Profiles In Pride Pixie Windsor PIXIE’S FAIRY DUST Pixie Windsor isn’t afraid to lose business for supporting and being LGBTQ
“First you said you were gay, then you said you were straight,” Pixie Windsor recounts her conservative older sister telling her. “I think you need to make up your mind.” For the record, Windsor, who grew up in a small town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, has never identified as either gay or straight. “All through high school, I was with girlfriends, and running around with boys. And I just thought that was what everyone did. And that wasn’t the case at all!” In the ensuing decades, Windsor has learned not to make a big show about being bisexual. “I would say my biggest struggles have been kind of within the gay community,” she says, with lesbians who “don’t really care for that” and gay men who say “you just haven’t figured it out yet. “I really don’t even talk about it very much,” she continues, adding, “I feel sometimes a little closeted about that.” But she is an out and proud, “unapologetic” queer businesswoman, as proprietor of Miss Pixie’s Home Furnishings. Twenty years ago this year Windsor opened the store in its original location in her Adams Morgan neighborhood. The quirky store, with obvious queer touches inside and out -- painted neon pink -- has since helped spark the revitalization of 14th Street, where it’s been located since 2008. “As far as things that we do here, people have asked, ‘What if you offend somebody?’ But if I offend somebody because they don’t like us supporting gay rights, I don’t really want them in the store.” If anything, the rise of Trump has made Windsor more vocal and more unapologetic about her queer identity and progressive loyalties. She’s also stepped up fundraising, through her own personal contributions as well as using her store as a place to host other efforts. This year, Miss Pixie’s has hosted fundraisers for SMYAL and Planned Parenthood, to name two of Windsor’s favorites, and contributed to various other LGBTQ and progressive causes -- including showing support to immigrants in reaction to Trump’s thus-far thwarted ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. As a result: Miss Pixie’s has been trolled a couple of times. “She’s probably hiding immigrants in her basement,” went one such poster to the company’s Facebook page. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is how this gets started. Isn’t that crazy?’” More recently, the store was trolled for supporting Planned Parenthood. “I will never shop at your store again,” one person -- from North Carolina -- posted to Facebook. “I don’t think they ever did,” notes Windsor, who has nonetheless fought her own urges to engage with the trollers -- “I don’t want any harm to come to my employees, I don’t want a crazy person marching in here.” And so far, the disengagement seems to be doing the trick for keeping things in safe check. All in all, Windsor likes to think of Miss Pixie’s as a de-facto community center. From time to time, the store’s gently used, made-in-America furnishings are moved around to allow the large space’s use as “big living room,” hosting everything from Pride-related parties to weddings to movie nights. And she has no intention of changing that. “I’m just really focusing on making the store fun, and using it politically and as a community place as much as I can, and keep doing as much as I can.”
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CAPITAL PRIDE 2017