagine what Divine would do in this circumstance!). Ultimately, these are commercial films reinforcing a hegemonic order and articulate a homonormalisation of gross out queer humour.

Yet there are some queer films whose loathsome camp-ness provides the political sting seen in Waters's earlier works. Babbit's feature films - with the exception of The Quiet (2005) - embody a political camp-ness that is rightfully Waters-esque. In her most recent feature, Addicted to Fresno (2015), two sisters working as hotel maids go to absurd lengths to cover up the death of a hotel guest. Sisters Shannon (Judy Greer) and Martha (Natasha Lyonne) agree to pay the owners of a pet cemetery to bury the body. To find the money, they rob a sex shop of all their dildos, sell them to a women's baseball league party and then rob a snooty kid's Bah Mitzvah. In Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007), an all-American girl finds herself when she joins a radical feminist collective Clits in Action C(i)A. The film ends with two characters Meat and Shulamith (named after Shulamith Firestone, played by Deak Evgenikos and Carly Pope) erecting a giant phallus upon the Washington Monument and blowing it up with explosives. Finally, in Babbit's seminal lesbian 90s rom-com But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), innocent cheerleader Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is sent to a gay and lesbian rehab camp by her god-fearing parents, where she falls in love with bad girl Graham (Clea Duvall). This is Babbit's most Waters-esque film, starring queer icons Mink Stole, Cathy Moriarty and RuPaul Charles out of drag. The film employs excessive conventional gender representations to critique gender normativity. The women learn how to clean houses and try on bridal dresses while the men change cars and practice shooting. There are, of course, no Edith Masseys or Divines in Babbit's oeuvre, yet while her films have never featured the depictions of bad taste that Waters's work exemplified, the humour in But I'm a Cheerleader does call out the artificiality of gender normativity. While light-hearted, these jokes draw attention to the homophobic undertones of respectability politics.

Another film given the 'Waters-esque' label is Charlie Vaughn's low budget comedy First Period, which features Brandon Alexander III and Dudley Beene in drag for the lead roles. As the new girl in school, Alexander III's Cassie Glenn (a self-labelled "totally rocking superstar, you're welcome!"), gets the popular group off-side, consisting of Heather (Lauren Rose Lewis), Other Heather (Karli Kaiser) and their clueless, closeted boyfriends (Michael Turchin and Leigh Wakeford). With the assistance of her unhinged friend Maggie (Beene), the film follows a classic high school trope - akin to Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess, 2004) or Spork (J.B. Ghuman, Jr., 2010) or Superstar (Bruce McCulloch, 1999) - where a social outcast wants to best the popular group by entering a high school talent contest. Much like Divine's characters, Cassie and Maggie are likable yet regularly push the boundaries of good taste (Cassie urinates on herself during a pregnancy test, and Maggie likens her areolas to "silver dollar pancakes that got burnt.") Vaughn's humour again flirts with grotesquery: First Period 's employment of camp generates an anti-normative humour that is aimed at a decidedly niche audience. This Waters-esque humour challenges homonormative cinema through the film's revelry in Cassie and Maggie's excessiveness. The queer film festival circuit, for instance, is often dominated by comedies depicting white, masculine gay men seeking monogamy. While Waters has claimed that the films of his career have never been explicitly political, this humour challenges the banal normalisation of LGBTI representation. Through utilising the perspectives of traditionally Othered voices in queer cinema and rejoicing in the rupturing of good taste, queer films such as those outlined here arguably capture this Waters-esque spirit. In doing so, they correct the myth of homonormative orientation towards the 'respectable' homosexual.

Conclusion

Waters's earlier films satirised the limits of good taste and all-American institutions, yet in his later films, grotesquery remained without the politicised camp aesthetic. Unlike his earlier works, these films have to compete with the darkest corners of the Internet. The legacy of his Trash Trilogy remains quintessential to the history of queer cinema: through juxtaposing gross-out humour with everyday Middle American imagery, Waters became an influential queer figure in developing queer exploitation cinema and established himself as an influential figure of queer humour. Through the utilisation of camp-ness and gross out humour, this Waters-esque aesthetic is decidedly anti-homonormative, and relishes marginalised identities within the LGBTI community. As a result of this legacy, contemporary queer comedies are often likened to his aesthetic. Some are exposed homonormative narratives reinforcing a hegemonic order that privileges respectability politics. Using Burke's perspective of incongruity, films such as the Eating Out films don't destabilise the good gay/bad queer binary: rather, momentary grossness and camp-ness fades and normality returns. Yet Babbit's queer oeuvre and First Period offer examples of contemporary queer comedies that utilise camp humour to challenge this orientation towards respectable identities. As a result, they can be justifiably likened to Waters work through their disruptive nature. While we might no longer have Divine in contemporary queer comedies, we have an admirable heir in Cassie Glenn: the rocking superstar pissing on herself.

