One issue that hasn't been sufficiently addressed is the show's inherent class problem. With the costs of participating in the show exponentially mounting each season, this issue feels particularly prescient. Nowadays, drag queens have to spend down payment-sized amounts of money in preparation for competing, which creates an inherent class barrier and disadvantages working-class and poor contestants.
Bring It To the Runway
The major consistent segment in almost every episode of
RuPaul's Drag Race is a fashion show. After participating in a main challenge, the contestants present a look on the runway.
They prepare their outfits in advance based on a
list of themes they receive from production just a few weeks before filming is set to start. That list includes looks for the runway as well as main challenges, so it's estimated that contestants have to prepare between 25-30 outfits for a season of Drag Race.
And what makes for a good runway outfit? Creativity and taste come into play, but the other metric that is just as (if not more so important) is how expensive it looks. Judges use terms like "couture" when praising an outfit, while negative feedback focuses on garments looking "cheap" or "crafty." Because of this, queens (especially ones without sewing skills) often spend
thousands of dollars on a single look.
"You Don't Need Money, Girl!"
Chi Chi Devayne's storyline is an interesting example of Drag Race's inaccessibility to working-class contestants. Devayne was a remarkable performer who
passed away recently due to scleroderma.
On the show, she shared her difficult experience with poverty and gangs. Before coming on the show, she was working two jobs in addition to working as a drag queen, just to make ends meet.
In one memorable scene, Devayne attempts to explain that lack of money is the reason why her runway outfit isn't up to the standards of
Drag Race judge Michelle Visage. Visage immediately shuts her down, saying "You don't need money, girl!"
Untucked: RuPaul's Drag Race Season 8 - Episode 4 "New Wave Queens"youtu.be
While Visage's statement was well-intentioned (and was followed by some genuinely good advice about asking for help), the abridged version that aired in the main episode rang false to most viewers.
In the critique, Visage even touches on the history of drag in the New York ball scene, when participants would put together outfits through thrifting and shoplifting. In practice, it's hard to imagine that those ball looks would receive a positive critique from Visage on an episode of the show.
Despite accepting Visage's critique at the time, Devayne's interviews during season 3 of
RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars show that she clearly believed that having money would have improved her performance on her original season.
The hilarious and charismatic Monique Heart presents a similar example. When she was accepted to the show, not only did she not have enough money to commission outfits; she didn't have the money nor the credit to buy the fabric she needed to make her own. By the time she raised the funds needed to make those purchases, it was too late, so she came on the show with
bolts of fabric instead of finished garments. As a result, she faced the added challenge of preparing every runway outfit from scratch while competing.
On the same season, Miz Cracker, who also grew up in poverty, had to take out a loan that, according to a statement she made on the show, was higher than the one she had to take out for her university education.
It's important to note that while some contestants have to take out loans to be able to participate in the show, queens of color have a
much harder time obtaining credit, and the options available to them are often predatory.
Drag Race's emphasis on looking "expensive" and "couture" presents a challenge to all working-class contestants, but it hurts queens of color more than their white counterparts. In that sense, the Drag Race class issue is also a race issue.
It Wasn't Always Like This
From the very beginning,
Drag Race's format was clearly inspired by the ball culture of the 1970s and '80s, especially as represented in the documentary Paris is Burning. The ball scene grew out of the need of homeless, largely Black and Latin-American queer youth for a community and a creative outlet.
This showed in earlier seasons of
Drag Race when there was an understanding that contestants came with limited resources. Runways weren't as important to the competition (and when they were, there was a greater emphasis on sewing), and class wasn't as big of a hurdle.
Winners of early seasons like James Ross (performing as Tyra Sanchez), Sharon Needles, and Jinkx Monsoon were able to win despite not having expensive outfits. Ross was a talented seamster, Needles was praised for her punk approach and DIY looks, and Monsoon won based on her talent as a performer.
Why Does This Matter?
To a certain extent,
Drag Race simply mirrors the inequality of life under capitalism. Starting out rich will always provide an advantage while starting out poor (especially both poor and Black) makes things much harder. So why judge the show harshly when it simply exemplifies real life?
