Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Over on ADS-L, Neil Crawford asked about “to wear the ruby slippers”, as here:

“Love is just a chemical reaction designed to encourage propagation of the species,” James [who is gay] declares […].

“Really?” Callie says. If it’s all about propagation of the species, then how do you explain homosexuality, honey-love? Those of you who wear the ruby slippers?” (Cody McFayden, Abandoned)

Clearly a reference to homosexuality, via the ruby slippers, red slippers, ruby red slippers, or ruby red pumps Dorothy wore in The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy and her slippers have become icons of homosexuality. In fact, the newsgroup soc.motss (members of the same sex), now in an incarnation as a Facebook group, ran a fund drive about twenty years ago on behalf of the Lambda Legal and Defense Fund, under the name RRP (for Ruby Red Pumps), and now the pumps serve as the Facebook icon for the group. Here’s a somewhat different version of the icon:

Sometimes you just have to be fabulous.

This entry was posted on March 16, 2011 at 9:15 am and is filed under Art/lit/music/film, Gender and sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.