This article has been peer reviewed

Endnotes

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Divine Dog Shit: John Waters and Disruptive Queer Humour in Film

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John Waters holds royal status in the world of queer cinema. He is the Prince of Puke, the King of Bad Taste and the Pope of Trash. Queer festival program notes and film reviews regularly cite movies as reminiscent of Waters in their 'camp-ness' and humour: including But I'm a Cheerleader (Jamie Babbit, 1999), First Period (Charlie Vaughn, 2013) and Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild!

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- part of the LGBTQI community
- was able to create a platform where drag queens, queer artists and anyone of any gender, race or sexuality were able to participate in these videos that elevated their platform and status
- videos that had non sensical humour
- surrealistic point of view
- the videos didn't seem to make much sense from a outstanding point of view (deeper in it would be intellectual)

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- over time in lingerie between the 1940s-50s bras were in the cone shape in order to exaggerate the nipple/breast form (overly sexualised)

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- element of exaggerating the breasts
- breastmilk (caring for a child??)
- breasts are on one hand a caring body part but also sexualised

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John Waters loves being called things like the "Pope of Trash," the "People's Pervert" and the "Prince of Puke," but when you visit him at his home in Greenwich Village, he's the consummate host. When you step off the elevator and you're not sure which door belongs to him, you hear his voice call out, "Over here." And when you step inside, he offers you coffee or water before retiring over to a marble table that overlooks a treelined street.

He's wearing a white-and-black blazer and a gray turtleneck. His hair is lighter in color than it used to be, but he's still maintaining his minute, Little Richard-inspired pencil mustache. He has a tall bookshelf, packed to the gills, and neat piles of books around the room. In one corner, there's a small pile of CDs next to a broken, flat-screen TV. He has an oversized photograph of an airport runway framed on one of his olive-green walls.

The only item in the place that would suggest that he could live up to such sleazy sobriquets, that he could be the cineaste behind Polyester, Desperate Living, and Pink Flamingos, is a small embroidered throw pillow on his couch sporting the image of an electric chair. "It's the electric chair from Female Trouble," he says, referring to the death scene in one of his boundary-pushing films that starred the transvestite Divine. "My mom made that for me as a house-warming present when I bought this apartment. She asked what I wanted on it. She didn't think it up herself. I have one in San Francisco that she did of a police car on fire in the Harvey Milk riot. And believe me, she didn't think that one up either."

Waters has spent some considerable time reflecting recently as he prepared his latest book of essays, Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder. It covers the making of his movies from Pink Flamingos through A Dirty Shame, as well as wittily detailed chapters on his dalliances with LSD, his admiration of Andy Warhol, and his music taste, among other subjects. Since the book is about his delightfully warped worldview - as is pretty much everything he's ever done - we decided to ask him questions about what he's learned in 73 years of living up to nicknames like the "Bon Vivant of Bad Taste," as the New York Times recently dubbed him.

[ Find the Book Here]

What's the best part of success?
Flying first class when you don't have to pay for it. The worst is when you're sick, and people recognize you. I had a kidney stone a couple of years back, in the middle of a book tour, and had to be rushed to the hospital. You're sitting there and people yell out, "Hey, it's John Waters!" And somebody else says, "Who's John Waters?"

So how do you define success?
Success is when you're never around assholes. It takes your whole life to figure out how to do that.

What are the most important rules you live by?
"Don't go backwards." Also, "You can't be an anarchist if you own three homes." "You can fail upwards and you should learn how to do it." And I still believe you can never wear white after Memorial Day or before Labor Day. No matter what anyone says, they're wrong.

You're from Baltimore. What's the most Baltimorean thing about you?
I never pay to park. A Baltimorean would rather die than pay to park.

You've said that when you get old, you must choose between being fat or gaunt and that people should "choose gaunt." What's your fitness regime?
I walk in New York and San Francisco. I ride my bike in Provincetown. And in Baltimore, you run when people are after you.

