Queen Julia Clarkson

Queen Julia Moffett

MEMPHIS BLUES QUEENS

Profile

I was one of the former Margarita Queens, a group of about 8 women who had been having Friday night dinner together at El Porton (really we went there for the margaritas and not the food) for a long time…too many years to count. As Maxine (she’s my role model) would say, we certainly tried to live up to this motto (and still do). So off we went to our first parade in March of 1999 after reading Jill Conner Browne’s “Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love.” It was only the second Queen march where wannabees had been invited to attend and march in the parade with the Sweet Potato Queens. But we were hooked on being queens after that first parade. What a great time we had partying and meeting all the other groups of queens. But that group of queens eventually disbanded after 4 years and several of us joined the newly formed Memphis Blues Queens in the summer/fall of 2003.

Thus, I became Queen Jules! That’s me when I put on my queenly outfit, wig, boots, and tiara. My husband just rolls his eyes and shakes his head every time I head out the door to one of the events. One time out at a restaurant with the Memphis Blues Queens was just way too much excitement for him. He just can’t handle all us queens together…you know all that beauty and queenliness is just too much for any one man to cope with. But luckily we have Soul Men to help take care of us queens. My two grown daughters are more understanding even though they still laugh and grin at me in my queenly outfit but I think they are slowly getting use to seeing photos of me and the other queens in the paper. My 23 year old even brought one of her friends to the Germantown Festival to watch us perform and she graciously took photos…laughing all the time. However, the three little grandchildren are still in awe of me when I’m Queen Jules and not quite sure if it’s okay to be hugged.

But what could be more fun for a grown woman than to get dressed up incognito with a bunch of other women and go out for a fun time. You just don’t know how much fun you can have dressed in a blue sequin dress and cape wearing a black wig with a tiara on top! It just transforms you into royalty.

Every outing is like a girl’s night out!!! It’s the ultimate in having fun!!! It’s the strangest thing when the Blues Queens are at an event, people just can’t resist the urge to have their picture taken with us. Must be all our beauty that overwhelms them!

Not only do we have fun, but this group of women have become such good friends who can count on each other for support no matter what is happening in their lives. What better time or good friends could a woman over forty ask for????

Just remember this. We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing. Never Be the First One to Grow Old!!