For the LGBT+ community, such a change in attitude is partly generational. What was once valorised as iconic can, as society and its values shift, become redundant and a symbol of a community’s collective embarrassment. In an era of non-binary gender and sexual affiliation, intersectionality and identity politics, are the slippers now destined to be tossed to the back of the LGBT+ closet?Įxplainer: what does 'intersectionality' mean? Still, the stereotype of the fussy, passive queen who sought and found emotional sustenance from divas such as Judy Garland, and her alter-ego, Dorothy Gale, is now sometimes regarded as antithetical to the progressive individuals who have come to represent the LGBT+ community. They also represent transformation – of a homely farm girl into a dazzling heroine, who leaves home, finds herself and creates a raggle-taggle, quasi-family along the way (something familiar to many LGBT+ people). As Oz fan Rufus Wainwright once recalled, as a small child, he would fantasise that he was “either the Wicked Witch or Dorothy, depending on my mood.” Another was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 2005 (the shoes were recovered in 2018 after a 13-year disappearance.)įrom their association with Garland and the rainbow, these slippers point to the glamour of torch singers and flamboyance of drag queens: symbolising the beauty and release that comes from dressing-up.

The Smithsonian reports that five known pairs were created by MGM Studios’ chief costume designer, Gilbert Adrian. The slippers carry some tantalising stories. And the ruby slippers have various meanings to those who cherish or fetishise them. The editors of the forthcoming book Queer Objects assert that “the idea of queer exposes the instability of the status quo and challenges the power of heterosexuality as well as the marginal status of homosexuality”. Nearly a decade after the British Museum’s landmark exhibition and complementary book by Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, the appeal of them as a window into the human past has spawned numerous other studies, and books.Ĭertain objects have become queer icons. Objects, or material culture, provide fascinating insights into the study of history. Wikimedia Commons What makes a queer object? The Smithsonian’s slippers pre-restoration in 2012.

Ruby red shoes