Lady Madonna: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Kitsch

I love the Madonna Inn. From the neon pink dining room to the bedrooms brimming with velvet and patterns and shag carpet in colors I didn’t know existed, the whole place is what would happen if John Waters and Dolly Parton had a shared fever dream and then hired a flock of drag queens to make it come true.

There’s something deeply unselfconscious about the Madonna Inn, a feeling I found myself mirroring during the entire time I was there. Part of that is because it’s incredibly hard to be up in your own head when you’re sitting in the restaurant and marveling at their ability to make everything from the furnishings to the frosting on the cakes the same, vivid pink. But, more than that, the weirdness, the garishness, is so all-encompassing that I lost the ability to worry about whether the people around me were judging me. Because not a single guest could escape the kitsch; if they weren’t eating in the pink coated café or somehow-even-pinker dining room, they were checking into suites that looked like retro jungles or caves built by the tackiest cavepeople imaginable, complete with rock walls and waterfalls. We were all invested in the absurdity together

That’s what I love most about the Madonna Inn: it perfectly embodies “kitsch,” and embodies it so thoroughly that even the most determined hipster would struggle to look “cool” within its walls. It’s tacky, garish, over the top, descriptors I use fondly. But, there was a time when I would have flinched at that description and insisted that those were the wrong words. The inn is cool, not tacky; bold, not over the top. Because once upon a time, I was obsessed with being cool, and that obsession extended to my travels. Eventually I leaned into my affinity for kitsch, and I’m glad I did; because doing so gave me the tools to understand some of my favorite parts of myself, including my queerness.

Kitsch, like its cousin camp, is tricky to nail down. Instead of igniting similar arguments to the ones the internet had during the recent camp-themed Met Gala, I’m not going to try and give a unified definition of kitsch. Instead, I want to illustrate how being in a kitsch space feels so fundamentally different than being in any other kind of space.

For a clear demonstration of that difference, let’s look at my recent trip to Southern Nevada. I stayed two places: The Flamingo, in Las Vegas, and the Little A’le’inn in Rachel. I was equally excited for both when the journey began. The Flamingo, with its neon pink signage and towering bird statues at the doors, looked like a kitschy dream come true. But it refused to lean into it — Ii tried to be tasteful and appealing to everyone, and instead ended up a boring, depressing place with grab-bag aesthetics (to be fair, it’s a casino, it’s focus is on money more than anything, but damn was it dull).

The lack of anything enjoyably kitschy during my time in Vegas left me bored but and drained from all of the stimulus there that demanded my attention but failed to deliver anything interesting. The final leg of the trip was the extraterrestrial highway (so named due to frequent UFO sightings and the fact that it passes Area 51). The highway itself exemplifies what I think of as a uniquely American form of kitsch: endless stretches of road interrupted only by over-the-top sights like towering alien statues.

Arriving at the Little A’le’inn, I stepped out of the car and into a place that’s leapt head-first into the fact that it’s the closest motel to Area 51. Glowing UFO statues? Check. Alien-themed food and beverages? Yes indeed. Famous UFO photos decorating the trailer where I stayed? You bet. It was an oasis of weird after the overwhelming image-consciousness of Vegas.

As I wandered the grounds, taking in all the little UFO images and jokes dotting the area and keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes, I tried piecing together why I felt so much calmer and at home than I had at the Flamingo. Part of it was the stillness and silence; Rachel is so small it doesn’t even have a gas station, so aside from the handful of guests and other staff and a few residents, there was nothing and no one around for miles.
Deeper down, I felt relief at not having to convey any pretense for why I was there, because in kitschy spaces the draw, the reason for stopping, is made clear. I don’t have to cultivate detached coolness in them. Instead I can own my enthusiasm for whatever the focal point of the kitsch may be, even if it’s just weird for weirdness sake, because those spaces are built for that exact purpose. In the case of the Little A’le’inn, I was there to drink “alien’s blood” cocktails, to speculate on the true nature of the UFOs in the photos on the walls, to be in a place where my alien tank-top and Jackalope hat fit in perfectly. I was there because life is short, so why the hell not sleep in the place with a giant flying saucer out front?

Years ago, I would have told anyone who asked that of course I didn’t want to stay at the Little A’le’inn (even though I desperately did). I wanted to travel, as I wanted to do all things, the “right” way, and while that way may have allowed for a stop to take photos and laugh at the kitsch, it didn’t allow for reveling in it. I wanted my travels to be normal and cool, in retrospect because I didn’t want to face the potential pushback if people (my anxiety never bothered to specify who) discovered the truth.

