kitsch is not merely failed high art but a mode of re-signification: the dismissed as frivolous or the overly sentimental becomes, in my queer hands, a means of creating alternative socialities and aesthetic worlds. the bow, as a kitsch object par excellence - decorative, excessive, feminised - offers presisely this potential for queer worldmaking by embracing cuteness, affect, surface ornamentation as modes of resistence and relationality.