My favorite thing about Tootsie was the choreography and the dance skills of the ensemble who were remarkably good in this cast and it had some funny one liners. But I struggled, at a core ethics level, with doing a tour of the show right NOW in the current socio-political climate. It would always be in bad taste, even with the friend character calling out the trust issues of it... But, the musical debuted in 2019. And 2019 was well within the socio-political battleground of TERF and MAGA bigotry toward trans people being mainstreamed by the news taking seriously the argument that men were masquerading as women not out of genuine gender identity exploration but as a means to get ahead in a career or to take advantage of unsuspecting females.  And this musical, his REASON for disguising himself as a woman is because no one will hire him as a man (which gets into the misogynist/reverse racism trope that you are now disadvantaged if you're a white man) and then the central plot point is that he USES his false identity pretending to be a woman to get close to the other leading lady and then kisses her while masquerading as a woman without telling her who he really is even when she decides she likes and trusts the woman version of the character enough to try it as a lesbian relationship. And I guess my issue with the TIMING of this musical is that it is reinforcing the propaganda and stereotypes that are actively being used RIGHT NOW to justify some horrific legislation that actively harms so many people who are non gender conforming and trans and dress in drag for their own personal growth reasons of self exploration.... It was hard for me to enjoy the show because of how the musical was reinforcing the propaganda stereotypes against trans acceptance in society. It would be like if you took the song in Cabaret "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes" where he's dancing with an ape costume and the last line is "she wouldn't look Jewish at all" and the audience just agreed with all the premises of the song/costume and didn't even realize that the Nazis taken over the Cabaret in all the mirrors including you the audience member and you were actively helping to pass anti-Semitic laws/restrictions on where Jews could and couldn't be....and then like you actually had all the Jewish characters in ape costumes or obvious phenotype/prosthetics/costumes of the blood libel caricatures right from the start. And then made the ENTIRE musical about confirming the stereotype implicit in that premise. Only in this case it's the central plot points confirming the bigotry storyline that men who pretend to be women are only doing it to get ahead in their career and/or to be predatory toward women in situations/places of trust. 

I knew it involved a cross dressing lead and I was expecting it to be an integral part of the character or in some way having other LGBTQ+ characters surrounding the central characters (spoiler alert: everyone was straight except a throw away one liner from the agent character and the only brush with LGBTQ+ was when the lead actress was in love with the main character disguised as a woman offered to be lesbians with him even though she'd never felt like that about another woman before, which gets into some complicated issues around the assumption/propaganda that being LGBTQ is a choice rather than an identity) or at least something like Mrs. Doubtfire where it was to see his kids or something that's a breach of trust but still morally grey territory rather than overt propagandizing a political stance of the right wing authoritarian storyline they've been selling... It just gave me a lot of icks because of the current political climate that this musical did so well and is doing a Broadway tour around the country right now.... If the intention was to help educate that even those fears are groundless, then it's problematic because it reinforces those propaganda stereotypes rather than proving them wrong. 

It just... I understand that the reason to bring it in now was the thought "cross dressing broadway tour for Pride month -- check" and nobody looked beyond that to the subtext of it... But honestly, as an audience member too much of it felt like it was making the "male white men have it harder than anyone else" and the TERF/MAGA "all men dressing as women only do so to cheat when they can't succeed against men and/or to prey on women." Those messages and moral points were the core of the musical's plot points and it just felt like right wing brainwash under a veneer of song and dance to try to get into your subconscious that the story it's telling is a truth worth validating.... And that gave me the icks and I found myself regretting that we had spent the money to see the show and support it.

It felt like propaganda trying to reaffirm the stereotype and I can't find a way to say that wasn't any prt of what was going on with it. My parents didn't see it that way until I pointed it out and said, "It's just the TIMING of releasing this musical and now touring it in relation to the actual LAWS being passed against trans people and that the storyline reaffirms all the propaganda used to justify the laws of bigotry and cruelty. If this musical had been written or toured a decade ago, it would have been questionable in taste, but it wouldn't have been serving to reaffirm the narratives used to defend the laws that are actively hurting REAL people right now across the country... The timing and how it reaffirmed every argument used to justify the trans hate bills made it difficult for me to enjoy what was good and witty in the show."