Do you still smoke pot?
No, but I would. It doesn't relax me anymore. But whenever I talk to politicians in Baltimore, I say, "Just give people pot." Who shoots people on pot? You don't get guns or have gang wars when you're on pot. It might make you stupid, but you stay home. So I'm for giving pot to kids.

What did you learn from getting busted for smoking pot at NYU?
Well, that wasn't NYU's fault. I barely went to class. I stole books from the bookshop every day and then resold them to get money for pot or to go to the movies on 42nd Street. So I don't blame them. What did I learn? That I should've quit school in the sixth grade. Actually, I take that back, because I learned about trashy girls in public junior high and religious mental abuse in high school.

You remained close to Divine until his death. How did you keep the friendship going after convincing him to eat real dog feces on camera at the end of Pink Flamingos?
It was stressful for a while. Divine got very sick of talking about it. People would give him shit presents, and he got very weary of it. I think it held him back. I made the joke then that I could never live up to it and he could never live it down, which is true.

What have you learned about censorship over the years?
I've learned that the dumber the censor, the better for your career. The more liberal the censor, the bigger the chance you cannot win. Mary Avara [the late Maryland State Censor Board member who opposed Waters' screenings in Baltimore] was basically a moron, and those kinds of censors are great. They help your career. They attack you; they look stupid; you win. The MPAA is a devious one. They're liberal censors, and they're the worst kind of all. And you lose with them.

Why do you say that?
The MPAA has had power too long. They never used lobbyists to change how NC-17 was received in the theater community. That Joan woman [ratings chairwoman Joan Graves] is finally retiring. You can't win with her. When you appeal, you go to a [hearing] and she ends it. All the people who vote are her employees, so it's not exactly an unbiased jury.

It's a shame because when I was young, an X rating helped. When Midnight Cowboy came out and Russ Meyer was making movies, they had giant X's blinking all over the theater, and it helped at first. The only revenge I got was when Pink Flamingos was released for the 25th anniversary, it had to get a rating. I said, "Just give it [NC-17]." And they said, "No, we have to watch it." I thought, "Good. Good. "

What did you learn from getting a PG rating for Hairspray?
People always figured I'd get an NC-17, so getting a PG was a shock that worked. And Hairspray is a Trojan horse. It's the only devious movie I ever made. It snuck in everywhere and encouraged gay marriage and interracial dating for your children, and no one ever noticed. The joke I make in the book is, "Even racists like Hairspray."

What did you learn about racism from the way Hairspray was received?
That you can't preach. You have to make people laugh if you want to get a point across. You can't stand up there lecturing somebody. They rebel against it. But if you can make them laugh or put it a different way, they didn't even realize I was making a pro-integration movie. If you disguise it with something entertaining, it changes how people think.

You made Cry-Baby with a heartthrob, Johnny Depp, a reformed porn star, Traci Lords, and a kidnapping victim, Patti Hearst. What did you learn from working with them?
Johnny wanted to do it because he hated being Justin Bieber, which he essentially was at the time. I said, "Stick with us. We'll kill that." And Traci had just escaped from the porn world, so I said, "Come with us and play a bad girl." She made fun of it. Patti Hearst made fun of being a victim. You make fun of it, and they can't use it against you.

Patti Hearst was protecting Traci Lords on the set, because the feds were raiding it. We all were like, "We've all had a past." But Traci's doing great. I still see her.

You have been out your whole life. How did that impact your life?
Was I out my whole life? I guess. Mink [Stole] lived me with me and didn't know I was gay for a while. My father used to tell me, "Just don't say it in USA Today," which made me laugh. So I never did. And to this day, if I ever talk to USA Today, I'm "in the club," in the memory of my father and his friends. He didn't care if I was on the cover of Out. What person that he knew would see that? I still have a USA Today subscription, too.

But what did you learn from being true to yourself while seeing others struggle with their identities?
The first time I went to a gay bar, I thought, "I might be queer, but I ain't this." It was so square. I was looking for Bohemia not gaydom. Bohemia always had a percentage of gaydom but they didn't fit in the gay world either. So I was looking for anybody who didn't fit in, and we hung around with suburban kids who were bad. We went downtown to hang around with black kids that didn't get along in that community, and then we met gay people, too, so it was all mixed. And we all took acid, and that formed our values.

