The best advice I’ve ever gotten was from my tenth-grade drama teacher, Mr. Pannell. At the time, I was going through a teenage drama of my own. My bad grades had finally caught up with me and I was being faced with expulsion from the only school I had ever really enjoyed going to. My teacher, seeing how shaken up I was, calmly pulled me to the side and said with an even tone, “The most important thing to remember, RuPaul, is to not take life too seriously.” Excuse me? I thought. I’m about to get kicked out of the only school I’ve ever loved and your advice for me is “don’t take life too seriously”? Are you for real? Of course, the truth and wisdom of his advice was lost on me then, but I never forgot it. In fact, over the next thirty years, it would become the creed I live my life by.
“Don’t take life too seriously” has served me well in the way I dress (in and out of drag), in the way I live, and undeniably in the way I work it! This easy-breezy approach is especially valuable when it comes to the people who want to suck me into their drama, misery, and despair. Honey, life is shorter than you think. I don’t have the time to be mired down in the mud. I’ve sung that song before, and it ain’t pretty. I choose joy. I’m a Scorpio, so I have a certain proclivity toward introspection, which isn’t terrible. It just means I have to actively nurture my lightness so I can have a balanced experience. Is the glass half full or half empty? Both choices are correct, but one choice will bring you joy, and the other will bring you pain. Yep, I choose joy.
Balance is a key theme in my life. Being able to take a step back and recognize what the situation calls for is essential. Sometimes that ability is intuitive, sometimes it’s learned, and sometimes it’s having the clarity of mind to ask someone who knows.
As a child, I assumed everyone had been given an instruction manual except for me. I grew up in a house with all girls, so I felt like the little boy who fell to Earth. I was a sweet, odd-looking kid with a face full of freckles. I got teased a lot for being a sissy, and I most definitely didn’t fit in. Being an outsider motivated me to study human behavior. My thinking was that if I could learn the rules of the game, then perhaps I could find a loophole and angle my way in. Well, I found plenty of loopholes, contradictions, and flat-out lies. And, honey, if I’m lying, I’m flying. Through my observations, it became clear that most of society’s rules and customs are rooted in fear and superstition! That makes them beyond refute.
Yep, I choose joy
With that knowledge came a death and a rebirth: the death of my desire to fit in, and the birth of my acceptance of a life outside the box. There is freedom outside the box. There is truth outside the box. And it was outside the box that I began to truly understand and develop my own sense of style.
The truth is you are a spiritual being having a human experience. The human part of the experience is temporary. Think of it as a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Your spiritual being is not temporary. It is eternal. Think of it as the sun and the moon. That’s why the saying “You’re born naked and the rest is drag” couldn’t be more true. Drag isn’t just a man wearing false eyelashes and a pussycat wig. Drag isn’t just a woman with a pair of glued-on sideburns and an Elvis jumpsuit. Drag is everything. I don’t differentiate drag from dressing up or dressing down. Whatever you put on after you get out of the shower is your drag. Be it a three-piece suit or a Chanel suit, a McDonald’s uniform or a police uniform. The truth of who you really are is not defined by your clothes.
Okay, now I’m gonna really blow your mind. Let’s take it a step further. Whatever you proclaim as your identity here in the material realm is also your drag. You are not your religion. You are not your skin color. You are not your gender, your politics, your career, or your marital status. You are none of the superficial things that this world deems important. The real you is the energy force that created the entire universe!
There, I said it! I’ve spilled the beans on what your ego doesn’t want you to hear: you are The Source, The One, The Big Enchilada (with an ever so temporary case of self-induced amnesia). But hey, we cool…we don’t have to get into that right now…. Just know that when you’re ready to accept it, everything becomes so easy, not so serious, and oh so much more fun! Your entire notion of style can be set free!
In the theater, when an actor breaks character and addresses the audience, it’s called breaking the fourth wall. It can be startling because it disrupts the illusion created by the actors and the audience. The same is true of this quasi world we’ve collectively created here on Earth. We take on roles that become our identity, but unlike the stage actor, we believe we literally are the characters we are portraying, forgetting who we really are—spiritual beings having human experiences. Some people take their roles so seriously that they are willing to kill in the name of staying true to their character.
NOBODY WINS BY PLAYING SMALL.
Most people don’t want to awaken from the illusion. That’s why drag queens make a lot of people feel uncomfortable. Drag queens are essentially making fun of the roles people are playing. And in doing so, “drags” have become experts at parody, satire, and deconstructing social patterns. In the drag world, we might say “she” when we’re actually talking about a “he,” or we might laugh hysterically at a sad, depressing scene from an old black-and-white melodrama. Again, it’s a survival technique to avoid getting sucked into the “seriousness” of all the drama. Like Mary J. Blige says, “No more drama.”
And it’s not only drag queens who have blown the lid off culture’s lunacy and hypocrisy. Comedians, rock stars, and even Bugs Bunny have built celebrated careers on irreverence and challenging the status quo, but drag queens aren’t praised as such because they carry the burden of shame inflicted on feminine men by a masculine-dominated society. Feminine behavior in a man is seen as an act of treason in a masculine culture, as opposed to in ancient cultures that relied on drag queens, shamans, and witch doctors to remind each individual member of the tribe of their duality as male and female, human and spirit, body and soul.
I needed to start off with this monologue so you could understand my approach to life, which is the following:
Don’t take life too seriously.
Love yourself.
Very little is off-limits,
but draw the line at being unkind.
Do whatever you want, just so long as
you don’t hurt anyone
else in the process.
Live your life with no restrictions.
To truly create your best life ever, you must begin the work from the inside out. You must liberate yourself and clear away the old mental habits that block you from moving forward. Style is a celebratory expression of your life force. You must approach it with a sense of joie de vivre. Open yourself to all the possibilities! And remember to love yourself, because if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen in here?
All the colors of the rainbow are there for you to use, but keep in mind that there are fixed ways the human senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) will interpret information (but those margins can be nudged with a quick and clever hand and a well-rounded knowledge of history). You must learn the rules first before you throw them out, and then by all means throw them out. The future belongs to those who have learned from the past. In the following pages, I have outlined tried-and-true techniques found on my quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of style.
