Not everyone can wait all year for Halloween to don a costume. And not everyone who dresses up is looking for handouts. Some are demonstrating a fun, humorous way to make a contribution to their community.
So it is with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. An institution in gay communities around the world, these people who dress up in parodies of nuns’ habits can be a barrel of laughs, but they are also serious about raising awareness and funds for causes close to the hearts of GLBTQ people.
Vancouver’s own “house” of the sisters — the Abbey of the Long Cedar Canoe — is comparatively new, less than six years old. But it is also one of the fastest-growing, with about 25 sisters, compared with only about twice that in far-larger Los Angeles, for example.
The offbeat movement began in San Francisco on Easter weekend 1979. A migrant from Iowa brought with him some nuns’ habits left over from a performance of The Sound of Music and a few friends decided to put them on and have some fun. The AIDS epidemic was about to hit the gay community and the sisters soon found a calling raising awareness, funds and spirits. Their unorthodox approach gained popularity and has spread worldwide.
Tim O’Brien, a.k.a. Sister Lois Price (he works in a grocery store), corrects me when I refer to what the sisters do as “drag.” While dressing up as nuns, the men do not attempt, as drag artists do, to depict themselves as women. They do not shave their beards or chests.
“We’re sort of gender neutral,” says O’Brien. They put on whiteface, not for any reason but pure theatricality, he adds.
Some people take exception to what they see as ridiculing Catholic tradition. A former nun told O’Brien he was making fun of her background, but O’Brien disagrees.
“I said, not at all and I explained everything that we did for the community and that we’re not making fun of them, we are emulating them, we are honouring them and the tradition of serving the community,” says O’Brien, who grew up in the United Church and has taught Sunday school.
Each city’s house is identifiable by its unique wimple, the headgear traditionally worn by nuns. The original house, in San Francisco, goes pretty basic, wearing a bra over the ears. With time, wimples became more elaborate. The wimples on sisters in Orlando, Fla., resemble mouse ears. The Los Angeles house references the Hollywood Bowl. Milwaukee incorporates the cheesehead usually seen at football games. The conical antlers on Vancouver’s wimple speak to the mountains, as well as the sails on Canada Place and in the harbour.
The local sisters run fundraisers like singalong film screenings with revenue going to charities that focus on HIV/AIDS and homelessness. They also piggyback on other groups’ events, showing up to work the coat-checks or to sell draw tickets. Their presence is an instant ice-breaker, says O’Brien. One sister even offers a confessional, which can be just for fun or to let people really get something off their chest.
I admit I was surprised when the second sister arrived late for our meeting. Out of costume, Amanda Irene Kuiack is … a woman. I’ve known of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for a long time, but I thought they were all gay men.
There are, I have learned, all range of diversity in the sisters.
Kuiack, a.k.a. Novice Sister Bodice Rippa (she’s an avid reader and a bisexual woman, for the record) says her new membership in the sisterhood pulled her out of chronic depression.
“The fact that they do accept women was a big surprise to me and that’s why I thought I have to do it,” says Kuiack. “Because my gender did not matter.”
“It’s also a healing experience, it really is,” she adds. “That’s kind of the way it acts like religion.”
O’Brien doesn’t see the sisters as a replacement for religion.
“I don’t look at it that way,” he says. “It’s like a family. We are sisters and we’re really like a family, like siblings. It doesn’t really replace anything, it adds to your life more.”
Among themselves, the sisters almost exclusively refer to one another by their chosen names, so much so that some of the newer postulants and novices don’t even know the real names of their house-mates. And the names sisters select in the process of joining the house are as dazzling as some of their outfits. Sister Bella de Ball. Sister Dana Van Iquity. Sister OyVey Maria. Sister Selma Soul. Locally, you could run into Sister Visa DeKline, Sister Mary Q. Contrary or Sister Koo-Koo Kachoo. Vancouver’s reverend mother has the inclusive moniker Sister Alma Bitches.
For all their irreverence, good works and potentially controversial appropriation of religious imagery, O’Brien says that, in the end, it’s just about having fun.
“We just want to go into the community and be witty and crazy.”
@Pat604Johnson