Still, I was always drawn towards strange and kitschy places when traveling. I took a cursory look at my refrigerator while writing this: magnets from Roswell, “The Rattlesnake Museum,” and the “Loch Ness Research Center.” I looked down and remembered I was wearing a Winchester Mystery House shirt. Somewhere in between all those destinations, I came to terms with the fact that there was nothing to be gained by living inauthentically, whether that’s in terms of my sexual orientation or my travel preferences. Not to mention life gets much more interesting when you lean into all the weird diversity of tastes and experiences that exist rather than dismissing them. I also realized that my fondness for kitsch was somehow tied up with my queerness and, because I’m the way I am, kept poking at the connection to figure out where it came from.

I, and many other queer folks, struggle with is how visible and vocal to be. Being queer out in the world is a constant dance of deciding how much attention, intentional or not, you want to draw to yourself. Too much attention at the wrong time or place can be dangerous, even deadly. But in kitschier spaces,everyone is too busy gawking at all the hot pink and taxidermy and velvet paintings to notice if you have a gender nonconforming appearance or a jacket with many pins from the Autostraddle store.

More importantly, in many kitschy spaces strangeness or queerness no longer sticks out. Learning how to love kitsch and learning how to love my queerness both involved learning to accept the labels attached to them. When you look at the synonyms of kitsch, they include vulgar (“those kinds of relationships aren’t appropriate in children’s media”), showy (“I’m fine with gay people, but why do they have to draw attention to themselves “) and tawdry, (“ the gay ‘lifestyle’ is inherently immoral”). It’s not a perfect comparison by any means, given that no one’s passing legislation to keep people who like kitsch from accessing healthcare, but it helped me realize that many of the fears keeping me from embracing how much I loved kitschwere, on a deeper level, the fears that kept me from admitting my queerness to myself. Embracing kitschy spaces was a safe way of testing the waters to see if I could handle people’s reactions to my being non-normative in some way.

I keep thinking back on how playful and confident I felt while I was at the Madonna Inn. I was only a year or so out of college at that point, and was in the throes of figuring out exactly how I wanted to move in the world as the “adult” version of myself. For so long, I’d assumed grown-up Sam would somehow shed the parts of me that were unwieldy, that were too weird. I remember going shopping for interview clothes, choosing items for a life I did not yet lead, not quite recognizing the person looking at me from the mirror in muted colors. I grew increasingly unsure if I wanted the life I was steering her towards. Smack in the middle of that deliberation, I found myself in the bright blue and yellow-tiled bathroom of the daisy-motiffed Marguerite room at the Madonna Inn, adjusting my sequined dress and putting on make-up that rivaled the tiles in its color. The woman putting on her eyeliner in the mirror was instantly recognizable — she was the version of myself I saw in my daydreams, confident in the way she looked, in what she wanted, in the things and people she loved. I’d conjured her to the forefront of myself without a second thought, because who else but the most unafraid, unashamed version of me could star in the technicolor story the kitschy space around me was telling.

The more I traveled as an adult, the more I noticed that version of myself coming out whenever I stepped into kistchier spaces. She didn’t always look or act exactly the same way, but the confidence and enthusiasm remained consistent. Being in places that took pride in their weirdness made it feel natural to take pride in my own.

Traveling to kitschy places taught me to embrace loving things, including myself, deeply and unironically. I think that’s part of why I, and many other queer folks, find those spaces resonant. When the very idea of you loving who you do is still stigmatized by so many, I find there’s an instinct to love expansively. To love harder and more when others say you ought to love less. When you understand that there are certain people who will look down on you no matter how you express your queerness, it allows you the freedom to stop worrying about whether the people, places, and things you love are “right.” Sometimes it feels like that’s all we as queer people have left; our willingness and ability to love broadly and unironically, to build homes and families and pockets of brightness in a world that grows grimmer by the day. To remind ourselves that there are absurd and colorful and wonderful reasons to keep fighting.

Humans have the intelligence, creativity, drive to create any number of innovations and tools. On my worst days, I feel like we put all that potential and capability into finding new ways to harm each other. It’s when I stand in front of the unnecessarily elaborate music machines at House on The Rock, or the too-pink lounge of the Madonna Inn, that I remember we are also a species that can devote immense effort to harmless feats of passion and absurdity. We erect halves of Cadillacs in the desert and encourage passersby to spray paint them. We build museums dedicated to creatures that help us believe in a world that still holds wondrous secrets instead of terrible ones. We look at a dull room and instead of bowing to the belief that safe and muted is the proper state of the world say “well, this could do with some lime green paint and a waterfall.”

