Transcriber: Marina Naguib Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Hello, hello, hello. How great is this movement? Are you all excited?
Come on now. I’m on stage. Better than that. Yes. Yes, yes.
So can we talk about something else that is also important?
Maybe a little bit more. I look great, right?
(Laughs)
So the great thing about that is I am up here -
a man wearing makeup and hair joking about wearing makeup and hair.
Oh, it's all good. But guess what? It wasn't always like that.
There was a time when a man, who wore makeup and had his hair done
would definitely get sounds thrown at you,
but they were not joyous or light-hearted as they are now.
Growing up in the early 70s, late 80s,
being gay was not only considered an immoral sin,
it was considered a travesty.
You could be a murderer because the word “murderer” has redemption to it -
at some point, if you tried hard.
The word “rapist” was terrible and insidious.
But guess what? You had a chance.
To be gay, there was no chance.
It was ingrained in my mind as long as I can remember,
as long as many people remember, and it was no exception,
even if you were a child of four years old.
Halloween, it’s coming up -
the day where you can dress up and be anybody you want.
I was so excited, I was like,
“Oh my God, I can finally let the world have a glimpse of who I really am.”
Now remember, I still in the back of my mind know that what I am is wrong,
but, but it’s okay, because now I’m going to be able to show the world.
So
we go shopping.
(Laughter)
I see all the boring boy costumes - vampires, werewolves. I’m like, “Really?”
I’m already wearing beige.
I mean, ...
“What’s going on? How am I special if I’m wearing a helmet
with a shirt that says ‘Vroom?’”
I did not want to be a motorcyclist or whatever these boys were doing.
So I looked past those costumes, and I was like,
“Oh, wait, hold up. Wait a minute. There’s pink. There’s glitter,”
all the things that boys were not allowed to love.
I knew this, again, at an early age, so guess what I did?
Oh no, no conformist here.
I walked all the way over to those costumes,
and I picked the most, in retrospect, scariest, hideous costume ever.
It was a mask that was hard to breathe out of,
the makeup was terrible - blue eye shadow, bubblegum pink lips -
but guess what?
At the time, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,
and I was like, “That is mine.”
(Laughs)
But guess what?
I used my puppy dog eyes, and I made it happen.
So ...
that Halloween, I got what I wanted,
but I also found out something even more important.
The minute the children found out who was behind that mask,
it was actually the first time I ever heard words I had never even ...
I had never even understood what these words were.
I was frozen because I was ousted without even knowing why I was ousted.
And I said, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Aren’t these kids running around as vampires
ready to suck the blood out of their victim?
Aren't these children being werewolves ready to slash their next prey?
Aren’t these kids dressed as cops pretending to shoot each other?”
Yes, they were, but it was OK
because they were not wearing a mask that had color on it.
Early in my cosmetics career, the judgment did not stop there,
I had a manager come up to me, “Hey, I got to tell you something.
Um, have you noticed how people are looking at you and what they say?”
Now, up to this point, I just wanted to make a living,
I just wanted to support myself, I just wanted to do what I did good -
make the world beautiful.
I had heard every name thrown at me
while trying to do my job,
and I heard it so much that after a while, I simply stopped listening.
It was obviously the first time she ever heard this,
so she comes up to me and she goes, “You know?
I have a suggestion.
If you only blended in,
didn’t look the way you do, looked like everybody else,
guess what?”
I’m just staring at her because I really liked her.
She was really nice, but I got it.
She goes, “Maybe people would not judge you,
Maybe people would not look at you the way they do.
Can you do that for me?”
I was like, “Sure, ...
I would love to.”
(Laughs)
That next day, I wore so much makeup,
you would have thought I was Mimi from the “Drew Carey Show,”
and I wore that makeup with pride.
I wore that makeup for every boy who did not want to wear blue.
I wore that makeup for every girl who did not want to wear a dress.
I wore that make up for every person who is beaten,
murdered simply for being who they were.
And I didn’t care.
(Applause)
I still don’t.
Nobody should care.
Nobody should care what anybody else thinks or says about them.
And there’s a reason why:
because that is you giving them your power.
So yeah, I know I look fabulous.
Come on now.
(Laughs)
But underneath it all ...
after all this is gone ...
after we get home, after we see our loved ones ...
regardless of what we wear, our aesthetic, what we look like,
we all crave the same things:
protection, to be protected.
to love, to be loved.
And that’s why my biggest message is,
no matter what,
after our masks are truly taken off,
we are all the same.
(Applause) (Cheers)
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)