Drag Queens and Beauty Queens with Laurie Green

In this episode of Wine, Women, and Revolution Heather interviews activist and author Laurie Greene. Laurie wrote the book "Drag Queens and Beauty Queens" which tells the often overlooked LGBTQ drag history in Atlantic City and the undeniable impact drag culture had on the Miss American pageant. She discusses how people competing in both Miss America and the drag pageant Miss'd America use it to access power structures that may otherwise be denied to them in this Cis, Hetero, White, Male, Capitalist world. Now Miss's America is struggling to reconcile its more subversive roots with the goal of capitalism to make everything consumable for the bland mass audience. Only the future will tell if they will be more successful than their beauty pageant inspiration, Miss America. Transcript Auto Generated Laurie Greene 0:00But the history of this event which you would never know from looking at any press anywhere, including the Miss America page is that "show us your shoes" started because drag queens used to be at the corner of New York Avenue and the two buildings would sit up on their balconies during the parade and lean out the windows. And tease the contestants, because they saw they weren't wearing shoes and they're wearing slippers but you couldn't see their feet they would yell "show us your shoes." Heather Warburton 0:34This is Wine Women and Revolution with your host, Heather Warburton. Hi, and welcome to Wine Women and Revolution. I'm your host Heather Warburton coming at you here on Create Your Future Productions. You can find us online at your future creator. com. Follow us on all the social medias and get us wherever you get your podcasts from. Today, I'm talking to someone that's a friend of mine. They're a fellow activist from South Jersey. And specifically what we're talking about today is they're the author of the book, Drag Queens and Beauty Queens. Welcome to the show, Laurie Green. Laurie Greene 1:08Hi, thanks for having me, Heather. Heather Warburton 1:10So you're actually joining us all the way from London today. Even though you live locally here, you're all the way in London when we're recording this Laurie Greene 1:18I've been here for two weeks, I'm actually going to get out of quarantine tomorrow. And I just found out today that they're closing down the country again. So it looks like I'm gonna be in quarantine for another week. Heather Warburton 1:30Yeah, things are definitely challenging in these times of COVID. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. We're talking about Drag Queens and Beauty Queens, which is an awesome title for a book, by the way. And I think what really compelled me was you kind of tell a lot of like the not so well known history of both the Miss America pageant, which if you're local here, you know, you know, Atlantic city's tied to Miss America, and Miss'd America, which may not even be as well known, but it's getting quite popular. And one thing that really stood out to me was when I first moved to the area, I had a friend of mine who was like, Oh, I'm going watch the shoe parade for Miss America. And I'm like, Wait, what? Like this was something I did not know about living outside the area and they were like, yeah, we go and they show us their shoes. I was like, well, why do they do that? And they had no idea why. I don't know, it's just something that happens and you actually explain the history of where that all came from. Do you want to give a little like, quick teaser about what that is, before we dive into the meat of the book. Laurie Greene 2:35Well, the parade is actually called the show us your shoes parade. It is trademarked that way by the Miss America Pageant. And what happens during that parade is that the contestants get dressed up in costumes and funny costumes that spoof or somehow over emphasize the characterizations of thei