It’s a similar feeling that washes over me when I’m at Pride or other explicitly queer spaces. How wonderful to be in a place bursting with the full diversity of human expression. How lovely to be part of a community that embraces the strange, the colorful, the sincere. Queer spaces serve as reminders of how odd and varied our experiences are as humans, and that the strangeness, the difference, is something to celebrate. I feel at home in those spaces in a way I don’t anywhere else. And I’ve learned that, if I’m missing them or can’t seem to locate them, there’s often a shag carpeted, velvet-lined trail of kitsch to help me find my way.🗺️

Edited by rachel.

Spook for the Summer: Warm Weather Looks for Dark Hearts

It’s no secret that the venn diagram of “queer people” and “people who would dress themselves entirely from the Target Halloween collection” contains a lot of overlap. We can be a spooky, gothic, witchy bunch. But as the days turn warmer, long black clothes and heavy sweaters with bats on them get harder to pull off without risking heat stroke.

But never fear! There is a whole host of ways that you can express your creepy self without melting into a puddle. Even for folks who don’t spend all summer dreaming of Halloween, a little spookiness offers a nice change from the never-ending parade of pineapples and seahorses coating everything during the warmer months. Whether you’ve got a specific spooky style to maintain or are looking to mix-and-match, there’s something in here to set your dark heart aflutter.

Spooky Femme

1/ Beachin Hat
2/ Consider it Done Sandals
3/ Bat crop top
4/ Bat dress
5/ Monster Skirt
6/ Skelemingo bag

Do you wish you could walk out of the house looking like the lovechild of Elvira and Miss Frizzle? Are you constantly searching for new ways to accessorize with bat prints, bones, or occult symbols? Then you may just be a spooky femme, and you’ve got plenty of options for looking cute and creepy all summer long.

Boo-tiful Butches

1/ Bless this Mess T-Shirt
2/ Strappy Camper Sandals
3/ Cryptid Button-Up
4/ Future Corpse Hoodie
5/ Ultimate WildFang Shorts
6/ Lesbian Werewolf Hat

If your look is somewhere along the lines of dad friend meets Gomez Addams on his day off, here are options to keep you cool and comfy (plus a light sweatshirt for midnight gatherings). Whether you’re barbecuing for your ghouls or camping with some cryptids, these looks are sure to turn heads.

Fear the Utility Queer

1/ Destroy All Men Who Abuse their Power Fanny Pack
2/ Frankenstein Flip-Flops
3/ Ghost Shorts
4/ Queer Vampire Pin
5/ Nothing to Lose Tank Top ($5 from every shirt goes to the Trans Lifeline)
6/ Haunted Dessert Skirt (with Pockets)

Some days, a spooky queer is less concerned with fashion and more concerned with not dropping dead from the hideous heat of the day-star. And with having sufficient pockets in which to keep chapstick, keys, small skulls, and other necessities should you have to venture outside your lair. Here are some looks that let your queer, weird self shine without compromising practicality.

Ghoulish Grab-Bag

1/ Death’s Head Leggings
2/ Demon Summoning Skirt (with Pockets)
3/ Gender Roles are Dead Cutoff
4/ Classic Horror Shorts
5/ Suspender Skeleton Skirt
6/ Vampire Top

In need of a skirt to help you summon a demonic companion? Want a shirt that expresses your belief that gender roles should be buried six feet under? Haven’t seen anything in the previous sections that fits your style? Then these pieces may just be for you.

Horror of Party Beach

1/ Batwing Sunglasses
2/ Coffin Float
3/ Disturbia Kosmos One-Piece
4/ Macabre Beach Read (I recommend “From Here to Eternity” by Caitlin Doughty).
5/ Kraken Towel
6/ Mesh Cover-Up
7/ The Meow Tote
8/ Tomboy X Unisex Suit
9/ Tombstone Suit

Whether it’s your local lake with a horrific past, a beach town beset by vampires, or your friends’ pool, here are some items and outfits to help create your own black lagoon wherever you roam.

