A large, muscular black man in a dress and bright pink lipstick asked a middle-aged White lady to hold a door open for him. Onlookers who numbered about fifteen or twenty gawked for a split second, then promptly switched to feigning impassive nonchalance.
The side show freak quality of this vignette was most pronounced in the reaction of the self-policing crowd. The Emperor has clothes…it’s a dress hiding a sausage, worn by a creature barking at the plebs in a lispy growl through neon natgeo lips…and we’re all supposed to act as if this is the most normal and natural thing in the world.
Is it humiliation if it’s self-induced?