He drives his mother's white Toyota Corolla with a car seat in back so he can babysit his nephew on a moment's notice. The hair is a small hint of his drag-show alter ego.
Luu, a waifishly thin man, wears his long black hair back in a man bun at a temp job he started in January. "I feel like I'm Lulu all the time," Luu says.
It's not that there's a moment when he becomes Lulu. It's after the powder layer is applied that Luu starts to think his face has made the transition. He steals glances at himself, turning sideways, gripping the doorway as he stands back from the mirror, giving himself coyly feminine glances. "If you don't look like a clown, you're not doing it right," he says. The edges of his face and sides of his nose become dark brown he's shading out his manlier features. Luu shades what facial hair he has with a red base cover-up.
Gay sex toy party selling kit skin#
The first step is getting rid of his manly eyebrows, by attaching them to his skin with purple Elmer's glue stick (later he'll disguise the dark lines with eye makeup). In the Gresham townhouse that Luu shares with his mother, he takes over the first-floor half-bathroom to do his makeup. It takes James Luu an hour to transform into Lulu Luscious-a name he picked by turning his family name into the feminine Lulu and adding an alliterative adjective. (Thomas Teal) James Luu, 26, is preparing for a legal battle against sex-toy company Pure romance, which doesn’t allow men to sell its vibrators. James Luu, 26, is preparing for a legal battle against sex-toy company Pure romance, which doesn't allow men to sell its vibrators. "I have one of those strong personalities," Luu says. He's out to prove that workplace civil rights protections apply to him. He's hired the lawyer who won the fight to overturn Oregon's gay-marriage ban, and is starting a new legal battle at the cutting edge of employment law. This week, Luu filed an employment complaint with the state of Oregon. In his attempt to run away from society's rules and expectations, he's found rules are exactly what he needs to protect him. In this most progressive of American cities, Luu's desire to become who he really is has brought him squarely into legal battles over gender discrimination. In Portland, freelancing or working as an independent contractor, with the attendant lack of legal protections, is unusually common (see sidebar). For everybody else, it's fend for yourself.
Sex toys aside, he was a contractor-part of the "gig economy" in which workers make their own schedules, pursue their dreams, and work outside the confines of a dreary 9-to-5 job.īut what Luu soon came to realize was that with the creativity and flexibility came the darker side of being a contractor-a total lack of legal protections.Įmployment laws were written to protect employees. But in this country and particularly in this city, Luu's choice to strike out on his own is not uncommon. "I can't believe in 2016 there's still this gender discrimination." "We believe that the opportunities we have provided women has made Pure Romance not just a company, but a movement to enhance the lives of women everywhere."
"The female-only environment has enabled open communication and sharing," the statement continued. "Although Passion Parties has allowed men to become consultants, Pure Romance was founded on a business model that focused solely on women consultants," said Jackie Reau, a spokeswoman for Pure Romance. The woman on the other end of the line read him a statement the company provided WW with something similar.