Adorn Your Flesh

1/ Adopocer Lotion in Deathly Dreams
2/ Fluide Starlite Nail Polish
3/ Jack Perfume
4/ Sunscreen
5/ The Black and Purple Hoe Out Lipstick and Glitter Set
6/ Graveyard Scrub

While Pumpkin Spice season is far away and pastels are everywhere, there remains a bevy of options for the spooky queer looking to coat their flesh-prison in pleasing colors and nice scents during the hot months.

Now go forth and look fabulous, you wonderful creatures of the night!

Throw the Ultimate Queer Halloween Party!

Halloween is creeping up on us, and I couldn’t be more excited — picture me doing a Julie Andrews-esque Sound of Music spin through the aisles of a Halloween superstore. Not surprising, given that I was the little kid who wanted a Count Von Count doll instead of an Elmo. All across the internet, our queer brethren are gearing up for this most spooky of months.

Halloween is so often treated as a sort of gay Christmas that being a queer person who adores Halloween feels a bit cliché. But the holiday is so dear to so many of us — for some, dressing for a Halloween party was how they first expressed their true gender; for others, it promises a night spent with like-minded friends rather than judgmental relatives of Easter or Christmas. And many of us find that this time of year, strangeness and otherness are just a little bit more welcome.

Because there’s so much awfulness in the world right now, celebrating the things we love feels all the more urgent. So, let’s celebrate it in style!

This guide includes three different party options, because while some of us love a glitter-fueled, spooky dance party with fellow creatures of the night, others of us prefer something on the mellower side. Whether you’re a seasoned monster masher looking for new ideas or hoping to throw your first Halloween bash, something here should strike your fancy. And, of course, you can always mix and match to stitch together your own Frankenstein’s monster of a party.

Grim Grinning Ghosts

Do you prefer your Halloween more silly than scary? Do you find yourself watching even the mildest horror movies through your fingers? Then this is the party for you! It also works great for folks who have kids or like to be in bed by 9 P.M.

For the décor, channel your favorite spooky yet scaredy-cat friendly theme, be that The Haunted Mansion, Hocus Pocus, or Bunnicula. That means lots of puns; lots of bright green, purple, and orange to complement the black; and zero gore or grossness.

1 / Spooky Eyes
2 / Haunted Mirror
3 / Easy Ghosts
4 / Purple Lights
5 / Pun Tombstone
6 / Animated Crystal Ball
7 / Ghost Hand Lights

Menu

This spread is very much inspired by the beloved Halloween parties my mom threw when I was a kid. Most of it can be scaled up or down easily, so while you’ve got a small coven coming or a mansion’s worth of ghosts to host, you’ll be set.

+ Graveyard Cake: I’ve eaten this every Halloween for the past two decades. There is nothing remotely nutritionally redeeming about it. It’s a thing of beauty.
+ Black Widow Cocktail: A drink with just the right amount of venom.
+ Ghost Punch: Free of boo-ze, but not boos! Use this tutorial to add ghostly shapes into the mixture
+ Pumpkin Chili: Tastes like fall and can be made vegetarian friendly by taking out the meat or swapping it for faux-meat.
+ Purple and Green Swirl Bread: Perfect for ghosts and foolish mortals alike.

Costumes to Keep Away the Chills

If you’re going with a specific cultural item, like The Haunted Mansion, as part of your theme, then you can match your costume for maximum commitment; a classic and not-too-scary Halloween monster like a werewolf or vampire is an excellent fit. The tone of the shindig also lends itself well to pun costumes or pop culture nods, so if you’ve been itching to bust out that “Netflix and Chill” costume, now’s your chance.

If you’re not looking for a full-out costume, here are some options that keep with an overall vibe that’s casual, comfy, and just a tad spooky.

1 / Pumpkin Cardigan
2 / I Put a Spell on You Button Down
3 / Every Day Is Halloween Dress
4 / Skeleton Cameo
5 / Put Fab First Wide-Leg Pants
6 / Purple Bat Dress

Playlist:

Black Bat Bash

Want to channel your inner Addams Family? Do you spend your free time discussing the queer coding of old monster movies? Then this is the macabre soirée for you, with an equal balance of spooky and swanky.

To set the scene, put together a mixture of black and white decorations with plenty of unsettling touches until it looks like you’re having an afterparty in the Twilight Zone. Toss in plenty of ravens, skulls, and bats to tie the room together and you’re set.

1 / Bat Balloons
2 / Bat Lights
3 / Eyeball Roses
4 / Black Candelabras 
5 / Bloody Candles
6 / Spider Web Table Layout

Menu

A selection that keeps things classy while assuring you that, yep, you’re at a Halloween party.