I went into it wanting to enjoy it and to laugh and have a good time... But as I said, my favorite thing about it was the choreography and how good the dancers in the ensemble were. Because they were legitimately quite good and the choreography was superb.

(Also. Can somebody tell whoever the fucking NYC vocal coach is that keeps training Broadway and Broadway tour singers, "If you can't hit the note go nasal and it will be close enough nobody will notice" to just STOP and go back to the classic "drop that down a half step to the harmony if you can't hit it" because you ain't fooling anyone by going nasal to try to hit it....It's an NYC vocal coach and it's becoming more and more common in musical theatre and I fucking hate it because actually you just flattened the note further by the way the soundwaves propagate through the nasal cavity and now you sound like a fucking off key goose. There's a reason any good vocal coach and all operatic coaches will train you NOT to try to produce the note by propagating the sound through your nasal cavities, ffs. You support the note from your diaphragm and use your throat and mouth as a resonance chamber for amplifying the waves produced by the vibrations in the larynx and sending the dang note through your nasal passages flattens the tone and does not help you hit the dang high note by moving it further up your head voice. That's not how sound propagation works and you sound like a fucking vuvuzela and just stop! Just drop the note down to the harmony you CAN hit and move on with everyone's life without causing everyone present to wince at your honking....I have a lot of words for any vocal coach who tells you that you should move from head voice up into nasal to try to hit a high note out of your range... in case you hadn't noticed, lol.)

On LGBTQ+ related issues, I also recently finished reading Annie On My Mind. It's listed on a lot of best banned and challenged books lists and never having read it, I picked it up at some point last year and decided that during a Pride month so filled with hate, this was the time to read it. It was really really good! At it's heart it's just a very true simple love story and the obstacle to the love is society's view of such a relationship. It was written in 1982, before I was born, but part of what struck me about it was how modern it still felt. And how much the theme of "don't say gay" and the vitriol against even being publicly lgbtq+ in the education system has once more become a toxic thing.... I don't want to ruin the plot if you haven't read it, but it was a really beautiful love story and despite some of the unfairness and heartache around that, it's still uplifting full of hope despite the "good Christians" for whom the cruelty is the point who come seeking you out while you were minding your own business just trying to build a meaningful life full of love and joy built together. And, I've always admired my lesbian aunts who are professors and who have been together as long as I can remember, but the way that things were handled in the book helped me understand better why all through my childhood and college years, until after Oberfell made their marriage legal everywhere, they still had one as professor at Harvard and the other a professor at Wellesley, not even teaching at the same school just in case.... I never really thought about that when I was younger, but it provides a double security against the Puritanical bullies getting power over both your careers at the same time if they found out you were together..... And I guess it's the privilege of being cis-het female to have never even considered how problematic ANYONE innocently leading to you being outed was for your job even as recently as the 80s and 90s...and in too many places now in the present.... I'd never considered it as being a modern within living memory thing to think about until the Florida "don't say gay" laws that are now being passed elsewhere to penalize lgbtq+ teachers for even mentioning their home life or having a picture with their spouse or anything.... it hadn't struck me how brave and defiant it is to choose to be in education as an LGBTQ+ teacher despite the discrimination from the conservatism of some parents/faculty toward lgbtq+ faculty.

That theme isn't central to the main plot of the book, but it something the book made me think about. I recommend reading the book. It's meant for teens, it's a quick read. But if you haven't read it, you should. And by today's YA lit, there's really nothing sexually explicit in it at all other than if you consider it explicit to show that it truly is all the same sort of love in the heart questions it brings up about those who hold lgbtq+ to be a taboo form of love. And it's just a beautiful little love story no matter how you feel love within yourself... I highly recommend taking the time to read it quickly. Especially, again, given the current socio political regressions and discrimination.