Big Boo at Penn State for National Coming Out Week
She had the whole crowd screaming ‘I am a lesbian’
Orange Is The New Black’s Lea DeLaria, better known as Big Boo, spoke at the HUB last night and when I showed up at 5.30pm thinking I’d be ahead of the game, the line was already down the hall and around the corner.
She was here to speak on campus as a part of National Coming Out Week sponsored by the LGBTQA Student Resource Center.
Lea DeLaria, the self-proclaimed “big fat dyke” plays everyone’s favorite prison bull dyke, Big Boo, on the Netflix Original Series Orange Is The New Black. If you’ve had your head up your own ass for the past three years and have never heard of OITNB, the show is loosely based on the book by Piper Kerman on her experience in prison.
Boo is a schemer, doing what she can to get ahead in the closed off world of the Litchfield Correctional Facility. But the only thing Boo and Lea have in common is their larger-than-life personalities.
Lea previewed her performance on Old Main this afternoon, pumping up a large crowd of ecstatic students with quotes like: “I’ve been a professional lesbian for 30 years.”
Lea is a huge LGBTQ rights activist, a professed “professional lesbian.” In 1993, she was the first out lesbian to appear on a late-night show.
“PENN FUCKING STATE!” she screamed as she ran out on stage promptly at 7pm in Alumni Hall in the HUB-Robeson Center.
Despite the warning of no filming or flash photography, Lea ignored the threat and allowed the audience to take pictures, sticking her tongue between her fingers for a photo op.
Lea had the crowd stand and scream “I AM A LESBIAN!” to set the mood, and then she began her speech.
The talk covered her life completely and she left nothing uncensored with a humorous spun on her stories. She joked about her recent weight loss due to her recent diagnosis of diabetes.
The talk quickly turned to her history and road to fame, and her life as a proud lesbian. She said she gained this self appreciation from her rule of “no fucks given,” about anything from weight and physical appearance to gender and sexuality. She talked about her love life and even was able to make fun of the serious history of gay rights, stating in relation to the recent SCOTUS decision on gay marriage, “now even I can go to Las Vegas and get drunk and marry a hooker in the Elvis Chapel.”
She had the crowd roaring as she cleverly joked about feminism, monogamy, and her own sex life with her “traveling companion” – her girlfriend who she refuses to call so because she’s not “12 on Degrassi.”
About halfway through her set, the microphone played a man’s voice over hers. She stops, a little freaked out, and goes “did you guys hear that? Was that Chris Christie…?” Everyone laughed. Short, witty comments like these had the audience laughing for an hour straight.
This does not mean that Lea was not able to take a serious tone. She told the crowd about how just over 30 years ago, she was assaulted because of her gender and sexual orientation, and how much progress she and the country have been made since then. She urged the audience that instead of trying to conform, embrace your differences. This is how progress is made. “We aren’t like everyone else, and that’s what she embrace about ourselves.”