Children’s show features man dressed as a woman singing and dancing, encouraging young viewers to become a drag queen
A children’s show on PBS, funded by the New York City Department of Education, featured a drag queen named “Little Miss Hot Mess” singing, dancing, and reading a book about drag queens to a target audience of three to eight-year-olds.
“Today I’m going to read from my own book, which is ‘The Hips On the Drag Queen Go Swish Swish Swish,’” Little Miss Hot Mess tells the viewers.
“I am a drag queen and a children’s book author,” he continues, “and you may be wondering to yourself: ‘What on earth is a drag queen?'”
The host describes drag queens to the children as “everyday people who like to play pretend and dress up as often as we can,” adding that drag queens are also “leaders in our community, and if you ask me: we make pretty good role models.”
Little Miss Hot Mess’s website describes the book as a tool to “encourage readers to boldly be exactly who they are.” The website also claims the author is “a founding member of the nationally recognized Drag Queen Story Hour.”
The author explained, “I wrote this book because I wanted everyone to get to experience the magic of drag and to get a little practice shaking their hips or shimmying their shoulders to know how we can feel fabulous inside of our own bodies.”
At one point during the twelve-minute video, Little Miss Hot Mess tells the audience, “I think we might have some drag queens in training on our hands.”
Reactions to the performance centered around the inappropriateness of children as young as three being exposed to questionably sexual behavior.
In March a Missouri Republican lawmaker received death threats after introducing a bill that would ban Drag Queen Story hour.
State Rep. Ben Baker introduced H.B. 2044, the Parental Oversight Of Public Libraries Act, which sought to ban Drag Queen Story Hour in public libraries. The bill was met with fierce opposition from the American Library Association, and LGBTQ activists. H.B. 2044 would strip government aid from libraries that allow minors access to “age-inappropriate sexual materials.” These materials include any description or representation of “nudity, sexuality, sexual conduct or sadomasochistic abuse.”
The bill would require libraries to institute a “parental review board” elected by the community. The review boards would determine whether any sexual material offered by the library is “age-inappropriate sexual material.”
Under H.B. 2044 library personnel who “willfully” violate or refuse to follow these rules could be punished by a fine of up to $500 or imprisoned in the county jail for no more than a year.