Queen’s Birthday, Kinky Boots and Cross Dressing

“Now, I give you fair warning,” shouted the Queen, stamping on the ground as she spoke; “either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time! Take your choice!”

Picture from my book published in 1944

Here in New Zealand, the Queen’s birthday is celebrated on the first Monday in June and this is the last Public Holiday now until Labor Day in October.

We do have the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in which many people are honoured for services to arts, business and the community but there are no official celebrations on this day – the hoi polloi just get a day off work.  Unless that is, you work in retail.  Retailers love a reason to blare out the word SALE and this is a perfect reason they think.  People on holiday, some money to spend, perhaps fractious children and/or rebellious teenagers, and it usually rains on this day in June.

It’s a wet June Monday in Wellington so how to celebrate?

1. I could join the throngs at the mall and buy unwanted items just because they are on special.
2. I could have some friends over for supper.
3. Of course, I could take Lotte for a walk but at 11.20am she hasn’t left her bed and I suggest it might be some time before she does.
4. I could tidy my very untidy study.
5. I could vacuum and rubber glove – oh really we say.
6. I could call in on a sick friend
7. I could have coffee with another friend
8. I could take in a movie – what’s showing locally?  There is a good selection of movies I haven’t seen and I could have coffee there.

The choices are endless.  So I think I shall do items 3, 6 and 7 and then settle down with a book at the fire.  Coffee cup in hand I shall think about the other options and be pleased that I have discarded them.  Perhaps item 8 can be moved to the top of my list on another day, but not today.

And Cross-Dressing and Kinky Boots in the title of the blog?  Well, I tuned in on Saturday and found a rerun of the movie Kinky Boots.  This is a feel-good movie based on a true-life story.  As the film, Kinky Boots depicts, when the son (Charlie in the film) inherits the factory, sales of traditional, hand-stitched leather brogues are already in trouble as cheap fashionable imports flood the market.  So to keep the factory operating, he looked for a niche market in which to expand.  And he found it.

Looking to London for inspiration, Charlie discovers sassy drag queen, Lola, whose Soho world of outrageous fashion and stylish, erotic boots for men, gives him the idea to diversify production with erotic women’s boots for a male market.  See the trailer here and the funniest clip from the movie here. If you haven’t seen it I suggest you go out and rent, hire or borrow a copy.  If none of those options is available I would even suggest you steal a copy. It would be well worth the fine you would have to pay.

This is the story of an unlikely friendship between two men from totally different backgrounds and experiences, who join together to create a success.  Fabulous!

I rate this movie alongside “Priscilla Queen of the Desert”.

If you haven’t seen this it’s about two drag queens and a transsexual who are hired for a gig in the middle of a desert in the Australian Northern Territories.  They drive from Sydney to Alice Springs a distance of about 2770 km or 1721 miles.

Humour and some pathos when they are confronted by a few rednecks in the town are cleverly covered in this movie.  The trip across country in a bus is fun and the songs are classics.  Their meeting and interactions with a group of Aborigines have to be seen to be appreciated.   If you want to see the trailer click here.  The movie is old – 1994 – but ever interesting and involving.  It shows how difficult life as a crossdresser, transvestite or transsexual really can be.

And here is a quote from an anonymous transvestite:
“The transvestite is a man who has discovered a way of being at peace with herself.  Transvestism is a gift, not a curse; we should be grateful for it.”