Speaker 1: Ephemeralist production of High Heart, three d Ad A fulful Exposure.
Speaker 1: Listen with that phones. You'll find it in New York City.
Speaker 1: You'll find it in your closet. You'll find it downtown.
Speaker 1: You'll find it at your neighbor's house, you'll find it
Speaker 1: at the club, and you'll find it on TV. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about drag, an art form which has garnered massive
Speaker 1: popularity over the last decade, but has roots older than
Speaker 1: modern religion. Drag has been traditionally defined as a form
Speaker 1: of entertainment where men dresses women or women dresses men.
Speaker 1: They might lip sync to a popular song, perform a
Speaker 1: role on stage, or strut down a runway wearing the
Speaker 1: trendiest clothes fashion has to offer. But in recent years,
Speaker 1: drag has come to be understood as so much more.
Speaker 1: It's a way of life, a path for people across
Speaker 1: the world to express themselves and live their truth. Today,
Speaker 1: producer Trevor Young is going to walk us from the
Speaker 1: origins of drag to its most popular modern iteration. A
Speaker 1: reality TV show which you've maybe heard of, Rue Balls
Speaker 1: Drag Race is now on v H one. Girl, Let's
Speaker 1: do this. Your edges are officially snatched the Queen is
Speaker 1: here about bitches. Think you've seen fashion? I got it
Speaker 1: going on. It's one of my main connections with young
Speaker 1: people who are college age in the twenties. Like, we
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of other stuff to talk about.
Speaker 1: They're very different. They're always got their head in their phone.
Speaker 1: But the one thing we can totally connect on is,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Candy News or Simone or got Nick,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you think? Blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: These are kids that are Ivy League colleges or there.
Speaker 1: You know, they're straight kids, all gay kids or anything kids.
Speaker 1: There's just this connection that RuPaul was created between people.
Speaker 1: My name is Simon Donan. I am an author, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people know me from my
Speaker 1: work at Barney's where I was creative director and design
Speaker 1: windows and ads, and I've done a whole bunch of things.
Speaker 1: I'm all hello. Simon and I had agreed we'd do
Speaker 1: a one hour interview about Drag, but it became two
Speaker 1: hours because we couldn't stop talking about RuPaul's drag race.
Speaker 1: It turns out we're both huge fans, but the reality
Speaker 1: is that drag is so much more than just drag. Race.
Speaker 1: It's an art form, a means of expression that goes
Speaker 1: back hundreds even thousands of years. It's a rich historical
Speaker 1: counterculture turned pop culture phenomenon that connects people across lines
Speaker 1: of age, race, gender, wealth, in time. For Simon who
Speaker 1: grew up in the UK, it's always been a way
Speaker 1: of life. Well, I can't ever remember not being wearing
Speaker 1: a drag. I mean when I was a kid, drag
Speaker 1: was always on the TV. Many of the popular comedians
Speaker 1: in my childhood always to a drag. We had big
Speaker 1: famous female in personators like Danny LaRue. May I call
Speaker 1: you ladies India any time we're owing a four three
Speaker 1: to eight. If mother answers don't hang up, you're still
Speaker 1: on a good thing. Dick and Marie, excuse me, miss
Speaker 1: tell me? Do you have a favorite way of spending
Speaker 1: a bank holiday? Yes? I invite the man in from
Speaker 1: next time you have a sound together, Stanley Baxter Tingers
Speaker 1: will have the staff are quite unsuitable, but surely we
Speaker 1: should spare Mrs Bridges. She's a treasure. If she's a treasure,
Speaker 1: then I suggested better. I don't oh god, So I
Speaker 1: think English people have a different relationship to drag than Americans,
Speaker 1: at least definitely back then, because we don't have that
Speaker 1: puritanical revulsion against it. In the nineteen fifties, it was
Speaker 1: just considered to be amusing and entertaining. I have pictures
Speaker 1: of me when I was like ten in our backyard
Speaker 1: at home, taken by my mother, with my best friend Biddy,
Speaker 1: who went on to become quite a famous drag queen
Speaker 1: in London in the seventies, and we're both in drag.
Speaker 1: After spending decades surrounded by drag, Simon wrote and published
Speaker 1: a book in twenty nineteen called Drag The Complete Story.
Speaker 1: So I had to think, well, why would I do
Speaker 1: this book now? And then I thought, well, here's the deal.