+ Cheesy Spider Plate: Use the tutorial to make your cheesy arachnid, then select the rest of your spread using these tips from Cheese, Sex, Death.
+ Bat Finger Sandwiches: The recipe calls for pumpernickel and pimento, but you can adjust with whatever bread and filling you prefer.
+ Pumpkin Spice Cake: Makes for a lovely dessert and, assuming you survive the night, breakfast the next morning.
+ Waltzing with Vincent: Vincent Price was the king of horror, bisexual, and an honorary board member of PFLAG. Raise a toast in his honor with this cocktail.
+ Dracula’s Daughter: Best imbibed while contemplating the history of lesbian vampire movies.

Devilishly Good Looks

If you’re going for a full-out costume, you’ll want to pick something that works with the “classic” elements of the theme. You could come as a zombified, ghostly, or perfectly alive version of your favorite old Hollywood icon (perhaps one of the era’s most prolific queer women) or as your favorite character from the early days of horror. The good folks at Dear Darkling have an amazing round-up of ways to dress like Universal Horror Monsters that don’t require you to wear a rubber suit all night or tease your hair up a wire cage á la Elsa Lancaster.

Given their retro clout and black-and-white color schemes, coming as any member of the Addams Family or the Munsters is also an excellent option. Bonus points if you and your partner come dressed as Morticia and Gomez and spend the whole night romancing each other.

Not in the mood to get too decked out? Check out these appropriately macabre outfit options.

1 / Blazer
2 / Morticia Dress
3 / Spooky Mini Dress
4 / Black Dress Pants
5 / Bat Flats
6 / Bride Earrings
7 / Bat Bow Tie

Playlist:

Scary Monsters & Super Creeps

This is for those children of the night who don’t mind getting a little gory, a little sexy, and super queer. Halloween may come just once a year, but you don’t let that stop you from striking fear into those who would force you into the shadows during the other 364 days. My wild and untamed things, this night is for you.

Fill your lair with black, red, and spatters of glittery gore. Tuck grotesque touches into each corner, coat hallways with eerie red light, and don’t be afraid to make things a bit bloody.

1 / Blood Spattered Table
2 / Vamp Banner
3 / Disembodied Heads
4 / Enter If You Dare Neon
5 / Red Orb Lights
6 / Bloody Handprints

Menu

Lay this selection of snacks out on the slab so guests can grab a snack between bouts of dancing, raising the dead, and flirting with the cute girl who came dressed as the Jersey Devil.

+ Bloody Brains: Mmmm, brains.
+ Bloody Fizz : For an added buzz, pretend it’s the blood of your enemies.
+ Hail, Hades: A luscious mix of pomegranate and tequila.
+ Pizza Skulls: A great option for any stoner zombies in attendance.
+ Bat Wings: These are one of the more involved recipes I’ve included, but the gruesome payoff is worth it.

Dress to Kill

Literally anything goes here, costume-wise. Sexy vampire? Extremely modest werewolf? Right on! Comfortable-with-her-sexuality-yet-shy ghoul? You do you!

Parties like this are often the ones where I, at least, find myself delving into the deepest depths of wish fulfillment. This year, for instance, I’m likely going as a modern Medusa because there are some men who deeply need to be turned to stone right now. You too may want to draw on your idols, your icons, the characters or creatures whose power you wish to channel: Nancy from The Craft, Dana Scully, Hela, Okoye, Rosa Diaz, or whoever speaks to your queer heart.

If you’d prefer some awesome, creepy, non-costume duds, here are some to get you started.

1 / Fang Dress
2 / B-Movie Mini Dress
3 / Elvira Jacket
4 / Mail Order Monster T-Shirt
5 / Slasher Skinny Jean
6 / Studded Black Boots
7 / Creature of the Night Pin

Playlist:

Go forth and have a ball!

Nessie Is My Girlfriend: What Is it With Queer People and Cryptids?

