In the ballroom of the Sheraton Grand Chicago Riverwalk, beneath the glitter of a disco ball, a DJ is spinning Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves while hundreds of people dressed as sitcom characters laugh and scream.
It’s the costume competition at Golden-Con, a convention for fans of The Golden Girls, the Emmy-winning 80s show about the lives and loves of four women of a certain age living together in Miami in a house beset with rattan furniture. The “Blanches” are slinking across the stage in floral leisurewear and pastel negligees, doing their best impressions of the highly sexed fiftysomething southern belle played by Rue McClanahan, a woman who loves to draw attention to her “perky bosoms”.
