ABSTRACT
Like many of you reading this, I have a long and tangled history with The Wizard of Oz.1 For the past thirty-five years or so, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, I Love Lucy, and Oz have been the popular culture touchstones for understanding my changing relationship to gender and sexuality. It all started in the 1960s with the annual televising of Oz. Watching as a kid, I loved Dorothy, loved Toto, was scared of, but fascinated by, the Wicked Witch, felt guilty for thinking good witch Glinda was nerve-gratingly fey and shrill, thought the Tin Man was attractive and the Scarecrow a big showoff. But I was really embarrassed by the Cowardly Lion. The supporting cast in Kansas was boring, with the exception of the sharp-featured spinster Almira (which I always heard as “Elvira”) Gulch. Only the cyclone could equal this grimly determined bicyclist and dog-snatcher for sheer threatening power.
