ABSTRACT
Leading the annual December Coon Carnival through the streets of Cape Town, the Moffie Queens 2 present an image of fantasy, hilarity and desire. Image is all-important — artifice used in defiance of the natural body's limits. The real Carmen Miranda would be proud of such a tradition. Heels, frills, fish net stockings, hairy armpits, trashy jewels: these say something about world the queens (and perhaps their audience) wish to inhabit. Never camera shy, the queens always enact the rituals of being outcast. What do we make of these images; what do they say about us?