What have you learned about selling out?
I tried to sell out with every one of my movies. I failed upwards. I eventually made some money on all the early films I was most famous for. I got all these really big salaries for the Hollywood movies but they all lost money. I don't feel guilty about it. I don't understand why Cecil B. Demented failed and Hairspray didn't. You have to know the business end of what you're doing, too, and strike while you can. Hollywood is about what appears to be hot, not what always is.

When you made Polyester you released it in "Smell-O-Vision" with scratch-and-sniff cards. Do you think people secretly like smelling farts or that it's a compulsion because they saw it on screen?
That's a good question. I believe the real truth is people like smelling their own farts and not others'.

How did you challenge yourself to get filthier or more shocking?
Well, I don't try to do that on purpose. I'm trying to make you laugh. I hate all of these movies that people say are "John Waters-esque," because they're trying too hard.

Is anything too politically correct these days?
When I heard about "theybies," where you don't tell your child what sex they are until they decide, I had to roll my eyes. Give me a break. That child will be in a psychiatric unit early. I thought I was reading The Onion but it was New York magazine.

In Female Trouble, Divine's character asks an audience, "Who wants to die for art," and when someone says yes, he shoots the person. How do you view scenes like that today?
Can you imagine having that scene in it today? You watch that scene now and it's horrifying because people have opened fire in audiences and in movie theaters and concerts, so it puts a certain edge to it.

There's also a scene in Female Trouble where Divine's character gets raped by ... Divine. That sort of thing wouldn't fly today.
Well, it's rape but it's self-rape. Is he raping her? Not really. He picks her up and she gets in, and then she fucks him to steal his wallet. So it's not rape, to me. But she was supposed to be in high school, so I guess technically Dawn Davenport was underage. But there's rape in Desperate Living and stuff in that movie that is so politically incorrect. And there's a scene in Polyester, where she said, "Oh, Francine. Don't you know it's bad luck to let retarded people in your house?" Well, she's the villain. Can't the villain say politically incorrect stuff?

Well, do you feel you've had to adapt your thinking about making movies like that since the #MeToo movement?
No, because I haven't made a movie since the #MeToo movement. I'll say that I'm glad I'm not single. You need a lawyer to ask for a date.

Who are your heroes and why?
My heroes are the kids in high-school detention who will end up correct in what they believe in. Life isn't fair. And there's no such thing as karma. Mike Pence is alive and Edith Massey's dead. Right there, there's no such thing as karma. The people who realize that life is not fair and that they've got to take what they get in life and make it work, make it holler, those are heroes to me.

What are the best lessons you learned from Andy Warhol?
He was the first person I can think of who branded himself successfully. Salvador Dalí tried but he sold out his career by signing anything. That was greed. You never felt Andy was greedy. So I like sticking up for Andy. In every book, he's portrayed as some kind of villain. Also, he reinvented cinema. One day his films will be known as the best thing he ever did.

How did you avoid becoming an acid casualty?
I never had a bad trip. I did it once a week for a couple of years and never had a bad trip. My mother said, "Don't tell young people that." But I'm not telling young people to take it, I'm telling old people to take it. I wrote about taking it again recently in my book. I hadn't done it since 1973 or something. It turned out better than I thought. I always say, "When you're young, you go, 'Wow.' When you're older, you go, 'Whoa.'" It's the same feeling, you just add 50 years.

You write about being at ease with your age in the book. What's the secret to aging gracefully?
Well, never be nude in public. Never go to a nude beach. If you go to the gym every day, people still don't want to see you nude at 70. Never dye your hair, because people laugh. Never wear a wig. Never be in a convertible if you're over 50. That's the most embarrassing thing possible. Realize that you can't wear clothes a 20-year-old is wearing; you can wear a version of it. But the main thing I've learned at my age is that you should never ever wear T-shirts, even if it's hot. Bruce Springsteen got away with it, but it's hard.

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The Last Word: John Waters on Censorship, Smoking Pot and Smelling Farts

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John Waters loves being called things like the "Pope of Trash," the "People's Pervert" and the "Prince of Puke," but when you visit him at his home in Greenwich Village, he's the consummate host. When you step off the elevator and you're not sure which door belongs to him, you hear his voice call out, "Over here."