Last summer I regained touch with the cryptozoological community, a space I adored as a kid. Cryptozoology is the study of cryptids, entities that may or may not exist. This includes animals that aren’t scientifically recognized as real, like Bigfoot or Mothman as well as animals like the Tasmanian Tiger that are classified as extinct but that some believe are still living. While they may not technically be cryptids, creatures like werewolves, vampires, and ghosts are usually included in the interests of the average cryptid-lover. The cryptozoological community is a cultural space where UFO researchers, people who would eagerly buy a haunted house to talk to the ghosts, and people who believe in the possibility of everything from vampires to lake monsters mingle together. I came into the community as a member of that last category. I was a weird little kid who asked her parents for a Count Von Count doll rather than an Elmo doll because I loved vampires. I became obsessed with the Loch Ness Monster so early on in my development that the reason for the obsession is lost to my memory. What I do remember is flipping through the same four or five cryptid books in the library, a fear of the unknown mixing with excitement at the thought that there were so many strange, compelling things on offer in the world. Possessing the stubborn optimism of a child I reasoned that if I ever met a cryptid I would befriend it, because who said monsters were automatically bad? Maybe they just wanted someone to talk to. I know I did. In those days the cryptozoology community existed in pockets, with stories and theories about creatures passed on via books and T.V shows. As far as I knew, there was no other kid in my suburban town who was a member of the Loch Ness Monster Fan Club (a gift from a family friend who’d gone to Scotland) or who made charts comparing Bigfoot to the Yeti. Without a space to share them, I let my interest in cryptids go dormant, indulging it now and then with an episode of Animal X, a book of folklore or, with the help of my mom, a cherished pilgrimage to Loch Ness.

Loch Ness Monster, by Sophie Argetsinger

Fifteen years after little me sat studying monsters, adult me was a displaced Californian in Wisconsin, halfway through a draining graduate program. To lessen my stress, I needed to feed my creativity and explore my surroundings, and I realized Wisconsin had a lot of cryptids. I decided to visit locations associated with cryptids and write about them. I started a Tumblr called Midwestern Monster Hunt dedicated to my adventures and to sharing stories of the weird, macabre, and strange. I began following blogs devoted to lovingly curating blurry photos dotted with red circles, grainy images of discs in the sky, or puns about Mothman.

The more involved in cryptid and paranormal spaces I became, the more queer people seemed to pop up. There were people claiming The Flatwoods Monster is a lesbian, running blogs specifically for men who loved men (but also loved monsters), and designing pride flags featuring a different cryptid for each sexual orientation or gender identity. If this sounds suspiciously like the Gay Babadook meme, it’s because that joke and the queer presence in the cryptid community are close cousins. You can read a full run-down of where the meme came from and how it spread here, but basically The Babadook was miscategorized into the LGBT section on instead of the horror section on Netflix and some queer folks decided to embrace it as a new icon. The Babadook isn’t a cryptid, as it doesn’t inhabit the space between real and unreal and is instead explicitly fictitious. It doesn’t inhabit the “my existence is accepted but also denied” experience that draws many queer people to cryptids. However, the Gay Babadook is a very visible example of how easily queer culture and monster culture bleed into each other. It also emphasizes the role humor plays in that overlap. Lots of the content created by queer cryptid lovers is silly. Sometimes the humor is in imagining something potentially frightening, like Mothman, in a ridiculous situation (like continually crashing into streetlights like the giant moth he is). Other times, the humor is self-aware jokes that you should just date Bigfoot because you too are hairy and would like to live in the woods. But as I dug further into cryptid spaces, I found the overlap with queerness has deeper, more complex roots than a handful of jokes

In order to get to those roots, I interviewed my fellow bloggers and did my own digging to answer the question: Why are cryptid spaces so queer?

The Flatwoods Monster, by Sophie Argetsinger

For starters, they’re just weird. In weird spaces, non-normative orientations and identities feel less stigmatized. This can lead to a cycle where there start to be more and more queer and trans people in a space, further claiming it for those communities. And while there will be bigots in every cultural space, circles with “oddball” reputations tend to feel more accepting. As one blogger put it, in the event that their identity is challenged in cryptid spaces, they feel like they can better defend it because they’ve got a built in trump card: “you’re going to tell me you believe in Bigfoot but not gay people?” To them, and to others I spoke to, the idea of homophobia and transphobia existing in cryptid spaces was absurd because those spaces are explicitly built on the premise of accepting things that “normal” society won’t. Blogger Aislinn pointed out that the kind of people who gravitate towards cryptid spaces are, if anything, too eager to believe and accept things. While some cryptid lovers are skeptics (including myself) and others simply believe the creatures to be folklore, the majority firmly believe that cryptids are out there. They believe that our current understandings of the world are incomplete and that people should be open-minded to ideas that don’t fit tidily into their worldview. In other words, people in cryptid spaces are primed to be accepting of the unfamiliar, making them feel like safer spaces in which to express queerness. When they stepped into cryptid spaces, none of the inteviewees encountered the disbelief or rejection they’d received from family and community members. Some interviewees even cited that rejection as the reason they’d moved towards cryptid communities, as they believed finding the weirdos would bring them to a space where they were welcome. Online this is certainly the case, to the point that nearly every time I follow a cryptid blog it’s run by a queer person or a vocal ally. That pattern falters offline, partially because it’s not as easy to filter your interactions and because well-known cryptozoologists are generally white, cis, straight men. However, internet cryptid communities are acting as launching pad for young, queer cryptid lovers to create movies and webseries and attend conferences. If even a handful of those people maintain their involvement in offline cryptid spaces, chances are good that those spaces will become queerer as time goes on.

