Posts tagged Sharon Needles
Thank you, Sharon Needles
“If anyone boos you off-stage, it’s simply applause from ghosts” - Sharon Needles, RuPaul Season 4 Finale
I was watching the Rupaul Reunion episode tonight and, I admit, I did cry a little bit. I was so happy that Sharon Needles won; I’d been rooting for her from practically the beginning.
Watching the episode tonight on the website, I began thinking about things, and I realized that Sharon reminded me a little bit of myself.
I’ve always been undercut and the outsider on things, and I’ve always been cut short on everything growing up. I was the freak, I was the one everyone judged wrongly. I was the one who was misunderstood for how I carried myself, and I was sensitive; when I was in elementary school, I was nervous in a play and forgot my lines - I got boo’d off stage by boys who threw paper and pencils at me. It’s always been hard getting over stuff like that.
I’ve always generally been the person who was afraid to show her freakiness to people, even now, because I’ve had a lot of people completely misunderstand me. Yes, I crossdress and crossplay often, and I know a lot of people don’t understand that. Some of my friends harp on the fact I’m not “normal” and they ask me crazy questions or say hurtful things like “why don’t you just change your gender to a guy if you like looking like one so much?” That’s like asking a drag queen why she doesn’t change from male to female; it’s insensitive and ignorant, and I know I don’t appreciate it.
Sharon, you’ve been an amazing inspiration to me and others like me. You probably won’t read this (I don’t blame you; getting 600 messages so quickly is crazy!), but it’s okay. I just want to write about how you’re one of the most beautiful human beings I know, and one of my role models for the future.
I’m a 20 year old college student, and I am a crossplayer (for me, that’s being a cosplayer/costumer that dresses up like a man), and I know that I face a lot of the same harping as people in drag. I work at a job where I can’t have my hair dyed blue with green tips, something I’ve wanted since I was seven years old. I have tattoos drawn out to express myself but I feel that when I get them, I have to put them in places to hide them in order to be “socially acceptable” in public. I support gay rights, which completely goes against my family’s beliefs and values.
Long story short, I feel like I have to hide a lot of who I am or what I do, and it’s really hard sometimes. I know I don’t have it as hard as many people out there; but sometimes it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning, you know?
What I really want to say is… Hearing you talk about how you’re you and how you’re not going to stop being you has become an extremely welcoming feeling in my life, and I feel like I can go out and take on the world. I feel like I can be the crazy freaky me, and I owe a lot of it to you. It might be in small, baby steps, but I feel like I can crawl out of a shell that I’ve been pushed into for a long, long time.
So I just wanted to say thank you, Sharon. And if you don’t come across this globbity-gloop post of my thoughts, that’s okay, cause there’s probably no consistency to it anyway, haha. Can’t wait to see more of your freakiness on the web!
~Much love,
Mer
