ARCHIVE: Diary of a Low Budget Superhero

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You're reading an old entry from Michelle "Lexi Kahn" DiPoala's online diary, formerly called Jungle Sweet Jungle. Blog name changed to Low Budget Superhero in October 2005. Now I mostly go by SuperLowBudge. You can call me Lexi, Michelle or SuperLowBudge, or if you're my mom, then Shelly. Enjoy these old posts (except if you're my mom.) Please follow on Blogger at superlowbudge.blogspot.com. From there you can follow me on Twitter and some other platforms. Thanks!

Hey Sista, Go Sista, Soul Sista

(March 01, 2008)

I met this fabulous person at a glam rock show a few months ago. This is Mika.

Mika's job at this rock show was to emcee -- basically to introduce the bands and entertain between sets. She wore a dazzling black cocktail dress, red pageboy wig and a ton of make-up. She rocked the dress, boy. She had some toys and things to give away for answering glam-related trivia questions (I didn't know any of the answers), staged a "glam costume contest" (I didn't glam up) and told rambling personal anecdotes about seeing Bowie live on stage. It was the first time I saw someone talking WHILE the band was breaking down who was holding the room's attention. Normally that person is ignored. I've been in so many rooms whose decibel level never wavered while there was someone at the microphone between bands. But for Mika, there was relative attention, and so she told her stories, and no holds barred on the copious amount of drugs and sexual ambiguity with which her youth was fraught.

What's with me? I'm such a soul of the 80s that men in makeup still curl my toes twenty years later, and gender ambiguity gets a wave-through almost every time. I don't even care to KNOW whether or not those in Mika's world have a penis or not. It's not about the penis, the penis is irrelevant.

I guess because being a woman carries so much challenge still, so many hurdles to leap, such a daily wrestling match with identity, that I'm floored by people like Mika who choose to be a woman. I'm not saying I don't love being a woman. It's just that there's so much automatically expected of women. No one believes that I don't WANT to be married, I don't WANT children, I'M the one who needs space...well...getting off the subject here.

Put simply, being around Mika makes ME want to be more fabulous; there's a certain twisted irony in that just begging to be embraced and flaunted.

Again, it could be that I identify with Mika because we could be sisters. Anybody else raising an eyebrow at this?

That reminds me -- I gotta shape my eyebrows today. I look like a cave woman. MIKA would never let her eyebrows grow wild like that...

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Back / Forward

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Stephanie - 2008-03-09 15:45:37
Glamorous drag queens DO make you want to be more fabulous, don't they? They somehow manage to be more feminine than women in some degrees, and do it with confidence. Maybe that's the thing. They're confident about being who they are. And we're running around trying to pretend we don't have vaginas. Maybe we should be proud of our...what are they calling it now? Vay-jay-jay?
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Lexi - 2008-03-09 16:04:07
Yeah! Well said!
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Lola - 2008-03-11 05:57:31
But you ARE fabulous Darling! Let's face it, I have your site on my favorites and check it every day. Believe me, you hold MY attention! I'm even thinking of starting my own page again. Only mine will be about potty training. Not so glam either!
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Lexi - 2008-03-16 04:01:08
Thanks guys! I do feel fabulous. Just not Mika-fabulous. Still haven't done my eyebrows, either. Heh.
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