In the UK the highest honor that can bestowed on remarkable women who have made notable contributions to our culture by HM The Queen is a Damehood. Think Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench and even Dame Joan Collins.
There are how others, not quite as famous, that qualify for this too and they tend to be honoured by A Queen instead on THE Queen. Take Dame Berta for example. This old-fashioned gal is a Drag Queen who loves to stay faithful to the Shakespearean version of drag when it was illegal for women to tread the boards. As a result, men appeared on stage – playing roles from scripts annotated with the letters “DRAG” – meaning dressed as girl
Because of the risk of theatre closure and prosecution, the audience and any casual observers had to know that these characters were men, so make up and clothing became extreme parodies of women with extreme makeup, false boobs and, of course, wigs or headwear to match.
It’s the headwear part that separates Dame Berta from the rest of the crowd. When she played in pantomimes she wanted outrageous wigs that could contain teapots, emergency sewing kits or bottles of some magical potion to help out in the wild world of Aladdin or Peter Pan. The bigger the better. Finding nothing available commercially, she had to find a way to make headwear work for her and she was so successful at it, that others (lesser Dames etc) were demanding her wigs and headpieces too. So she started her own cottage industry FOAMWIGS where everyone can look now buy her creations and look (almost ) as glamorous as The Dame herself. Here’s a few of Queerguru’s favorites
https://foamwigs.uk/foamies/ https://www.facebook.com/foamwigs.uk/
Labels: 2019, Dame Berta, wigs