Drag Race is more than just a reality show. Despite its flaws, the show is the biggest mainstream platform for queer artists, and it's one of the few places where stories about queer people of color are told. This is one of the few spaces in the media where viewers can see their politicized lived experience represented.
The show itself also gets explicitly political. Fans have come to call the segment when queens apply their makeup before the runway "social justice corner" based on the topics they discuss. This year, episodes ended with contestants dancing with signs urging viewers to vote (not to mention the fact that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared as a judge).
Considering the show's commitment to social justice and its inherently political nature, it makes sense that the politics of
Drag Race are more closely scrutinized. It is exactly the kind of TV show that should exemplify justice and equality.
How Drag Race Can Fix the Problem
There are many important demands to be made of the show, especially when it comes to questions of gender identity and
race. Class is another element of equity that needs to be addressed.
For
Drag Race to become a more equitable contest without losing its drama, it needs to de-emphasize the runway portion of each episode while boosting the importance of performance-based challenges. Drag is a performance-based art form, and episodes with major comedy or musical challenges don't need a runway portion at all!
More importantly, the judges' classism needs to stop. The history of drag, in general, and of the drag that inspired
Drag Race, in particular, was never something that belonged to the upper classes.
While the occasional challenge that focuses on couture garments is exciting, it doesn't need to be the main goal of every runway challenge, and terms like "crafty" shouldn't be used as critiques. It's not too late for the show to return to its roots, and for affordable, visibly DIY creations to be celebrated as great drag once again.
The story of psychedelics is intertwined with the story of music, and tracing their relationship can feel like going in circles.
For thousands of years, artists have been using naturally-grown herbs to open their minds and enhance their creative processes. Since LSD was synthesized by Albert Hoffman in 1938, psychedelics have experienced a reemergence, blooming into a revolution in the 1960s, launching dozens of genres and sounds that focused on acid, shrooms, and all of the portals they opened. Around the 1960s, scientists also began studying the relationship between psychedelics and music, and even back then, researchers found that, when combined, music and psychedelics could have therapeutic effects on patients.
More modern studies have discovered that LSD, specifically, links a portion of the brain called the parahippocampal—which specializes in personal memory—to the visual cortex, which means that memories take on more autobiographical and visual dimensions. Other studies have found that LSD can make the timbres and sounds of music feel more meaningful and emotionally powerful. Today, psychedelic music still thrives, and you can hear flickers of those early trip-inspired experiences all across today's modern musical landscape.
"There is a message intrinsically carried in music, and under the effects of psychedelics, people seem to become more responsive to this," said the psychedelic researcher Mendel Kaelen. "Emotion can be processed more deeply. It's a beautiful narrative. It's like a snake biting itself in the tail."
All that said, psychedelics can be as dangerous as the archetypal live-fast-die-young rock and roller's average lifestyle. They can destabilize already fragile minds and can encourage further drug abuse and reckless behavior. Often, psychedelic revolutions have coincided with colonialist fetishizations, apocalyptic visions, and appropriations of Eastern culture.
However, sometimes psychedelics and musical talent can come together in a synergy so perfect that it can literally create transcendent and healing experiences. Hallucinogens affected each of these following musicians in a unique way, but their experiences with hallucinogens produced some of the greatest music of all time.
Harry Styles — She
In his revelatory Rolling Stone profile, Harry Styles spoke out about how magic mushrooms inspired his most recent album, Fine Line. Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the 25-year-old apparently spent a lot of time at Shangri-La Studios in Los Angeles tripping and listening to the old psychedelic greats.
"Ah, yes. Did a lot of mushrooms here," he said in the interview during a tour of the studio. "We'd do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney's Ram in the sunshine."
Things even got a little violent, as they often can when dealing with hallucinogens. "This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place," he reminisced affectionately.
Kacey Musgraves' dreamy song "Slow Burn" was apparently inspired by an acid trip. Listening to the lyrics, you can hear the influence of psychedelics twining with country and singer-songwriter tropes. "I was sitting on the porch, you know, having a good, easy, zen time," she said of the songwriting experience, which she said happened out on her porch one evening. "I wrote it down on my phone, and then wrote the songs the next day with a sober mind."
