The whole “kids shouldn’t look up to drag queens!” thing amuses me to absolutely no end, honestly.

My parents were super, super strict in comparison to my peers. I didn’t really realise this until I met my friend JM, who is Korean-Australian, and we’d get to chatting about life stuff, or we’d watch something stupid on YouTube or whatever, and I’d comment “holy shit, my folks would have kicked my face off if I’d tried pulling that”. After a few times of my saying this, JM side-eyed me, and then asked me if my parents were really white. (Whereupon I died laughing, but…yes, they are. XD Celtic as hell on both sides, I’m afraid.)

So like. Picture my super-strict, mostly conservative (don’t worry, she’s gotten much better) mother looking at her anxiety-riddled, socially phobic 11-year-old developing an eating disorder and loathing herself, and saying to her, “You remember the girls from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, right? You love that movie? Be like them! Don’t care what anyone else thinks! Be happy and confident and proud. Just think of them when you’re getting anxious.”

And, like, the only thing that looking up to these fictional drag queens made my 11-year-old self do was…learn to be proud of myself and my own style and personality. Which helped carry me through years and years of trauma.

This manufactured panic about drag is beyond hilarious, honestly. Stop moaning and take your damn kids to the drag queen story hour. Especially the shy anxious ones.