How's My Wig

Three Manhattan's into a drag show that seemed to be dragging on and on, I grabbed my friend Sarah, my wig and what was left of my dignity before heading for the exit. But first, I had to make a pit stop at the powder room to reapply my face. While staring at the mirror and the unfamiliar face looking back -- the one with the perfectly arched brows, luscious red lips and protruding Madam's Apple -- I started thinking about gender differences. We expect women to wear make-up and men to wear muscle, but this was not always the case. There was a time, not so long ago, when both sexes wore powdered wigs and high heels. And there was a time before that when both genders wore matching animal pelts and ate meat off a bone. Today, however, a fella is persecuted for looking overly feminized or underlie butch, and as far as I can tell, the basics of human nature have not changed. We all want to be loved, heard and touched. How is it we think nothing of noshing on a chicken thigh, but are disgusted by a man in a dress, or a woman without tweezers? Is this the meaning of a civilized nation, or merely a lovely window dressing for primitive thought? Why do we keep insisting on placing value on what we can see, instead of what we feel.