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- HUGE TITS (POSSIBLY MADE OUT OF PLASTER OR PAPER MACHE - AS CAN DO THE BALLOON TRICK WITH PAPER AND DO IT FOR THE ASS AS WELL)
- SUNTANNING GOGGLES
- HUGE LIPS AND CHEEKS (POSSIBLY MADE OUT OF LATEX ??? CREATE A NASTY AND CRUSTY LOOK AS WELL)
- OR SOMETHING BASED AROUND THE CONCEPT OF RUBBER??? RUBBER LIPS SO THEY LOOK LIKE BLOWJOB LIPS????
- HAVING LATEX BEING ADDED TO THE BODY - PEELING??? LAYERS??? - DUE TO EXCESSIVE SUNTANNING

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WEBSITE ON PARKER DAY WHICH I FUCKING LOVEDDDDD!!!!!!!!

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WEBSITE ON PARKER DAY WHICH I FUCKING LOVEDDDDD!!!!!!!!

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ICONS explores identity and the masks we wear. Through costuming and exaggerated expressions, I toy with the truth of who and what I portray. I deliberately eschew Photoshop in favor of in-camera capture on film. Lurid color bathes the work and heightens the surreality of my subjects while the grain and grit of the photographs make them palpably real.

ICONS is a series of one hundred portraits shot between July 2015 and November 2016. The works are 12"x18" and 20"x30" digital C-prints, each in an edition of 10, printed on metallic gloss paper.

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ICONS explores identity and the masks we wear. Through costuming and exaggerated expressions, I toy with the truth of who and what I portray. I deliberately eschew Photoshop in favor of in-camera capture on film. Lurid color bathes the work and heightens the surreality of my subjects while the grain and grit of the photographs make them palpably real.

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"the brief interactions lead to a fluid, often extremely graphic or unfinished piece. Even though the face of her subjects is always cut, the blunt exposure of the human body through bold colour and brush strokes creates a sense of familiar connection to the unknown." (RFG Website)

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- utilising homemade objects to create something surreal
- brings in the club kid aesthetic and attitude
- makeup overexaggerated to the MAXXXXXX
- this aspect of messy yet polished work is fascinating as it seems to have this element of being 'rushed' and 'unfinished' and seems like it was taken in the middle of doing something

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"Spanning a number of different disciplines -- ceramics, performance, video, costume -- Urara's work reifies the absurdities of human life and nature with a unique and droll charm." (I-D)

"Urara’s subversive take on traditional design and lurid use of sexuality. The idea behind these bowls came from a ceramic piece that belonged to her grandmother. " (I-D)

"The bizarre sexuality her ceramics exhibit is simply there to “make people uncomfortable”. " (I-D)

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- this concept of creating something quite satirical
- the 'shitty' effects seeming like it was done on powerpoint
- introductions of these people = introductions of these characters that we have created ourselves

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- concept of being given a 'topic' of conversation
- going off on conversation
- having no script
- using the personality of the character that you are personifying/or have the personality of YOURSELF!!
- each embody some form of personality - it seems to screw with yourself

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"Creating lo-fi assemblages and film sets in her studio for performative to-camera improvisations, she uses the immediacy of her own body as material to consider the construction of authenticity, taste and belonging. DIY glamour and an elaborate layering of references across costume, props and set create an ambiguous cultural vernacular often rooted in pop music, showbiz and traditional folk heritage. Revealing moments that capture the promise of empowerment, often constructed and filtered through multifarious layers of digital appropriation and mainstream manipulation, Georgieva examines how we configure and re-configure our cultural identities" (Royal Academy of Fine Art)

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BLACK NARCISSUS - INSPIRED PINK NARCISSUS [1947]

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BLACK NARCISSUS - INSPIRED PINK NARCISSUS [1947]

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"Based on the 1939 novel by Rumer Godden, the film revolves around the growing tensions within a small convent of Anglican nuns who are trying to establish a school and hospital in the old palace of an Indian Raja at the top of an isolated mountain above a fertile valley in the Himalayas." (Wikipedia)

"Black Narcissus was released only a few months before India achieved independence from Britain in August 1947. Film critic Dave Kehr has suggested that the final images of the film, as the nuns abandon the Himalayas and proceed down the mountain, could have been interpreted by British viewers in 1947 as "a last farewell to their fading empire"; he suggests that for the film-makers, it is not an image of defeat "but of a respectful, rational retreat from something that England never owned nor understood".[8] The story in the film quite closely follows that of the book, which was published in 1939." (Wikipedia)

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- pink narcissus was inspired by black narcissus
- arthouse movie based upon what it is like being a gay male prostitute in the 70s and the 'underground' gay scene in the 70s