Speaker 1: You know, in the nineties, drag was basically losing its mojo.
Speaker 1: People were speculating that now that it's would have lost
Speaker 1: a lot of its marginal status, it was just gonna fizzle,
Speaker 1: And people were making those kind of speculations, and I
Speaker 1: quote people in my book saying that. But then fast
Speaker 1: forward to the second decade of the century and there's
Speaker 1: this huge explosive revolutionary interest in gender drag, not just
Speaker 1: RuPaul's drag race, but the whole gender landscape became this
Speaker 1: massively complex, massively focal part of the culture. As Simon
Speaker 1: says saw, the doors burst open for gender expression, and
Speaker 1: drag was the leader of this new revolution that made
Speaker 1: it very appealing to a whole new generation of people.
Speaker 1: It just seemed like a perfect art form that not
Speaker 1: only like affirmed me in a queer and trans kind
Speaker 1: of way, but also just like allowed me to showcase
Speaker 1: all of my talents and didn't put any restrictions limitations
Speaker 1: on it. This is Taylor Alexander in Atlanta based drag performer.
Speaker 1: We'll be hearing from Taylor throughout this episode. Taylor began
Speaker 1: their drag journey in I started identifying as like non
Speaker 1: binary INN. When I had that kind of language, it
Speaker 1: just made kind of more sense to me. It felt
Speaker 1: more comfortable. Never really felt comfortable identifying with the label
Speaker 1: of being a man. For some people, they do drag
Speaker 1: because they don't have a space or a place to
Speaker 1: explore gender, or they have an inkling that they might
Speaker 1: not be the gender they were assigned at birth, and
Speaker 1: so drag can sometimes be a way to explore that.
Speaker 1: You know, I know plenty of people who come into drag,
Speaker 1: you know, identifying as like cis gender men. And then
Speaker 1: when they start doing drag and they started doing shows,
Speaker 1: and eventually you know, they might come out as trans
Speaker 1: or non binary, and I think that's beautiful. Well, that's
Speaker 1: the reason to do this book, because there is this
Speaker 1: gender revolution going on. When I started this book, there
Speaker 1: was this iron firewall between drag and trans. It would
Speaker 1: have been a huge mistake to call a trans person
Speaker 1: a drag queen. There was this very different focus. And
Speaker 1: then during the two years that I wrote on the book,
Speaker 1: all the boundaries crumbled. Was truly revolutionary period where suddenly
Speaker 1: you had straight women identifying as drag queens, you had
Speaker 1: trans women identifying as drag queen identity. So it was
Speaker 1: all changing to the point where now obviously you see
Speaker 1: on Rupha's Drag Rays, we have got Mick who's a
Speaker 1: trans man who has a drag queen alter ego, if
Speaker 1: that's the right word for it. I thought, this is
Speaker 1: a great time to revisit the history of drag and
Speaker 1: bring it right up to day into this new revolutionary,
Speaker 1: exploratory gender period that we're in now. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: taken a time to get to this point, so let's
Speaker 1: go back to some of the earliest iterations of what
Speaker 1: we now call drag. Early Greek and Roman society was
Speaker 1: very masculine and very chest beating and all about testosterone basically,
Speaker 1: and then late Greek society became much more androgynous, and
Speaker 1: the same with Rome, you know, towards the end of
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire, when it began to crumble. Then you
Speaker 1: saw a lot of bacchanalien madness emperors like Nero Caligula
Speaker 1: wearing women's clothes. And you know, some people say they're exaggerated,
Speaker 1: but I like to think that they're not because they're
Speaker 1: so fun to read and and I thought, this is
Speaker 1: a great way of getting young people interested in history
Speaker 1: to tell all these super body crazy stories about Nero,
Speaker 1: who also murdered his mother. You know, it's good to
Speaker 1: keep that in mind. Um. I don't think they were
Speaker 1: particularly nice people, by the sound of it. And the
Speaker 1: was another ancient culture to test out gender ambiguity Egypt,
Speaker 1: which is just the most marvelous, beautiful androgyny. If you
Speaker 1: look at to some common and you know that was
Speaker 1: a boy, but how beautiful, how extraordinary, how how mesmerizing
Speaker 1: and timeless, like so amazing even today It so takes
Speaker 1: your breath away to look at Egyptian art and the
Speaker 1: use of androgynous images, the androgynous clothing and the shifts.
