YMMV / To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Vida just a drag queen who wants respect, or is she a transgender woman seeking acceptance? It's heavily implied throughout the movie that she isn't just a performer but might actually identify as a woman. The movie is ultimately vague on this point, but it's not unheard of for trans people to use drag as a stepping stone towards living openly, or to use it as their sole outlet if circumstances prevent them from transitioning.
  • When Chi Chi says that she is a drag queen and gets dismissed by Noxeema as "just a boy in a dress", she seems genuinely hurt and attempted to run off. Is it because of her relative youth and inexperience, or because she is actually transgender? The latter seems most possible and Chi Chi's actor suggests that Chi Chi is transgender.
• Awesome Music: "Body Beautiful" by Salt-N-Pepa (albeit edited strangely; you can't tell it's a rap song) playing during the opening credits while the queens are putting on their make up. Words can not describe how perfectly it fits. This song has since become a standard in drag shows.
• Fair for Its Day: While a lot of the film can be outdated, most notably casting straight male actors in the roles, it's still notable for being one of the first mainstream American films to feature gender non-conforming characters in a central role and treat them as sympathetic characters rather than walking punchlines or something to evoke disgust (in comparison to the now infamous finale of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective from a year prior where Ace reacts with exaggerated disgust at learning a woman is trans). It treats said disgust as wrong and the characters who express it as bigoted, showing the girls being accepted and defended by the townspeople positively in contrast. Today's terminology may have evolved from what's presented in the film, but it's still respected for its unusually progressive attitudes for a comedy film from the 90's.
• He Really Can Act: Countless people who came to know Wesley Snipes through his action films will be shocked to see him having a ball as a drag queen in this film.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A drunk Carol Ann suggests getting rid of all the men except for Mel Gibson, who would be allowed to stay because of his cute butt, but not allowed to think or speak. This was well before Gibson made headlines for expressing some of his less savory thoughts and speech. Maybe Carol Ann's plan was for the best.
  • Noxie tells Clara that her #1 goal when she gets to Hollywood is to star in a movie about the life of her idol, Dorothy Dandridge. An actual biopic on the actress, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, would come out four years later starring Halle Berry.
• One-Scene Wonder: Robin Williams as John Jacob Jingleheymer Schmidt. After all, his name is my name too.
  John: Do people always shout? I hate that.
• Retroactive Recognition: Michael Vartan of Alias and Hawthorne fame plays the roughneck who gets schooled in chivalry by Noxeema.
• Tear Jerker: When Vida, Noxie, and Ch-Chi briefly pull up to a house and see an elderly woman, presumed to be Vida's mother, momentarily step out and glance at the queens only for her to look at her son/daughter in disgust and walk back inside. This all but says she has not accepted Vida's lifestyle or for who s/he is.
  • Vida getting sexually assaulted by Sheriff Dullard, which sadly can be Truth in Television for many gender non-conforming women.
• Values Dissonance: Noxie's descriptions of different types of gender non-conforming people may be consistent with 90's attitudes, but terminology has changed a great deal since then. She says that a transvestite is someone who crossdresses for fun but doesn't necessarily live as that gender, a transsexual is someone born in wrong body and has an operation, and a drag queen is a gay man with "way too much fashion sense for one gender". With trans people becoming much more vocal and visible since this movie came out, these definitions have all fallen out of favor for the following reasons:
  • "Transvestite" due to its negative, sensationalist connotations.
  • "Transsexual" because most trans people today prefer not to emphasize their physical traits. Such a person is transgender regardless of their ability or willingness to medically transition.
  • Drag is no longer seen as strictly the domain of gay men. Drag kings, transgender performers, and drag artists that are straight, bi, asexual, and so on are much more visible today than they were when this movie came out.
• Values Resonance: For all its dated elements, the film's message about accepting trans women as women, queer people as valuable, and positively portraying friendship between cis women and trans women and standing up against bigotry from traditionalists is arguably even more relevant in the 2020's given how many people, even avowed feminists, go out of their way to exclude them from women's spaces and the intense hatred against trans people expressed by mainstream politicians and pundits.

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