Queer Joy Crushes in Fortune Feimster’s ‘Crushing It’

On By Littum

Sometimes a comic will cultivate a stage persona that is angry and dark (Marc Maron), so you will be impressed by their depth. Others are so virtuoso (Eddie Izzard) that you are struck by the elegance of their writing. As for Fortune Feimster? She’s an adorable goof whose recurring motifs include her mother’s quirky dating life, her own love of chain restaurants, and her bathing suit of choice: an oversized T-shirt and cut-off sweatpants, also known as her “lesbian swimsuit.” In Feimster’s latest special – Crush itout today on Netflix — politics come closer to the forefront than they have in the past, but not in a way that makes it seem like she’s trying too hard. Her craft and skill is so finely honed that you might primarily remember her having a good time the whole time, and only notice long after her set is over how much it actually affected you.

Feimster’s previous two specials (both of which are also streaming on Netflix) also touched on politics, but in a more implicit way. In the 2020s Sweet & SaltyFeimster describes how a chubby upbringing prevented her from being kidnapped as a child, since “kidnappers” have a “type” who aren’t girls who look like the kid from The sandlot. She ribs the younger me, whose main motivation for joining the Girl Scouts was access to cookies and uninterrupted time with other girls; at the time, Feimster’s mother Ginger called her a “tomboy”, an acceptable euphemism for “future lesbian”. Good luckfrom 2022, Feimster allows her adult self to be mocked for learning during COVID that she lacks survival skills, knowing that a positive stereotype of lesbians is that they have them. Stories about the men Ginger dated after her divorce from Feimster’s father suggest financial challenges for the family, which Ginger tried to solve by locking up some strange old man to look after them. But we’re also sure that even if Feimster wouldn’t find out she was queer until years later, there was enough money to celebrate her 18th birthday at Hooters.

Growing up in the South in the ’80s and early ’90s, Feimster has a lot of stories about the heteronormative performances she had to perform. She made her formal social debut in a wedding-like ceremony (“It looked and felt like I married my brother, which is just too on the nose for North Carolina”). She attended an all-girls school, where what passed for intimacy for Feimster was when her friends let her wet their forearms. She had Ginger dress her in either power suits or the kind of infantile “sister-wife” floral dresses Lane Bryant was selling at the time. So one of the true pleasures of Feimster’s trio of Netflix specials is watching the evolution of her relationship with Jacquelyn Smith — Jax, as Feimster calls her on stage. IN Sweet & SaltyFeimster and Jax are engaged. IN Good luckwe hear the funny story of Feimster’s proposal at a Big Sur hotel, assisted by an employee named Craig, who reminds Feimster of the candlestick in Beauty and the Beast. Feimster talks about Jax’s much more butch ex-boyfriends, several of whom were cops, and how easy it was to decide to spend an exorbitant amount of money treating their dog Biggie (don’t worry, he got through it just fine!), how Feimster got out of it. beat them all together.

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After their low-key COVID wedding, Feimster and Jax want to blow things up for their honeymoon, and Crush it – which Feimster performs in a Barbie pink power suit of the kind she gently toasted Ginger back in Sweet & Saltyto buy her – opens with the story of their trip to the Maldives. What Feimster doesn’t know until he accepts Jax’s choice of destination is that sex between same-sex partners is illegal there; it is also illegal in Qatar, where they have a stay coming up.

Feimster wrings as much material out of the situation as she can: pretending, at the hotel in Qatar, that she and Jax are cousins ​​on their way to meet their husbands; cracks that only one of them can pass straight and the other is sometimes called “sir” in public bathrooms; that she does not risk drinking a bottle of beer, as it could be a trap to catch lesbians. But when she comes to the point of only having one photo of herself on the trip, seven meters apart and with a random family in between, the barbs of the story become much more tangible. Feimster’s rising career success, coinciding with her marriage, has opened up the world to her in ways that would have been unimaginable to the young Feimster we heard about in Sweet & Saltyand looks down from her birthday stool at a ring of Hooters waitresses jumping up and down for her. But there are dangers from which Feimster’s wealth and privilege cannot insulate her.

The magic of Feimster’s comedy, however, is her facility for shaping dark stories without preaching or self-pity. The Maldives story reminds her fans – at least some of whom probably haven’t given it much thought – that Feimster and her wife still face not only discrimination but also potential legal ramifications depending on where in the world they try to be in love.

But Feimster slips out of that story into a lighter one, about an early trip to Italy with Jax and how each learned how the other deals with travel stress. She jokes that Ginger had made Feimster her “husband” before Jax was in the picture, and the nightmare of Ginger and Jax’s birthdays being five days apart, knowing Ginger will be jealous of anything Feimster gives Jax . (Feimster clarifies that Ginger loves Jax; she just thinks Jax stole her husband: “My wife is Jolene.”) The story of buying her first house with Jax leads Feimster into a large number of haunted houses she’s known , and why you definitely should Ask a real estate agent if the house they are showing you has ghosts. Feimster easily slips from being a jerk in a rant about driving to her hometown Hardee’s before they stopped serving crackers (that’s the timer her biological clock is set to) to one where Ginger is being a jerk to get herself in enough trouble at a cemetery for the fire department to have been involved.

Longtime followers of Feimster’s social media accounts will know that one of her recurring things is shooting herself dizzy dance with ice cream. That’s Feimster in a butter-pecan shell: not just indulging, but reveling in celebrating a little pleasure. Feimster has made a lot of good bits out of his early disappointments, as comics do. Feimster also celebrates the great pleasures of his life—happiness, love, the chance to see the world—and meets hate and horror with queer glee.

That defiance can be Crush it‘s most political statement of all.