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I am thinking about this because I am currently working my way through Crip Theory by Robert McRuer which draws parallels between queer and disability theory and critique binary unreal identities of "able bodied heterosexual."

Today I'm thinking about when I worked in a museum. Our job was to stand there, and they could watch us on the security cameras to make sure we were doing a good job standing there. Not talking, on our phones, sitting, etc. One time this girl Z**** was called in to the office because she was doing a bad job standing there. Our boss was yelling at her and asked her something like "How would you feel if we fired you?" In reply, Z**** said "FABULOUS!"

She was an international student and English wasn't her first language so she immediately pretended she made a mistake and said "I meant HORRIBLE!"

She hated this job and quit shortly after.

"We might, in fact, extend the concept and see such a perspective not as critically disabled but as severely disabled, with severe performing work similar to the critically queer work of fabulous. Tony Kushner writes:

Fabulous became a popular word in the queer community-well, it was never unpopular, but for a while it became a battle cry of a new queer politics, carnival and camp, aggressively fruity, celebratory and tough like a streetwise drag queen: "FAAAAABULOUS!" ... Fabulous is one of those words that provide a measure of the degree to which a person or event manifests a particular, usually oppressed, subculture's most dis-tinctive, invigorating features. (vil)

Severe, though less common than fabulous, has a similar queer history: a severe critique is a fierce critique, a defiant critique, one that thoroughly"

- Robert McRuer

I think that was pretty defiant and camp of her. I make institutional critique work but I'm not sure I could embody this idea the way she did in that moment, without even thinking about it.