Speaker 1: That was a pretty amazingly rich culture. To the east,
Speaker 1: Japan used a form of drag with its kabuki theater,
Speaker 1: developed in the Edo period. Kabuki featured men, often performing
Speaker 1: as women on stage. The men would wear kimonas done
Speaker 1: heavy pale white makeup, angle fans, and assume the role
Speaker 1: of a geisha. The reasons for kabuky being male only
Speaker 1: are vast and complicated, not limited to rampant sexism and
Speaker 1: a history of violence towards female performers. Like kabuki, Shakespearean
Speaker 1: drama in England also featured male actors playing female characters roles,
Speaker 1: and like kabuki, it was not always for great reasons.
Speaker 1: In Shakespeare, the female roles were played by men because
Speaker 1: women weren't allowed to get it on the stage physically.
Speaker 1: Oh no, even so quickly may one catch the plague. Methink,
Speaker 1: so I feel this youth's perfections with an invisible and
Speaker 1: subtle stealth to creep in out mine eyes. And then
Speaker 1: the boys who played female roles lady Macbeth, Cleopatra. I
Speaker 1: don't think they were treated really great. They didn't become
Speaker 1: superstars or anything. They're often forgotten, whereas the male actors
Speaker 1: are still remembered and the always who played women's roles.
Speaker 1: One minute they might be in a pair of tites
Speaker 1: having a sword fight, and then they would have to
Speaker 1: put on some gown for their female role, of which
Speaker 1: there are many. Shakespeare place with this all the time
Speaker 1: because he does a lot of swapping. Gender swapping. You know,
Speaker 1: as you like it, you're accellent is something finer than
Speaker 1: you could purchase, and sort of moved the dwelling. I
Speaker 1: have been total many but indeed the lord really just
Speaker 1: uncle of mine, told me to speak. I've heard him
Speaker 1: read many lectures against it, and I thank god, I'm
Speaker 1: not a woman to be touched with so many gideal offenses.
Speaker 1: That's actually apparently where the word drag comes from, because
Speaker 1: there were these laws in Elizabethan, England that unless you
Speaker 1: were an aristocrat, you couldn't wear velvet pearls. Course it's
Speaker 1: all the all the finery of the aristocracy. It was illegal.
Speaker 1: So when the aristocracy wanted to dump off their all clothes,
Speaker 1: they would sell them to the Globe Theater where Shakespeare
Speaker 1: producing his place. They would refer to it as their drags,
Speaker 1: not going to wear my little jerk in and my
Speaker 1: tides have to get my drags on. That's one theory
Speaker 1: about the origin of the word drag. Drag might have
Speaker 1: been most prevalent in the performing arts, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: its only purpose. Often the stakes were much higher. There's
Speaker 1: instances of people cross dressing to evade danger. That's a
Speaker 1: common theme throughout history. Women have worn men's clothes in
Speaker 1: order to survive, to get a job. Even in Victorian England,
Speaker 1: you couldn't become a law clerk unless you were a boy,
Speaker 1: so a lot of girls would dress up in boys clothes,
Speaker 1: sort of like a gentle stories. What would you do
Speaker 1: with all you have? Want the life was to study
Speaker 1: and it was forbidden. But if it were that would
Speaker 1: be difficult, wouldn't it always hiding afraid of being discovered? Yes,
Speaker 1: what's your secret? So women across just throughout history, but
Speaker 1: often with the goal being just pure survival, either physical, financial,
Speaker 1: or whatever. The technical term for a woman who dresses
Speaker 1: as a man is a drag king. While the practice
Speaker 1: was used for survival reasons. It was also incredibly popular
Speaker 1: in the entertainment industry. You know, there's drag kings who
Speaker 1: became very famous, Hetty King and those women at the
Speaker 1: turn of the twentieth century, they were making a lot
Speaker 1: of money. They were like huge Broadway stars. People love
Speaker 1: to watch a woman grab that male man, splaining power
Speaker 1: and and satirize it. We'll hear more about drag kings
Speaker 1: in a minute for now. We Land in the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century where drag exploded. Between the wars was a
Speaker 1: very fertile time for drag. That the Harlem Renaissance. There
Speaker 1: was people like Gladys Bentley. There was this thing called
Speaker 1: the pansy Craze in Harlem. There was a time of
Speaker 1: sort of loosening morals, more creative freedom and freedom of
Speaker 1: expression between the wars, and you saw that in London,
Speaker 1: Germany obviously the Weimar period. And you know, if you've
Speaker 1: seen the movie Cabaret, what good is sitting alone in
Speaker 1: your room? Come here the music play. Someone like Gladys Bentley,
Speaker 1: you know, she thrived during the panty craze, became a
Speaker 1: big superstar. She had a big apartment on Park Avenue
Speaker 1: and a limo driver, and she was doing great. She
Speaker 1: would wear a tucks and she would flirt with women
Speaker 1: in the audience, and she was a secretly charismatic woman
Speaker 1: who I think somebody should make a film about her life.