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- talks about a lot of stuff to where by she creates this altered characters and enables herself to immerse in the topic of conversation
- taboo topics spoken about - creates skits or has characters that are related to the topic
- characters enable themselves to have discussions with each other or have conversations whether that be through disagreements or agreements

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RESEARCH FOR VIDEO CONCEPT THAT WAS CONSIDERED [OR CREATING SOMETHING THAT WOULD THEN LINK TO INSTALLATION]

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RESEARCH FOR VIDEO CONCEPT THAT WAS CONSIDERED [OR CREATING SOMETHING THAT WOULD THEN LINK TO INSTALLATION]

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SOPHIE ANDERSON

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REBECCA MORE:

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COCK DESTROYERS [REBECCA MORE AND SOPHIE ANDERSON]

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COCK DESTROYERS [REBECCA MORE AND SOPHIE ANDERSON]

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- both pursue in the career of pornography, to which they have altered their appearance with the means of plastic surgery to look 'dolled up' with huge tits and lips and bum - who knows what else
- what's fascinating is their 'bimbo' appearance, like russ Mayer's stuff its a massive over-exaggeration of themselves and I guess one would say an extended personality of theirs - done this for themselves, and also the career and line of work they are in
- they have also created many shows of themselves to which they take on parodies of pornography or movies and turn it into what they want

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- considered the social rejects of society
- brang to light this new era of drag, to which are considered the origins of drag - no one was able to amount to the level of talent THESE GIRLS HADDD!!!!!
- over exaggeration of being 'genderless' or representing feminine and masculine features
- a lot of leather, studs, spikes

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PHOTOGRAPHIC REFERENCES FOR PLASTIC SURGERY 'BOTCHED' WOMEN:

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PHOTOGRAPHIC REFERENCES FOR PLASTIC SURGERY 'BOTCHED' WOMEN:

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MORE DRAG QUEENS THAT HAVE USED PLASTIC SURGERY IN ORDER TO ALTER THEIR APPEARANCE TO PERFORM FOR THEIR 'JOB' AN EXAGGERATED WOMAN: 

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MORE DRAG QUEENS THAT HAVE USED PLASTIC SURGERY IN ORDER TO ALTER THEIR APPEARANCE TO PERFORM FOR THEIR 'JOB' AN EXAGGERATED WOMAN: 

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- role reversal

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Sexist advertising didn't stop back in the 50s.

It feels like every month there's another advert to be annoyed about, whether it crosses the line into sexual objectification or relies on outdated gender stereotypes (like suggesting women are slow on a bike. We don't get that one either).

But several decades back, sexism in advertising was more common, and definitely more accepted.

We didn't have Twitter back then for people to call out brands for being terrible to women, and there was little support for women who tried to fight back against traditional gender roles.

Need a reminder of the extent sexism pervaded advertising? Take a look at this photo series, which shows adverts from the 50s with the gender roles reversed.

Hey, if it looks ridiculous when a man's in the woman's role, that should set alarm bells ringing about what the advert says about women.

The series of gender-swapped ads is the creation of Eli Rezkallah, a 31-year-old visual artist and photographer currently living in Beirut.

'Last Thanksgiving, I was visiting my family in New Jersey and I overheard my uncles talk about how women are better off cooking, taking care of the kitchen, and fulfilling "their womanly duties",' Eli told Metro.co.uk.

'Although I know that not all men think that way I was surprised to learn that some still do.'

That motivated Eli to take a look back at the ads of the 50s, and see how those outdated gender roles looked when swapped around.

'Their essence is still present in the folds of today's modern social fabric,' says Eli. 'I went on to imagine a parallel universe, where roles are inverted and men are given a taste of their own sexist poison.'

Eli hopes that the gender-swapped ads will draw people's attention to the cracks of patriarchal societies and help them to rethink their views on gender.

Looking back to the past and seeing what used to be acceptable is a good place to start, right?

MORE : Do men find women who swear unattractive?

MORE : It's time to stop fat shaming Donald Trump

MORE : Photo series captures Iranian women defiantly rebelling against compulsory hijab laws

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Photos show sexist ads from the 50s with the gender roles reversed

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Sexist advertising didn't stop back in the 50s. It feels like every month there's another advert to be annoyed about, whether it crosses the line into sexual objectification or relies on outdated gender stereotypes (like suggesting women are slow on a bike. We don't get that one either).