There’s also a hunger for representation running through this phenomenon. It’s not news that even in 2018, queer representation in media is not at the levels it should be. This presents a particularly interesting dynamic in the context of monster stories of which cryptids are a subset. Those stories generally hinge on some outside menace, some “other” threatening the status quo. But when you’re part of a marginalized group, be that queer folks, people of color, disabled folks, or any other identity that’s pushed into the shadows, the status quo mixed with the absence of anyone resembles you becomes menacing. The questions becomes: are those who are different being hidden, or are they hiding to protect themselves from harm? Cryptids embody both of those possibilities. They capture the feeling of being hidden because they are seen fleetingly or not at all, something many queer people can relate to. Cat, a Tumblr user, theorised that, “we (queer people) are hidden and so are these things so maybe we just subconsciously find solidarity in that.” Another user, Calvin, added, “enjoying the hidden things that no one talks about can be really fun for those who feel invisible in their own world.” I think we can extend that solidarity queer people feel for cryptids further by considering how both may hide out of self-preservation, because they are seen as a threat to be eradicated. Just as there are endless, soul-destroying debates about whether certain members of the queer community are a threat to various spaces, so too are there debates about whether cryptids are a menace to humans. For instance, blogger Savannah explained her fascination with Mothman as partially due to his being tied to a tragedy he may have had nothing to do with; the collapse of the Silver Bridge in West Virginia. In 1975, author Jack Keel claimed the collapse was in some way connected to the sightings of Mothman that occurred at approximately the same time, leading some theorists to blame the incident on the cryptid. The idea of being falsely framed as a threat strikes a chord for many queer people, and adds another reason why cryptids and queer people may be pushed into hiding. Nice, normal people want them to stay far away so that the community will remain safe. It’s not that those doing the pushing are against things and people that are different, oh goodness no. They just want the abominations to stay over there in the woods, so that they can’t do anything to the children.

Maybe familiarity with that baseless fear is why, when cryptids appear in stories, queer people embrace them. After all, the people who clutch their pearls and bite their knuckles in terror at monsters never really look like you do they? They look like the polite neighbors who clicks their tongue about “those people.” The dashing hero brings to mind the nice young men who hurl slurs at you like handfuls of rocks. If you’re not represented by the heroes and the civilians, that leaves two choices: accept that people like you don’t exist in that world, or lay claim to the creatures the status quo fears. Many queer people do, choosing to embrace the parts of themselves that are labeled monstrous. Queer coding of villains and monsters, and queer people’s response to that coding, has a long and complicated history that I won’t get into here. What I will say is there can be a lot of power in saying, “yes, I don’t fit within your narrow worldview, and I do not give two flying fucks about it.” If they won’t let you swim in their school, become a sea monster and devour them.