Speaker 1: Then after the Wars, particularly in America, there was this
Speaker 1: new emphas on respectability and being conventional, and you know,
Speaker 1: they started threatening her. It's illegal for women to wear
Speaker 1: men's clothes. And she wrote a terrible article in I
Speaker 1: think it was Ebony magazine. The headline was something like,
Speaker 1: I become a woman again, And she took female hormone
Speaker 1: and had married a guy and had to retreat from
Speaker 1: this freedoms of being a drag queen. And it's quite
Speaker 1: a sad story that was very much a mirror of
Speaker 1: the times. Sadly, drag and trans performers continued to struggle
Speaker 1: for rights and for survival throughout the twentieth century. In
Speaker 1: New York City, being queer was illegal, as was selling
Speaker 1: alcohol at openly lgbt Q establishments. Then in nineteen one
Speaker 1: event changed everything. On June, police rated a gay bar
Speaker 1: called the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Cops broke into
Speaker 1: the building, arresting and assaulting the patrons. The local queer
Speaker 1: community was over it, and they were furious. Riots erupted
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood that would go on for days. Headed
Speaker 1: up by movement icons Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera,
Speaker 1: the Stonewall riots were some of the most significant displays
Speaker 1: of resistance and courage in the face of oppression. You know,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, obviously for gay people of
Speaker 1: color and trans people of color, it's infinitely worse, but
Speaker 1: even for me in my little factory town, gay bashing
Speaker 1: was a weekend hobby for the local skinnets. Homophobia was
Speaker 1: just part of the lingo, as was racism, as was
Speaker 1: stuff that's completely unacceptable these days. It was just normal.
Speaker 1: And I remember my dad saying to me when he sensed,
Speaker 1: you know, I was starting to manifest. We never discussed
Speaker 1: it during our entire life, but he was getting sense
Speaker 1: probably that I was gay, and he said to me,
Speaker 1: you know, those homosexuals, they get beaten up, they get blackmailed,
Speaker 1: most of them end up in prison or in the
Speaker 1: mental hospital. And the horrible thing is he was actually correct.
Speaker 1: It was illegal to be homosexual until nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: in England, and then even when that was overturned. The
Speaker 1: actual policing of gay people continued way into the seventies,
Speaker 1: and the gay bashing in many someplaces never stopped. My
Speaker 1: family is from Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland was very slow
Speaker 1: to make any changes. My sister's gay and my mom
Speaker 1: was terrified that the police would find out we were
Speaker 1: gay because it was illegal, was on the books, you know,
Speaker 1: like unless is into the eighties, into the nineties, I
Speaker 1: think still gay marriage isn't eagle and so imagine that.
Speaker 1: But your trans and you're you're breaking these other sacred
Speaker 1: taboos about gender is a million times worse. So I
Speaker 1: only signed my gaye experience as a sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg for what what the trans
Speaker 1: person might face. Simon knew a number of trans and
Speaker 1: drag performers throughout the seventies and eighties. I asked him
Speaker 1: how they got by? You have a good left hook.
Speaker 1: When I lived in Manchester in the early seventies and
Speaker 1: it was a fantastic town with a very vibrant drag scene,
Speaker 1: but the dragon queens was so tough. I remember being
Speaker 1: in at some horrible calf with these two drag queens.
Speaker 1: I knew called Aver and Charis, and some woman said
Speaker 1: something to Ava that ticked her off. And Ava was
Speaker 1: big and she picked up her tray with her food
Speaker 1: on just threw it right out this woman and then
Speaker 1: poors Cherise later on was murdered by you know, skinhead gang.