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VICTORIA SIN [SERPENTINE GALLERY EXTRACT]

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VICTORIA SIN [SERPENTINE GALLERY EXTRACT]

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"Victoria Sin presented a ballad of embodiment, longing and transformation, using poetry, drag, science fiction and an original soundtrack by Shy One. Drawing from seminal works of social science fiction and reflective, speculative encounters of looking and wanting, the performance ​presented a character’s journey through fictional locations, exploring transformational narratives in the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body."

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Victoria Sin presented a ballad of embodiment, longing and transformation, using poetry, drag, science fiction and an original soundtrack by Shy One. Drawing from seminal works of social science fiction and reflective, speculative encounters of looking and wanting, the performance ​presented a character's journey through fictional locations, exploring transformational narratives in the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body.

Victoria Sin is an artist using speculative fiction within performance, moving image, writing, and print to interrupt normative processes of desire, identification, and objectification. This includes: drag as a practice of purposeful embodiment questioning the reification and ascription of ideal images within technologies of representation and systems of looking, science fiction as a practice of rewriting patriarchal and colonial narratives naturalised by scientific and historical discourses on states of sexed, gendered and raced bodies and storytelling as a collective practice of centering marginalised experience, creating a multiplicity of social contexts to be immersed in and strive towards. Drawing from close personal encounters of looking and wanting, their work presents heavily constructed fantasy narratives on the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body. Their long-term project Dream Babes explores science and speculative fiction as a productive strategy of queer resistance, imaging futurity that does not depend on existing historical and social infrastructure. It has included science fiction porn screenings and talks, a three-day programme of performance at Auto Italia South East, a publication, and a regular science fiction reading group for queer people of colour.

Mali Larrington-Nelson AKA Shy One lives and breathes the eclecticism and diversity of her DJ sets and productions. Having started off DJing on pirate radio as a teenager, Shy One has been exposed to and influenced by the full spectrum of sounds her hometown of London has birthed and nurtured over the years. As with many young Londoners at the time, grime and the wider family of indigenous London club music was what gave Shy One the passion to pursue music as more than a pastime. Obsessively collecting white labels by some of her local production heroes quickly developed into obsessively making beats in Fruity Loops for a handful of local MCs bubbling up in Harrow, the North West London borough she grew up in. Undeterred by those in the scene who called her beats "weird" or "different", Shy One ploughed on carving out her own sound which eventually caught the ear of Scratcha DVA, who went on to release the Decaffeinated Love EP and her debut LP, Bedknobs and Boomkicks, on his now renowned DVA Music imprint.

Since her initial releases with Scratcha, Shy One has continued to grow as an artist and diversify further into a somewhat undefinable sound whose origins are undoubtedly London but take in a huge variety of musical cultures, from hip-hop and jazz to house music and West London's own broken beat movement -all of which are well represented on her various radio shows across stations like Balamii, NTS and Rinse FM. As well as DJing and releasing music more recently on labels such as Diskotopia and Through My Speakers, Shy One is also a resident DJ and part of London's BBZ and Touching Bass collectives -two forward-thinking groups of artists, DJs, and activists that strive to create a space for London's marginalised LGBTQI+ and POC communities through art, music and culture.

Park Nights is the Serpentine's experimental, interdisciplinary live platform, programmed for the Galleries' annual architectural commission, the Serpentine Pavilion.

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Park Nights 2018: Victoria Sin, The sky as an image, an image as a net - Serpentine Galleries

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Victoria Sin presented a ballad of embodiment, longing and transformation, using poetry, drag, science fiction and an original soundtrack by Shy One. Drawing from seminal works of social science fiction and reflective, speculative encounters of looking and wanting, the performance ​presented a character's journey through fictional locations, exploring transformational narratives in the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body.

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VAGUE CONCEPT OF A 'DOMINATRIX' CHARACTER

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VAGUE CONCEPT OF A 'DOMINATRIX' CHARACTER

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VAGUE IDEA OF HAVING A DOMESTICATED HOUSEWIFE CHARACTER!!!!!!

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VAGUE IDEA OF HAVING A DOMESTICATED HOUSEWIFE CHARACTER!!!!!!

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 PROPAGANDA TO BE A 'SUITABLE' HOUSEWIFE

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 PROPAGANDA TO BE A 'SUITABLE' HOUSEWIFE

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- women submitting themselves to their partner, the male being the dominant one
- women seen in their home as naive deers
- a lot of women not understanding the concept of 'sexism' - completely normalised
- led now to internalised misogyny