LSD, she said, "opens your mind in a lot of ways. It doesn't have to be scary. People in the professional worlds are using it, and it's starting to become an option for therapy. Isn't that crazy?" Her affection for the drug also appears in her song "Oh What A World," which contains the lyric, "Plants that grow and open your mind."
A$AP Rocky — L$D
While A$AP Rocky's affection for LSD isn't a surprise given his propensity for writing about the drug, apparently the rapper has an intellectual approach to his psychedelic experimentation.
"We was all in London at my spot, Skeppy came through," he told Hot New Hip Hop about his experience writing LSD. "I have this psychedelic professor, he studies in LSD. I had him come through and kinda record and monitor us to actually test the product while being tested on. We did the rhymes all tripping balls."
Apparently his first acid trip happened in 2012. "Okay, without getting anyone in trouble, I was with my homeboy and some trippy celebrity chicks and…" he said in an interview with Time Out. When asked how long it lasted, he said, "Too long, man. Twenty-three hours. I was trippin' till the next day. When I woke up, I was like, Damn! I did that shit! That shit was dope. It was so amazing. It was a-ma-zing. Nothing was like that first time."
Acid changed his entire approach to music and success. "I never really gave a f*ck, man, but this time, I really don't give a f*ck," he said. "I don't care about making no f*cking hits." Instead, he focuses on creating. "It's so hard to be progressive when you're trippin' b*lls," he said. "You make some far-out shit!"
The Beatles' later music is essentially synonymous with LSD, and the band members often spoke out about their unique experiences with the drug. According to Rolling Stone, the first time that Lennon and Harrison took it was actually a complete accident. A friend put LSD in their coffee without their knowledge, and initially Lennon was furious. But after the horror and panic faded, things changed. "I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience in 12 hours," said Harrison.
Paul McCartney had similar revelations. LSD "opened my eyes to the fact that there is a God," he said in 1967. "It is obvious that God isn't in a pill, but it explained the mystery of life. It was truly a religious experience." Of LSD's effect, he also said, "It started to find its way into everything we did, really. It colored our perceptions. I think we started to realize there wasn't as many frontiers as we'd thought there were. And we realized we could break barriers."
Using the drug not only helped the band create some of the most legendary music of all time—it also brought them closer together. "After taking acid together, John and I had a very interesting relationship," said George Harrison. "That I was younger or I was smaller was no longer any kind of embarrassment with John. Paul still says, 'I suppose we looked down on George because he was younger.' That is an illusion people are under. It's nothing to do with how many years old you are, or how big your body is. It's down to what your greater consciousness is and if you can live in harmony with what's going on in creation. John and I spent a lot of time together from then on and I felt closer to him than all the others, right through until his death."
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Remastered 2009)www.youtube.com
Ray Charles — My World
The soul music pioneer allegedly once described acid as his "eyes." Charles was blind, but LSD is said to have allowed him some version of sight. Though he struggled with addiction, Charles eventually got clean, though his music always bore some markers of his experiences with the subconscious mind.
Actually, blind people on LSD and hallucinogens can experience hallucinations of different kinds, though it's somewhat rare. According to a study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, this happens because during a trip, "the plasticity of the nervous system allows the recognition and translation of auditory or tactile patterns into visual experiences."
Clapton struggled with drug abuse throughout his life, and LSD certainly had an influence on him. While he was a part of Cream, he frequently played shows while tripping, and according to outontrip.com, he became "convinced that he could turn the audience into angels or devils according to the notes he played."
Before he was creating the ultimate dad rap, Chance the Rapper was an acidhead.
"None of the songs are really declarative statements; a lot of them are just things that make you wonder...a lot like LSD," said Chance the Rapper of his hallucinogen-inspired album, the aptly named Acid Rap. "[There] was a lot of acid involved in Acid Rap," he told MTV in 2013. "I mean, it wasn't too much — I'd say it was about 30 to 40 percent acid ... more so 30 percent acid."
