the destroyer > cheap papers > Maureen McHugh

BEAUTIFUL / SPOOKY / STUPID

sharon needles is a “punk rock sex clown” + beloved contestent competing for the title of america’s next drag superstar on the 4th season of rupaul’s drag race. the internet has described her as:

-a dead debutante in drag
-sexy, bitchy, scary, and approachable
-FREAKville !!
-a post-Warhol mannequin
-looks like Marilin Manson !!!!!!!
-charles pierce mixed with divine

///////

BACKGROUND / / / GIRLHOOD ////

quiet submission, no back-talking, no gleaning of power, no masculine qualities unless docile (as in, “tomboyish”); paint fingers, toes, use faint perfume (nothing trashy); tan the skin, wear pink, wear light blue, wear purple; wear anything that sparkles to attract the attention of a man (whose brain is particularly animal-like); enjoy submissive yet conventional sexual acts; no flexing of the weak feminine brain; no controlling conversation; no dominant sexual drive; no profanity; no dark circles under the eyes; no gross puffy eye wrinkles; blame tears on hormones; blame tears on sad commercials; remain silent when betrayed; remain silent so as not to embarrass yourself; remain coy & ladylike; no raised voices; no freakish smirking; no thoughts of death; no brash screaming; keep the hair light; the skin soft; the thoughts muted; the nails trimmed clean into squares

“I’M A PUNK ROCK BITCH, I WANNA PUSH YOUR BUTTONS, I KINDA WANT TO PISS YOU OFF AND MAKE A BIG OLD MESS” - SHARON NEEDLES

sharon needles scares the shit out people who aren’t as fierce as she is. more specifically, she scares the shit out of people who care about traditional ideas of beauty, girlhood, and glamour. juxtaposed directly against hyper-girlish representations of mainstream beauty, she actively goes against the dominant cultural narrative of what a woman-figure should or shouldn’t do, how an ideal woman should or shouldn’t appear.

girls shouldn’t look like sharon needles, shouldn’t make biting and inappropriate remarks, shouldn’t misbehave (is there a word for misbehaving in the vocabulary of masculinity?) shouldn’t cause trouble, shouldn’t be nasty bitches. to rebel against the predominant ideas of girlhood, which have so much to do with the external, with appearance, with performance, is an act of radical dismantling; to live (and even further: to act out from within) this space of should and shouldn’t becomes an act of defiance as well.

“WHEN YOU AREN’T FAMOUS YOU WILL DO THINGS THAT AREN’T SENSIBLE FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR ART” - SHARON NEEDLES

//////// DESTROY PRECIOUS GIRLHOOD //////

demolish girlhood. ecstasy in discomfort. liberation from gross daily life. liberation from those who claim you are “acting like a crazy person.” turn to stone. mouth-bleeding as new glamour. write a poem called fucked to shit. somebody at a bar calls you weird bitch. thank them for it. new glamour as in, bar-light. demolish comfort. demolish meaning. lavender lipstick. black lipstick. red lipstick. lipstick that smells so good you eat almost half a tube of it. glamour in sheer magnitude; in verses; fuck with boots on, fuck in heels, fuck in nothing; reject certainty, reject familiarity, reject the rehearsed, label the placid life “disinteresting”, worship your mean streak; worship vague hopelessness; hurt everyone’s feelings; liberation from pathetic weeping; refuse sedation, refuse blankness, exploit vapidity, exploit vapid head rolling blank-girl mindlessness; try to count the number of men you’ve chased down streets; fetishize everything; fetishize madness; fetishize your own sadness; take photographs of yourself crying in various positions; perfume named after a stripper; perfume with a french name; perfume that comes in a glass bottle; perfume chucked hard against a bedroom wall;

//////

ARTLESS ART ///////

“Art should always be polished, rehearsed, scripted, and expensive. The art world simply does not have room for cheap improvisations and spur-of-the-moment reactions in the present moment. Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats" on Broadway? Art. Sharon Needles' bargain bin burlesque? NOT ART.” - CONCERNED CITIZEN, VIA ALASKATHUNDERFUCK.COM

needles is paradoxical, as any alter-ego draws a tension between original & construct. she is both terrifying and warm, vapid and razor-sharp. she is both real and not-real, dead and un-dead, cliche and innovative, reality and performance, farcical and sincere. she evokes a sense of cognitive dissonance in the viewer, invoking that divine moment where an audience thinks: what in the fuck am i watching? this dissonance is probably the truest test of determining what good art is; that moment where one feels just uncomfortable enough but not too uncomfortable to be provoked to turn away.

many people enjoy hearing stories about insanity but don’t actually want to be insane. many people enjoy hearing about liberation but find freedom vast and terrifying. many people want to make art but want to make an art that is as non-threatening as possible, art that gets published many places, art that sounds very beautiful, looks very beautiful, does very beautiful things. everything can be meaningless. everything can be dismantled, destroyed, ruined, fucked to shit. everything can be girlish weeping. mean-girl bar fighting. weird girl spooky. that’s good art also.