BY RUTH CARR
Los Alamos

As some may know, Lil Miss Hot Mess is a University of Arizona professor under the name of Harris Kornstein. In collaboration with another researcher, they have published a paper on the purpose behind Drag Queen Story Hour, which directly addresses some of the presumptions made by those in town. “Drag Pedagogy: The Playful Practice of Queer Imagination in Early Childhood” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03626784.2020.1864621 

There is an intended purpose behind these performances, and simple fun and empathy are not one of them. As a scholar, Lil Miss Hot Mess is intentionally manipulating buzzwords to gain access to children for their published agenda. “It is undeniable that DQSH participates in many of these tropes of empathy, from the marketing language the programme uses to its selection of books. Much of this is strategically done in order to justify its educational value.” 

Certainly some will be supportive, regardless, but let us not extrapolate to insert personal biases to justify that support and focus on the intended purpose “play as praxis, aesthetic transformation, strategic defiance, destigmatization of shame, and embodied kinship.”