But the album wasn't merely about acid; like much of the best psychedelic music, it was more about the imagery and symbolism associated with the drug than the actual drug itself. "It wasn't the biggest component at all. It was something that I was really interested in for a long time during the making of the tape, but it's not necessarily a huge faction at all. It was more so just a booster, a bit of fuel. It's an allegory to acid, more so than just a tape about acid," he said.
Jazz great John Coltrane was a regular LSD user who used the drug to create music and to have spiritual experiences. Though he struggled with addiction throughout his life, LSD was one drug that had a major artistic influence on him. While it's not known for sure if the album Om—which includes chanted verses of the Bhagavad Gita—was recorded while Coltrane was on LSD, many rumors theorize that it was.
"Coltrane's LSD experiences confirmed spiritual insights he had already discovered rather than radically changing his perspective," wrote Eric Nisenson in Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest. "After one early acid trip he said, 'I perceived the interrelationship of all life forms,' an idea he had found repeated in many of the books on Eastern theology that he had been reading for years. For Coltrane, who for years had been trying to relate mystical systems such as numerology and astrology, theories of modern physics and mathematics, the teachings of the great spiritual leaders, and advanced musical theory, and trying somehow to pull these threads into something he could play on his horn. The LSD experience gave him visceral evidence that his quest was on the right track."
Jenny Lewis — Acid Tongue
Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis wrote the song "Acid Tongue" about her first and only experience on LSD, which happened when she was fourteen. She told Rolling Stone, "It culminated in a scene not unlike something from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—the scene where Hunter S. Thompson has to lock the lawyer in the bathroom. I sort of assumed the Hunter S. Thompson character and my friend – she had taken far too much – decided to pull a butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and chase me around the house… At the end of that experience, my mom was out of town on a trip of her own and she returned to find me about 5 lbs lighter and I had—I was so desperate to get back to normal I decided to drink an entire gallon of orange juice. I saw that it was in the fridge and decided that this would sort of flush the LSD out of my system, but I didn't realize that it did exactly the opposite."
The Beach Boys' mastermind Brian Wilson was famously inspired by psychedelics, which both expanded and endangered his fragile and brilliant mind. After his first acid trip in 1965, an experience that he said "expanded his mind," Wilson wrote "California Gurls." After the trip, however, Wilson began suffering from auditory hallucinations and symptoms of schizophrenia, and though he discontinued use of the drug, he continued to hear voices; doctors eventually diagnosed him with the disease. Wilson later lamented his tragic experiences with LSD, stating that he wished he'd never done the drug.
Though it led Wilson on a downward spiral, LSD inspired some of his band's greatest work—namely the iconic Pet Sounds, which launched half a century of "acid-pop copycats."
The Flaming Lips — Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" is widely believed to be the product of lead singer Wayne Coyne's LSD experimentation. This theory is corroborated by the fact that the album's cover features the number 25 (and LSD is also known as LSD-25). They also frequently reference LSD in their music, which includes an album called Finally, the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid.
the flaming lips yoshimi battles the pink robots part 1www.youtube.com
Jimi Hendrix — Voodoo Child
While there is still some general contention on whether Jimi Hendrix hallucinated frequently, nobody really doubts that he did. According to rumors, the legendary musician even used to soak his bandanas in acid before going onstage so the drug would seep through his pores.
According to one source, Hendrix did more than just play music while tripping. He was also an expert at (of all things) the game of Risk.
"Jimi would play Risk on acid, and I never — and me personally — ever beat him at all," said Graham Nash in an interview. "He was unbelievable at it. He was a military man, you know, he's a paratrooper, and I don't know whether you know that about Jimi, but no one ever beat him at Risk."
The Doors — The End
Jim Morrison was a documented LSD user, and it eventually led him out of his mind. "The psychedelic Jim I knew just a year earlier, the one who was constantly coming up with colorful answers to universal questions, was being slowly tortured by something we didn't understand. But you don't question the universe before breakfast for years and not pay a price," said John Desmore in Riders on the Storm: My Life With the Doors.