It doesn’t all boil down to power and menace. There’s a subversion in taking something unknown and feared and making it gentle and protective. In taking that which is labeled monstrous and naming it lovable. That’s exactly what a lot of cryptid-loving queers do. While cryptids in popular media are framed as dangerous (looking at you, two zillion Bigfoot hunting shows), the queer lens characterizes them as maternal figures, friends, or even potential partners. Over the last few months, especially in spaces like Tumblr, unrelated cryptids (as in, ones that belong to totally different countries) are being drawn in groups, a paranormal embodiment of the chosen family. Mothman is a favorite in these pictures, as is Bigfoot, the Fresno Nightcrawler, and The Flatwoods Monster (with the word monster often swapped out for “momster”). People also draw ads for Cryptid dating sites and joke about dating Bigfoot or Nessie. I asked why certain cryptids are depicted more than others, but many people said they just felt inexplicably drawn to a particular cryptid. Calvin did offer one reason, which is that they are non-binary and feel that a lot of their favorite cryptids could be non-binary too. I can follow that logic, especially in the case of the Flatwoods Monster and the Fresno Nightcrawler as they are presumed to be aliens and thus would not fit into earthly gender binaries. And if these creatures don’t have human notions and biases about gender (or sexuality, for that matter), maybe they’ll see queer people as kindred spirits and take them in. That might sound silly, and it might sound like a stretch, but the more I thought about it the less it surprised me that these friendly cryptid portrayals are created by queer people. Many of the creators are queer youth or young adults, people who want to build chosen families but whose age and resources make doing so difficult. When you’re in that position, you find creative ways to build a community, and maybe one of those ways is stitching together a cryptid family to escape into. Blogger FrankenLouie spoke about their experiences saying, “I’ve been dealing with a lot of parental abandonment and I like making characters and mythical creatures into sort of replacement parents. So giving them aspects of identities that I can relate to can make them seem safer.” Even if you’re an older cryptid-loving queer, these images can still offer you something you hunger for. When the structures and people that are supposed to protect you instead erase, oppress, or harass you, it’s comforting to imagine a world in which you can be welcomed into a space and enfolded in the warm embrace of Mothman or Bigfoot (not to mention Mothman looks soft as hell and probably feels like one of those fuzzy, Nordic throw blankets Google keeps trying to sell me).

Mothman illustrated by Sophie Argetsinger

Playing with the way cryptids are viewed introduces a new narrative, an alternative interpretation of stories both old and new. In that way, we can see it as an extension of something we’re called upon to do all the time: challenge the stories our culture tells itself, whether those are historical accounts that erase queer people or or movies that seldom bother to include us. An element I identified through my research was that interactions between queer people and cryptids act as wish fulfillment on a couple of levels. Cryptids thrive in isolation, in places juuuust out of reach of human hands. In the current social and political climate, a life of isolation in the New Jersey Pine Barrens or the woods of the Pacific Northwest sounds tempting to many of us. Throw in the fantasy of hanging out as part of a big cryptid chosen family and it’s easy to see why queer people become attached to the idea of cryptids. To some, they can basically represent a (slightly) weirder, spookier version of A-Camp.

There’s one more piece at play in this phenomenon. A sentiment I heard from multiple interviewees and have heard elsewhere in my life as a queer advocate, is that queer people have their experiences and existence denied all the time. Aislinn said that collecting evidence and defending the existence of cryptids, whether it’s in a serious or joking way, is doing for others what they wish was done for them. They pointed out that, “we can make the choice to validate the beast as something to fear, or inspire sympathy for it and promote its protection. I know that personally holds something empowering.” My friend Jess stated that cryptid culture provides an acknowledgement of the liminal space that it can feel like you inhabit when queer. For her, when she struggles to claim space in the world, when she wonders if she’s being seen for what and who she really is, the liminal spaces that cryptids inhabit (between known and unknown, real and fictional) start to feel familiar. In her mind, when you’re queer you feel a kinship with creatures that may never have their existence truly accepted and who remain outcast due to that lack of acceptance. Interviewee Jesse explained her interest in cryptids thusly: “maybe I’ve been drawn to them because they’re just as “weird” on the outside as I felt (feel?) on the inside. But I also remember wondering a lot about how cryptids might live. Like, day to day in their environment. I spent a lot of time thinking about them being in the woods alone. Wondering if they’re sad, if they’re lonely, if they’ve made friends with the animals like I do. I guess when you feel like an outcast (I usually had a hard time making friends) you become curious about other outcasts.” The outcast nature of cryptids generates curiosity, but also carries an element of fear. Cryptids tap into the fear of living a lonely, unconfirmed existence that many queer people feel. The worry that you’ll end up isolated somewhere, never fully recognized as valid.

For me, and for many of the people I spoke to, claiming cryptids as queer is a way to fight against that fear. When I step into cryptid spaces, I see people humanizing creatures in a way they wish others would humanize them while also connecting with other queer people. At the same time they’re creating art that de-isolates their favorite cryptids and gives them a big, hairy family, they’re pushing back against their own isolation by finding their people. I know that participating in the community makes me feel less alone. I’ve found other people in the wilderness and they have found me.The cryptids that fascinate us are at once entry point and anchor, introducing and connecting queer people to one another. In a world that’s often hostile, I’m grateful that monsters give me a way to find my community. The phenomenon makes me feel that in the event that the real monsters show up, I’ll have a people standing with me to face them.