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RuPaul

RuPaul Biography

Actor

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“But in that time the RuPaul idea was born, and people outside of my world were inspired to talk about me and androgyny and drag in a way that was unprecedented. Not long after that, the questions came: Why you? Drag had been around forever. Why had I been able to crack the code after so many false starts and almosts?”

FameDrag
Book:The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir―The Transformational Power of Facing Yourself Fearlessly
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“Even when I didn't have a dime, I always felt rich, because I knew that I had imagination. Having money to me was like having a tank full of gas—it didn't mean much if you didn't know where you were going or didn't have the curiosity to enjoy the ride. Money made things easier—much easier. But no matter how poor I'd been, I had never felt as impoverished as the rich people I knew who had no imagination, whose capacity for fun was stunted.”

MoneyCreativity
Book:The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir―The Transformational Power of Facing Yourself Fearlessly
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“Sometimes the thing we are not able to let go of isn't benevolent. Sometimes we hang on to past hurts and old ideas. We refuse to let those die, that old darkness. But we have to let go - both of the things we despise and, often, the things that we love. Every ascended master will tell you the same thing: It's the ego that grips, and nonattachment is the path to freedom. But it never stops being difficult to let go - to say goodbye.”

GriefLetting GoBaggageNonattachment
Book:The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir―The Transformational Power of Facing Yourself Fearlessly
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“All the Black people in our neighborhood were transplants from the South, and so they had inherited a kind of slave mentality, which was based on fear. When you hear stereotypes about Black people who can't swim or are afraid of dogs, it's because for so many generations, they were afraid of swimming across bodies of water to flee, or afraid of dogs because they were scared of being chased. Those fears are epigenetic - they burrow deep into the subconscious, creating an internal paradigm of rules that you forget can be broken. Systemic oppression created walls that can feel impossible to scale, but so, too, does the inherited belief that you are victim. People hold on to that victim mentality so fiercely; it becomes a defining feature of their identity. Nobody's going to take that away from them. It runs too deeply to take out and examine under the light.”

PsychologyRacismBlack HistoryStereotypes
Book:The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir―The Transformational Power of Facing Yourself Fearlessly
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“Not long after that, the questions came: Why you? Drag had been around forever. Why had I been able to crack the code after so many false starts and almosts? But I knew they would never understand the delicate choreography I’d done to make it all work. I’d mastered the art of naughty-lite: two spoonfuls of Diana Ross, a pinch of Cher, a shake of Dolly Parton, all sealed with Walt Disney’s family-friendliness. Before, I had been blurry—confusing, a thing that only some people could understand. Finally, I had snapped into focus, just in time for the whole world to see. The eighties, with all its excess and opulence, had also been marred by darkness: the heaviness of crack cocaine, the AIDS epidemic, the crashes of S&Ls in the markets. There was a yearning for levity in the culture, the very same irreverence and sense of play that had animated me my whole life. A window opened. I stepped through it.”

ComedyDrag80s80s Music
Book:The House of Hidden Meanings
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“The men who could pass for straight if they wanted had a form of privilege that people like me, people who could never pass, never would. Later, when my career had blossomed, I would cross paths with masculine white gay men who looked at me with a kind of seething hatred, a self-loathing turned outward, their internalized homophobia like a sneer of contempt.”

LoveHateRelationshipsFateFameRacismLgbtq
Book:The House of Hidden Meanings
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“We learn about how to enslave the soul and how to enslave our brothers, by buying and selling things, buying and selling each other. But we can only go to the moon so many times, we can only do so much and buy so much. My sisters would tell me when I was growing up that in the future every body in our society was going to have eight pair of shoes. The idea was the that The People In Charge are going to make it better for the other people....I realized this wasn't going to happen. The Fat Controllers are only making it better for themselves. If they have their own way they will have eight million pairs of shoes, and everyone else will have to go without.”

LoveHumorHateRelationshipsMoneyFateMen And WomenParents And Children
Book:Lettin It All Hang Out: An Autobiography
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“The public wants a great product, but they also want more layers of value. So it's lifestyle, it's takeaway, it's entertainment. It's all of those things and social media facilitates a big chunk of that, because they want to touch and feel you, they want to talk to someone about it, they want to join a community of other people who dance to the beat of a different drummer.”

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Author:RuPaul
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