Morrison used many different drugs during his lifetime, but apparently LSD had a special place and he avoided using it while working. "LSD was a sacred sacrament that was to be taken on the beach at Venice, under the warmth of the sun, with our father the sun and our mother the ocean close by, and you realised how divine you were," said Ray Manzarek. "It wasn't a drug for entertainment. You could smoke a joint and play your music, as most musicians did at the time. But as far as taking LSD, that had to be done in a natural setting."
Morrison himself—a visionary who was also a drug-addled narcissist—was kind of the prototypical 1960s LSD-addled rock star. Alive with visions about poetry and sex but lost in his own self-destruction, he perhaps touched on something of the sublime with his art, but in the end he went down a very human path towards misery and decay.
Like many of these artists' stories, Morrison's life reveals that perhaps instead of using hallucinogens and psychedelics as shortcuts to a spiritual experience, one should exercise extreme caution when exploring the outer reaches of the psyche. When it comes to actually engaging with potent hallucinogens, that might be best left to the shamans, or forgotten with the excesses of the 1960s.
On the other hand, we might do well to learn from the lessons that people have gleaned from hallucinogens over the years—lessons that reveal just how interconnected everything is, that shows us that music and memory and nature may just all stem from the same place.
As a devoted 80's baby, I'm nostalgic for anything that reminds me of my youth. i Care Bears, TMNT, Slap Bracelets – I remember it all like it was yesterday. So, when I came across an old Muzzy commercial on YouTube, the memories started pouring in. The 80s and 90s spawned a ton of super-memorable commercials, and Muzzy was my personal favorite.
I remembered the big green fuzzy cartoon that taught you how to speak French and how badly I wanted the tapes. It was everywhere in the '90s, and I was over the moon when my parents bought the VHS tapes for my sixth birthday. I was excited because of the fun monster cartoon, but it ended up helping me become bilingual and giving me more opportunities in life.
Now it's been modernized: the language learning cartoons come as a website subscription that includes interactive bonus materials like movies, games, songs, and worksheets that can teach your child all kinds of concepts from greetings to counting.
The online subscription also includes an online recording studio that lets your child practice pronunciation by hearing themselves aloud. I knew I had to get it for my daughter, so she could learn a second language just like I did.
Because I started at such a young age, learning French became part of my daily life. Muzzy didn't make it feel like learning at all, because they design their stories to teach you a new language the same way you learned your first. Plus it was really fun!
Now I'm bilingual in French and English, and I want my daughter to have all the same opportunities being bilingual gave me -- traveling the world, increased job opportunities, and exposure to a culture that expanded my worldview. And I knew I should start while she's young, while the lessons will have the biggest influence on expanding her cognitive skills and creative abilities.
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I decided to get my daughter a Muzzy online subscription so that she can learn Spanish. They have 7 different languages to choose from, but I thought Spanish was a good choice since her father has family in Spain. They have a bunch of different online subscription plans starting at just $5 a month, so teaching my daughter Spanish would cost less per month than a single venti latte at Starbucks.
It's nice to have something to occupy her time other than mindless cartoons or iPad games. Plus, there are countless studies out there that prove there are so many benefits to learning another language at a young age, like improved cognitive functions, creative thinking, and a greater ability to multitask.
When I was a kid,
Muzzyalways felt like I was watching a cool tv show, not like I was in school learning something boring. Speaking in French became something fun for me to do. Watching my daughter have fun learning Spanish with Muzzy has been one of the most rewarding things I've done as a parent.
There are more than 6 billion people in the world speaking roughly 6,909 different languages. The ability to express ourselves using language is inherently what makes us human. We communicate to each other over the phone, text, email & yes, sometimes even in person. In today's globalized society it's almost imperative that we learn to speak several languages. For many, like me, it's been a challenge to travel and communicate with people for work or pleasure. I've missed out on business opportunities due to language barriers. Other times I've gotten lost and taken the wrong train due to misunderstanding someone. Learning a new language however, can be extremely difficult, full of boring textbook memorization and not to mention, can be extremely time consuming.
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