Speaker 1: And I think that that kind of stuff continues in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world. I mean these countries where
Speaker 1: it's still illegal to be gay. There's countries in Africa,
Speaker 1: whether it's just you wonder when are they going to
Speaker 1: make some progress on this issue. Brazil, I think it
Speaker 1: seems very liberated and very gay positive, but then trans
Speaker 1: people are murdered in record numbers in Brazil. So brave
Speaker 1: to throw on a frock and get out there and
Speaker 1: it's empowering and it's creative and it's brilliant, but it's
Speaker 1: also hugely courageous. For some younger drag queens today, that
Speaker 1: history might get lost the Internet and media portraying much
Speaker 1: more glamorized version of drag than the one of generations past.
Speaker 1: But for Taylor Alexander, that history is everything. It's really
Speaker 1: informed how I got into drag. Who was the porting
Speaker 1: me when I started doing drag? So knowing my history
Speaker 1: and knowing what had to happen before I came along
Speaker 1: to make the world what it is for queer and
Speaker 1: trance people is extremely important. I think that there are
Speaker 1: some people who just don't think about that, who don't
Speaker 1: take that into consideration. You know. On top of being
Speaker 1: like a performer, I'm also like a community organizer, and
Speaker 1: so as much as like you know, I love throwing parties,
Speaker 1: I'm always thinking about, like how can I reflect different
Speaker 1: communities in this drag show? How can I tie this
Speaker 1: into like queer history, how can I tie this into
Speaker 1: like movements that are happening right now, which is like
Speaker 1: standing up for black trance lives and whatnot. It's like
Speaker 1: an ongoing process, and I think it's unfortunate that some
Speaker 1: performers just completely toss it to the side. I definitely agree.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go to every single bar and
Speaker 1: have like a sit down conversation about like stone Wall
Speaker 1: in Marsha P. Johnson, But every single person that comes
Speaker 1: to a show of mine, it comes to a uh
Speaker 1: an event that I'm producing. I would love to leave
Speaker 1: with like a certain kind of inspiration and to learn
Speaker 1: more and to to know more and to grow, and
Speaker 1: so history and representation and just learning about who came
Speaker 1: before me and what's going to happen, you know, after me.
Speaker 1: It's really important. Until the late eighties, drag culture had
Speaker 1: very little visibility outside of its few subversive pockets around
Speaker 1: the world. But then one movie changed all of that,
Speaker 1: Jenny Livingstone documentary Paris Is Burning Law Learned and learned
Speaker 1: it well. That movie is sort of like the Citizen
Speaker 1: Kane of drag. I was working years ago in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties when all of my friends were dying. It
Speaker 1: was a terrible period, the Eights epidemic. And Susanne bart
Speaker 1: Is a very clear was friend of mine. She's a
Speaker 1: club queen in New York, and back then we were
Speaker 1: like so overwhelmed with death. You know, we're still young
Speaker 1: people and dealing with all this death. And she said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do a charity event, but like one
Speaker 1: of these voguing balls. And I said, what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: And she dragged me up to Harlem and we went
Speaker 1: to a bunch of these voguing balls, and then we
Speaker 1: started having committee meetings for this event she wanted to
Speaker 1: do call a love Ball, and one week Chi Valente,
Speaker 1: who has been very involved in this work. She said,
Speaker 1: I'm bringing this girl who's doing a documentary on the
Speaker 1: voguing scene in New York killed Jenny Livingston, And she
Speaker 1: came and she showed us a little fragment, a preliminary
Speaker 1: fragment of this film, Paris Is Burning. It's a very
Speaker 1: intimate look at what was called ball culture in the
Speaker 1: late eighties. It was often less than wealthy, gay and
Speaker 1: trans people of color who put on their own pageant
Speaker 1: shows using whatever clothes and props they had. Jay people
Speaker 1: men gathered together under one roof and decide to have
Speaker 1: competition amongst themselves. Balls. I worked to a ball. I've
Speaker 1: got a trophy, and now everybody wants to know me.
Speaker 1: In the film, you see the underground ball culture of
Speaker 1: New York City centered around Harlem, and there we meet
Speaker 1: a number of drag families such as the Lobejas and
Speaker 1: the Extravaganzas. The House Extravaganza has a lot. It's made
Speaker 1: me feel like I have a families and we're always together.
