Gay for the holidays
“Wrong Kind of Girls” brings queer feminist ukulele comedy to Calgary for the holiday season
By Amber McLinden, Staff Writer
The holiday season often isn’t the easiest time to be around family, especially if you identify as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, and the Wrong Kind of Girls understand this.
“There’s some holiday space for [people] to not feel like there’s only one way to enjoy that time of year,” Shirley Payne, a member of the group, explains.
The Wrong Kind of Girls are a self-described queer feminist ukulele comedy group consisting of Easy Annie, Shirley Payne, and Pam of Green Gaybles, who have played events in the past like Calgary Pride and Femme Wave. The trio writes original songs but also does parodies of existing songs. Their holiday show will include more parodies, like a feminist spin on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”.
“Holidays can be — I think — a really hard time for queer people in particular because of not having really great connections with our families sometimes, and so I think it’s really nice all of our concerts are really community events where you can kind of come and see people you are acquainted with or meet new people, find some connection with others who maybe share some things in common,” Easy Annie adds.
That’s why they think it’s important to create an event that everyone can come and enjoy.
“Lots of people are looking for entertainment in December, but if you don’t want to hear organs and church music there’s not always space for you to find something else,” Easy Annie explains. “So this is just trying to make some space for us as queer feminist people who want to feel included in that.”
Shirley Payne explains that many people have ambivalent relationships to the holiday season in general, resulting from traditions that weren’t necessarily taken on by choice. “We wanted to have a space where people could come and feel okay in that ambivalence and be in a space that’s a little bit ambivalent in a really fun, hilarious, queer and feminist way.”
The trio has a whole slew of new music for attendees, with various parodies and new tunes related to the holiday season.
“Some of those songs that we use existing tunes to, people have a certain expectation of what the song is going to be about and us singing three part harmony and talking about something completely different than that is really fun for us to play with,” Pam of Green Gaybles says.
The group is also going to be collecting donations of menstrual products for the Women’s Centre of Calgary, so they encourage everybody to bring donations of pads and tampons. The group recommends a PG-13 rating due to adult content. You can buy tickets online on their Facebook page now.
