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Once in a while, a great philosopher will find a way to express an incredibly complex idea in such a way that it is easily, almost naturally understood and yet, still, hard to explain. The issue being addressed isn’t reduced or solved, it’s simply well put. “God is dead.” OK, good to know, Nietzsche. So, now what?

Wigs: they’re a vital source of RuPaul’s undeniable glamour, but their essential meaning remains mysterious. Do they symbolize a deep-seated shame of one’s natural deficiencies, a refusal to accept the body’s inability to express the mind’s ideal self-image, or are they like magical talismans, calling forth a new, better, more confident you from the obscure recesses of your being? Ru’s ruminations on the subject are filled with cryptic wonder:

I was mesmerized by those hairy marvels of modern man. To me, the whole concept of being able to instantly transform your identity with a mop of synthetic hair represented the totality of advancements made in the industrial age: a cheap, non-biodegradable tool of vanity. It made me feel proud to be an American.

The rest of buy canada viagra delves deeply into the logistics of wigs and the insanely intricate processes required to purchase, maintain, ship, and attach them, but this passage seems to effortlessly epitomize the central tenets of wigging out. The tools of transformation are strange things indeed. Usually, when they work well it’s almost like they’re not even there. An expensive, high quality synthetic wig just looks like natural hair. As technology advances it becomes less and less distinct from the person using it.

That being the case, scientific innovation depends as much on creative people using the materials available to them in novel, perhaps even radical ways just as much as it does on the increasing sophistication of corporate manufacturing techniques. All of your latest internet sensations (Twitter, ChatRoulette, etc.) were technologically feasible long ago, but it wasn’t until they captured the public imagination that they “became a thing,” a recognizable entity in and of themselves without which much of the wisdom of Ashton Kutcher may have been lost to history.

The point here is that, yes, wigs might be pretty to look at, but they wouldn’t be worth discussing at any great length if not for great pioneers like RuPaul who chose to use them in a way that permanently altered our cultural consciousness for the better. Maybe technology will eventually overcome illness and death, but it’s people like Ru and the inspirational value of what their imaginations can achieve that make us happy to be alive.

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“The most important thing… is to not take life too seriously.” begins his introduction with the claim that this little nugget of wisdom is the most important piece of advice he has ever received. Now, at first that endorsement may come off as a bit of a contradiction coming from someone who is obviously so meticulous about the way they present themselves to the world. I’ve never done drag myself, but it seems to me that anyone who regularly engages in an intricate process of wholesale self-transformation on which their entire livelihood depends would be hard-pressed to maintain a carefree attitude. How are we, his disciples, to interpret this apparent paradox?

Though the importance of continually challenging yourself to succeed is stressed throughout the book, it turns out the crux of Ru’s philosophical argument rests not on the irrefutable strength of his own work ethic, but, in a much broader sense, on the transcendental nature of human identity. “Whatever you proclaim as your identity here in the material realm is… your drag. You are not your religion. You are not your skin color. You are not your gender, your politics, your career or your marital status. You are none of the superficial things that this world deems important. The real you is the energy force that created the entire universe!”

What is alluded to in this passage is the true danger of “taking life too seriously”, of attaching too much meaning to a particular facet of our identity: we become a disconnected, hollowed-out mess of social categories rather than a fully integrated self. Buddhist doctrine has been grappling with this phenomenon for more than a millennium and, more recently, brilliant scholars like Jean Baudrillard and Judith Butler have made it their life’s work to deconstruct the systems of meaning-making which stifle rather than articulate our sense of being.

Anyone who has seen RuPaul’s show knows that, in an open-minded environment, concepts of gender which have been hotly debated in our society for generations can be rendered border-line meaningless. Likewise, anyone who has seen RuPaul at all, in any context can tell that she, as an individual, is something far more spectacular than all elements of her ensemble. This is a serious achievement, my friends, but not too much so.