Speaker 1: We always if we're not together, we always speak on
Speaker 1: the phone. These adoptive families and these balls were often
Speaker 1: these individuals only source of belonging and safety. It's like
Speaker 1: crossing into the looking glass in Wonderland. We're going there
Speaker 1: and you feel, you feel a hundred rights being gay,
Speaker 1: and then that's what it's like. That what it's like
Speaker 1: in the world. The Boys, the Extravagances, lab Asia dupri
Speaker 1: they were all over Manhattan. But there's one person had
Speaker 1: the imagination to pick up a camera and create that movie.
Speaker 1: And so hats off to her that she saw that,
Speaker 1: because the impact of that movie is is enduring and
Speaker 1: enduring and enduring, and I think it's given drag to
Speaker 1: a global language. Shante Shante Shante Shante Shante Chante. You know,
Speaker 1: throwing shade shad is I don't tell you're ugly, but
Speaker 1: I don't have to tell you because you know you're ugly,
Speaker 1: and that's shade. All the lingo that's in there, mopping, mopping,
Speaker 1: you go into a store and just look mapping, stealing.
Speaker 1: A lot of people would recognize the expressions that were
Speaker 1: used in Charaspanic because you hear them on CNN. Please
Speaker 1: don't don't trying to throw shade just because I'm making
Speaker 1: sure that shade. I'm just trying to you know, people
Speaker 1: will say, getting shady with me and throwing shade and bloody,
Speaker 1: bloody blood. That's the magic of this film. And then
Speaker 1: you hear it every time you watch Rupules, drag Rays, Girl, shade, Shade,
Speaker 1: constant references to that movie. Now in the great tradition
Speaker 1: of Paris is Burnie the library is about to be outfit.
Speaker 1: You know, that period is very poorly documented. Not many
Speaker 1: people photographed those balls, but we have that film which
Speaker 1: is very very touching. You know, a lot of those
Speaker 1: kids are in the balls. They don't have two of nothing.
Speaker 1: Some of them don't even eat. They come to ball
Speaker 1: starting and they sleep on the pier or wherever. They
Speaker 1: don't have a home to go to. But they'll make
Speaker 1: they'll go out and they'll still or something and get
Speaker 1: dressed up and come to a war for that one
Speaker 1: night and lived a fantasy. One of the things I
Speaker 1: find so amazing about it is when you look back
Speaker 1: at it, Jenny Livingston said, I realized I'd entered the
Speaker 1: world where these people knew exactly how to be themselves.
Speaker 1: Mistakes were so low for those people in that film.
Speaker 1: They were so marginalized on so many levels that they
Speaker 1: had nothing to lose. What you see when you look
Speaker 1: at those people like Pepper up Asia and Dorr and
Speaker 1: Corey and the legendary children and all of it is
Speaker 1: people who know how to be themselves without any filter,
Speaker 1: and they all seem strangely happy. You know, obviously they're
Speaker 1: on for the camera, but that's the thing that always
Speaker 1: strikes me, Like, as Pepper lap Asia says, they don't
Speaker 1: have two of nothing, but it was laughing and they
Speaker 1: make their own fun and then not being driven bonkers
Speaker 1: by social media. Obviously they have their TIFFs in their issues,
Speaker 1: and they all were casualties of aids and drugs, and
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't have easy I'm not saying they
Speaker 1: had easy lives, but there's this weird joy that radiates
Speaker 1: from people even though they have essentially nothing. I find
Speaker 1: that very touching, very inspiring. At the same time that
Speaker 1: voguing balls were taking place in small Manhattan clubs and
Speaker 1: dragging in forms of drag, we're being commercialized in pop culture,
Speaker 1: most notably in the music industry. The counterculture. Back then,
Speaker 1: people talked about unisex, unisex clothing, unisex hair dues, and
Speaker 1: it was around that time that glam rock erupted, turns On,
Speaker 1: Leave It On. How you are driving. I want my
Speaker 1: m T, I want my TV. I worshiped David Bowie,
Speaker 1: Mark Boland, all those people used to go to those
Speaker 1: early concerts of Theirs and We're Satin, you know, and
Speaker 1: things I couldn't afford to buy from Mr Freedom, which
Speaker 1: was the big glam rock star I used to make myself.
Speaker 1: It was a totally androgynous lot of boys were big
Speaker 1: platform shoots and our heels, which was great for me
Speaker 1: because I'm only five ft four, so it's fabulous. It
Speaker 1: was a period where androgyny became a big thing, and
Speaker 1: and it surges in and out of pop music. I mean,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hendrix is obviously very androgynous, wearing flowers and velvet.
