Drop Dead Gorgeous — Horror &. Gender Conflict
“Men are afraid women will laugh at them…women are afraid men will kill them” (Margaret Atwood). At the heart of horror is the struggle of gender conflict. Camp, satirical or bloodthirsty, the interplay of gender in all forms of media surrounding crime and horror say so much about the way women are seen and treated in the day to day and this is at the heart of my latest release ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’
RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Sharon Needles expressed the draw of horror in an interview with The BFI in saying that they are “irreverent, strange and in no way reflect reality, while dealing with real characters” like “real life cartoons”. For me, dealing with real life characters in situations that are obscene, supernatural and theatrical reflects the world through human eyes, just on steroids. The woman running from the killer says so much about how women are seen and how we see the every day world.
My fascination with Sharon’s form of drag, as well as that of Divine is the very idea that their draw to feminity is wrapped up in horror. Horror feeds into both archetypes of femininity, the vulnerability of the fleeing woman and the imposing, suggestive flamboyance of the female killer; it’s the modern expression of the virgin-whore complex. You can see this in the cult classic ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’; you have Janet, the drippy damsel in distress, pitched against the irreverent and suggestive Dr. Frankenfurter. Tim Curry’s performance in drag allows for a different breed of woman on screen, the glamorous criminal mastermind who manages to dominate all characters beyond their gender. I love this character so much because the interplay between his masculinity and femininity makes it all very human; its about one humans bitterness and sadness rather than that of a man or a woman.
What I wanted to achieve with ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’ was to use both archetypes it the same context; to have the power and fear side by side. The female victim is rarely jealous, passionate or bitter just as the female killer is never vulnerable or anything less than flamboyant. However, the song is also a kill or be killed response. Infamous serial killer Ed Kemper was quoted to say that there were two things he thought of when seeing a beautiful woman walk down the street: the first was that he would want to take her out on a date and the second was that he wondered what her head would look like on a stick.

Violence against women is a reality in every country worldwide and if we’ve learnt anything over the last year or so, too much of it goes un-addressed. We’re even looking at a world where we have recordings of the President of the US laughing about groping women, using what I would describe as violent language. As a response, women need to be allowed to be victim and killer; to be vulnerable and powerful, and not penalised for either. In my own small way, I’m using horror as my medium of reclaiming both of these things.
You can listen to my song Drop Dead Gorgeous on all platforms here https://lnk.to/DropDeadEloiseMe