You do You: Proud to be Fabulous
Written and Narrated By: Tan France, Nikki Levy, Janine Brito, D.J. “Shangela” Pierce, Emma Willmann, Gigi Gorgeous, Percy Rustomji, Alexandra Billings
Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
About coming out, coming to life, getting real… and just Being
I thought m’ Dad was backwards. When my niece Came Out, he’d chuckle and would roll his eyes at the haircut she chose to sport, the clothes she chose to wear. I’d wanted to throttle him at the time. After all, wasn’t I part of Gen X, who brought the world Marriage for All? Dude, I’d loved the rainbow flag.
But meeting and being Facebook friends with a non-binary individual has taught me sooo much… Namely, one of her posts today was a play on a Dr. Seuss saying but had an “Oh the things you’ll have to Unlearn” quip. The pronouns, the proper terminology. I do NOT wanna pull a “Dad” and just let myself roll with a smug, I’m From A Different Generation, so I don’t have to adapt or change as I do think ignorance perpetuates prejudice at best, hatred at worst.
So You do You was such a blessing at just the right time. My Facebook friend is correcting people left and right cuz ignorance abounds, and it isn’t about people simply having “a different opinion”, rather it’s about words having weight and the ability to harm. So let the lessons begin.
You do You is seven Stand Up comics telling their stories to receptive audiences. Some I could relate to (Weird as a straight female who’s not had the exact challenges), as they were of dealing with pesky hormones and weird-patoot sex drives at an early age. Some were eye-opening and rather sweet, even if they were of trying to switch the Disney DVD out for the “Boogie Nights” one so as to get a gander at Mark Wahlberg’s famed closing scene in “Boogie Nights”. Surreptitious sexuality; I’m there. Wondering just WHY a little boy finds himself oh so curious and getting feelings for another male and doesn’t know what to do about it? No, haven’t had that particular challenge.
Some acts are funnier than others, tho’ I did rather get a knee-jerk reaction to the second act wherein the comic seems to think that As Long As I’m Going There, Might As Well… and decides that dying children from a Make A Wish group are fair game. Kids bald cuz they’ve lost their hair from extensive, intensive cancer treatments, who will soon be dying? Uhm, nope, couldn’t quite find the chuckle within that, not even with Beyoncé gyrating to and fro.
But one story sparks outrage… it’s illegal for a man to dress as a woman in Dubai but then sparks fear, seeing as how our Courts are currently stacked and that we might go back to that.
But the stunner is the very last story, with a transgender who came of age just after the Stonewall riots, who discovered who she was, who went through a LOT. Her “bio” of who she was and where she’s been throughout the years is stunning with the amounts of change she went through, the struggles, the AIDS at the time when it was a death sentence. She’s diagnosed, and the advice from the doctor: Go out, max out your credit cards… because you’re not going to live long enough to see the bills come in. Still, she survives.
And her story, the way she finds herself is SUCH an inspiration. She’s not religious, but she’s spiritual—there are no coincidences, we’re all where we need to be. And we’re all coming Home, being with each other.
Forgive me if I got terminology wrong, but I blame Tan France for speaking sooo fast and for having, however light, an accent. And co-host Nikki Levy speaks super fast as well. Man was I hitting 30 sec. repeat to try to get m’ lingo straight (NO pun intended), or what?! And still I failed.
Definitely an inspirational Listen, tho’ do be aware that some comics get a lot of joy in describing in bawdy detail their experiences and their bodily functions. My toes didn’t curl, but when an orgasm was paired with a high-pitched scream of ecstasy, my ears DID suffer.
And now I’m off to go see just what-all else I need to Unlearn. It’s a process, y’all. But who on earth wants to live with eyes tightly shut, with a heart closed up like a fist…?
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