Speaker 1: Mick Jagger that was the sixties thing too, and then
Speaker 1: resurfaced with glam rock in a more theatrical show busy
Speaker 1: way with satin and stars and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: then loads of makeup obviously, like Boie, I find that
Speaker 1: I am a person who can take on the guises
Speaker 1: of different people that I meet. I can switch accents
Speaker 1: in seconds of me somebody and I can adopt their accent.
Speaker 1: I've always found that I collect I'm a collector I
Speaker 1: have a hotchpotch philosophy, which really is very minimal. And
Speaker 1: you seem like somebody maybe who would love glam rock.
Speaker 1: Are you a glamor rock person? But he is probably
Speaker 1: my favorite musician of all time. Well, today you're looking
Speaker 1: very hunky dory, thank you. Yes, I get that a lot.
Speaker 1: He was so he wasn't male, it wasn't female. He
Speaker 1: was genuinely very androgynous, like you actually stopped thinking about
Speaker 1: anatotomical stuff with him. He was just this beautiful extraterrestrial
Speaker 1: of androgyny. For gay people of my generation, it was
Speaker 1: very powerful because back then you thought, oh, if you're gay,
Speaker 1: you just end up being some alcoholic Judy Garland loving
Speaker 1: person who's full of self loathing and living in the shadows.
Speaker 1: And suddenly, oh, my god, is this way to be gay.
Speaker 1: That's hip and groovy and tied into the culture. And
Speaker 1: so it was very significant for my generation. I think
Speaker 1: he was the most sophisticated take on androgyny other than
Speaker 1: maybe Grace Jones. How do you view yourself? I'm schizophrenic,
Speaker 1: have many different moods. I think, like everyone else, I'm
Speaker 1: very much human, very much that Grace Jones is incredibly
Speaker 1: beautiful visual take of androgyny. It's also very unforgettable. Then
Speaker 1: at other times it became like the New York Dolls.
Speaker 1: You know, they were doing a parody of almost like
Speaker 1: slapping the makeup on and you know, hasty, kind of
Speaker 1: ratchet drag, which was sort of just designed to be provocative.
Speaker 1: And then we moved into the eighties with hair Metal.
Speaker 1: You know, hair Metal was pure drag. It was like
Speaker 1: guys dressing in their mother's aerobics clothes and then getting
Speaker 1: their done like Joan Cusack in Working Girl. It was
Speaker 1: brilliant and very funny, you know, aggressively heterosexual, but then
Speaker 1: dressed like a New Jersey housewife basically no offense to
Speaker 1: New Jersey housewives. But when the nineties hit, drag became
Speaker 1: synonymous with one name and one name only, RuPaul. You've
Speaker 1: had a show, Bunny as the Pyramid Club was the
Speaker 1: focus of drag when I came to New York in
Speaker 1: the early eighties, and that is where drag kind of
Speaker 1: started to become hip. I mean a lot of people
Speaker 1: stood out, but there was one person who was just different,
Speaker 1: and that was RuPaul. Because RuPaul was always turned out,
Speaker 1: never sloppy, it was never hag drag, you know, it
Speaker 1: was always turned out. And I'm not at all surprised
Speaker 1: that he has gotten where he's got because there was
Speaker 1: always this aura around him of success, and he used
Speaker 1: to say it. He always envisaged his own success. He
Speaker 1: knew he kind of would be something, he would amount
Speaker 1: to something. When you become the image of your own imagination,
Speaker 1: it's the most powerful thing you could ever do, you know,
Speaker 1: because I ain't stopping, you know. You know, in my mind,
Speaker 1: I've always been a superstar, you know, and nobody couldn't
Speaker 1: tell me no different, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: if you believe it, then they'll believe it, they'll buy you.
Speaker 1: Hear that from a lot of people. Madonna also has that.
Speaker 1: I think I've always had a lot of confidence in myself.
Speaker 1: What are your dreams? What's left to rule the world?
Speaker 1: Like nothing was going to get in their way. It
Speaker 1: was going to happen. And there's this weird kind of
Speaker 1: certainty that most of us don't have, but certain people,
Speaker 1: and root Poles, one of them, always had that vision
Speaker 1: of herself and has fulfilled it. RuPaul Charles was born
Speaker 1: in California, but really kicked off his drag career in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Georgia in the nineteen eighties. He then went on to
Speaker 1: New York City, where he exploded onto the scene, appearing
Speaker 1: on TV with the RuPaul Show one studios in New
Speaker 1: York Show Up and recording hit songs like you Better
Speaker 1: Work in a Shade Shady, I just want to give pay,
Speaker 1: I just want to Finally, in two thousand nine, RuPaul
Speaker 1: launched the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race, a show
Speaker 1: where queens would compete to be the next drag superstar.
