"All Hail the Queen"

I hope to be proven wrong, but I believe there is a lack of appreciation for camp.

No, not summer camp. No, not Jesus camp. I'm talking about Bette Davis serving up roast rat to a wheelchair-bound Joan Crawford; Aunt Clara falling out of a fireplace and dropping her fine collection of door knobs all over Samantha's living room floor; Paul Lynde in the Center Square; Suzanne Sugarbaker loving each and every one of her crowns, spitting venom at the thought of Miss Valdosta Feed and Grain or Helen Van Patterson Patton, and waxing poetic about her time as Queen of the Azalea Festival; Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence in the "Eunice" sketches; "Went with the Wind" and seeing a gorgeous dress in the window that you just can't resist; and the list goes on (that's the beauty of camp).

Maybe there is an appreciation for camp, but there's also push back, and it seems to be among younger generations of gay men (the ones who, on dating websites, must over-emphasize their masculinity).

With all that said, allow me to introduce myself. I am Queen Deanna of Arts, formerly the Duchess Deanna (though my Twitter feed still says the latter). After years of only being a minor form of aristocracy -- a welcomed but sidelined member of the royal court -- I have ascended to my rightful place as a queen.

It was inevitable, really. I always wore a crown too big for my title, and it made the other queens jealous.

Plus, it seemed fitting, upon earning my master's degree, to play with the degree's title. Why be a Master of Arts when one can be a Queen of Arts? And why hold a Doctorate of Philosophy when one can simply become an Empress? In fact, why hold to any of those academic titles? Why not play it up campy gay style and rework the chronology as follows:

• Undergraduate Degree = Duchess (we're princesses long before college anyway)
• Master's Degree = Queen
• ABD (All but dissertation) = All but divine
• Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) = Empress
• Earning tenure = Priestess
• Becoming a full professor = High Priestess
• Retirement/Professor Emeritus = Oracle

Really, I think this works so much better. In fact, I will hold to this sequence of titles as I move through my career as a graduate student/budding academic and researcher.

Of course, I encounter, regularly, people who do not "get it." I say that I am a Queen of Arts, and I get responses like, "Well, that's not a title that the Academy recognizes."

No shit, Sherlock.

And ... screw that. The Academy also does not recognize a number of forms of knowledge as knowledge. And some it did not recognize but, now, does recognize (or acknowledges, or perhaps ghettoizes so it can observe better) -- e.g., gay and lesbian studies, gender and women's studies, diasporic cultures, African American studies, etc.

Oops, I am on a tangent.

Back to being a Queen of Arts -- I know I am not "really" a queen. But once, long ago, in a land ... eight hours away from where I currently live, a former coworker once told me, upon hearing that I call myself a duchess, to never settle for anything less than being the queen. That nobody else will treat me as a queen, so I should always treat myself as the queen that I am (or want to be). It was a self-esteem booster, truly. And important advice that, occasionally, I pass on to other individuals in need of a royal makeover.

There's no point to constantly putting yourself down -- self-deprecation is overrated and counterproductive to achieving one's life goals. Value yourself, embrace who you are, and appreciate all that you have to offer! Be. A. Queen.

Plus, it's kinda campy, but I shouldn't talk too much about that. No sense revealing all the artifice behind the queenly display that I have erected.