Can I Get an Amen?
I didn't know about RuPaul until I was 23. Dallas introduced me to RuPaul's Drag Race during Season 6, shortly after we met. I struggled whenever RuPaul would ask at the end of every episode "Can I get an Amen?" It was a little too close to some of my religious damage and was shocking to see such a prominent drag queen use a blatantly religious reference, but RuPaul was too fun to not watch. Soon we were watching Starrbooty and playing RuPaul's music videos on repeat.
It's easy to get lost in the fun with RuPaul, and everybody loves to have fun, but I learned the most about RuPaul through their book, "Workin' It!: RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style". In it, RuPaul describes part of their spiritual practice.
The idea is that your existential experience is multi-faceted. There is your mortal self, your higher self, and your inner saboteur. Your mortal self is your consciousness and where you make your day to day decisions. Your inner saboteur is the whisper that gives you insecurities, doubts, and self prescribed limitations. Your higher self is all of your love, strength, and powerful force for good in the world. Your higher self is like god within you and is what the inner saboteur seeks to prevent. For artists, this god-self becomes realized when we are sharing our talents.
As somebody who has struggled with religious abuse, it has been healing to claim within myself a source of light that leads back to divinity. I had a vague understanding of the higher self before reading RuPaul's book, but the depth to which RuPaul explored the conversation empowered me. As I have been creating art for the Fame Collection, I have come to terms with the fact that I am expressing my own higher self by paying tribute to the gods and goddesses of pop-culture that have helped shape me into who I am today.
Afterall...
"If you can't love yourself, how in the Hell you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an Amen?"
It's easy to get lost in the fun with RuPaul, and everybody loves to have fun, but I learned the most about RuPaul through their book, "Workin' It!: RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style". In it, RuPaul describes part of their spiritual practice.
The idea is that your existential experience is multi-faceted. There is your mortal self, your higher self, and your inner saboteur. Your mortal self is your consciousness and where you make your day to day decisions. Your inner saboteur is the whisper that gives you insecurities, doubts, and self prescribed limitations. Your higher self is all of your love, strength, and powerful force for good in the world. Your higher self is like god within you and is what the inner saboteur seeks to prevent. For artists, this god-self becomes realized when we are sharing our talents.
As somebody who has struggled with religious abuse, it has been healing to claim within myself a source of light that leads back to divinity. I had a vague understanding of the higher self before reading RuPaul's book, but the depth to which RuPaul explored the conversation empowered me. As I have been creating art for the Fame Collection, I have come to terms with the fact that I am expressing my own higher self by paying tribute to the gods and goddesses of pop-culture that have helped shape me into who I am today.
Afterall...
"If you can't love yourself, how in the Hell you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an Amen?"
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