Speaker 1: So goes the show's popular slogan, good Dragular, these queens
Speaker 1: will rate them old by spreading and positivity and unity
Speaker 1: to become a America's next drag superstar not away from me.
Speaker 1: The show would not only bring drag into the mainstream,
Speaker 1: but inspire a whole new generation of drag performers, including
Speaker 1: Taylor Alexander, though they have some mixed feelings about RuPaul.
Speaker 1: It's weird because RuPaul started doing drag here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and when she first started doing drag, which is like
Speaker 1: my favorite era of RuPaul, she was you know, very
Speaker 1: into like Androgyny. She used to wear like you know,
Speaker 1: football shield and like shoulder pad like mohawks and like
Speaker 1: also used to do like music. She was in a
Speaker 1: band called Wee Pole that used to perform right along
Speaker 1: here on Ponds. And so it's funny that you know,
Speaker 1: she was dabbling in androgyny and messing with gender and
Speaker 1: messing with even like the ideas of drag because even
Speaker 1: then there were still like, you know, these notions that
Speaker 1: you know, drag is quote unquote to be a female illusionists,
Speaker 1: and so they have to be padded and have this
Speaker 1: very kind of like quafft and perfected, you know. Look,
Speaker 1: and here comes through Paul, just like completely messing with that.
Speaker 1: But then you see her slowly transform over the years
Speaker 1: into this glamazon and she calls it and kind of
Speaker 1: completely forget the very queer, the very like androgynous route
Speaker 1: that she began with. And I think that's because of
Speaker 1: her personal journey with being like the world's most like
Speaker 1: famous drag queen. What Taylor is referring to is that
Speaker 1: throughout the runtime of Drag Race, RuPaul has been slow
Speaker 1: to accept trans performers into the ranks, instead preferring sis
Speaker 1: gay men exclusively. However, the show itself has progressed over
Speaker 1: its decade plus time on the air, now featuring a
Speaker 1: number of trans men and women. Most of all, the
Speaker 1: show has provided a platform for drag performers of all
Speaker 1: types to expand their brands and show their stuff. The
Speaker 1: show also allows for many intimate and tender moments with
Speaker 1: many of these queens. My dad passed in October two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, and it's still so fresh to me. We
Speaker 1: didn't see at at first, but we ended up having
Speaker 1: the best relationship. He came to my patents and we
Speaker 1: was always talking, and he told me, you need to
Speaker 1: go on Rupa's request so him pass. And he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's time. I want to do it for my dad. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's an amazing story and you've done so well. I
Speaker 1: am so proud of you. Thank you. I'd love watching
Speaker 1: you just work through it and make it happen. I
Speaker 1: love how if there's some drag queen who's struggling a
Speaker 1: bit and they're in a saboteur is pushing them in
Speaker 1: the wrong direction, and Rupat has that very paternal maternal
Speaker 1: conversation with them about being your own best pal and
Speaker 1: get your act together. You deserve to have good things
Speaker 1: happen to you. And I think that's a very important
Speaker 1: message because I don't think drag queens historically thought that
Speaker 1: they deserve to have good things happened to them. The
Speaker 1: whole society was telling them the opposite, Just like my
Speaker 1: dad telling me, we'll gay people. They all get blackmailed
Speaker 1: and they all end up in prison or depressed or whatever.
Speaker 1: RuPaul is just annihilated all that. These kids know how
Speaker 1: to make money, they know how to take care of themselves.
Speaker 1: They're great role models for like survival, because survival is
Speaker 1: really important, how to get a job, how to keep
Speaker 1: a job. And RuPaul has those basically solid working class
Speaker 1: beliefs that are married with this amazing, free flowing creativity.
Speaker 1: To be successful at drag race, usually you have to
Speaker 1: do two things. You have to look good and you
Speaker 1: have to be funny. Ms Bendella Cram. After seeing you
Speaker 1: and drag I realized now why Seattle had to hide
Speaker 1: suicide rate. It used to be quite separate, you know,
Speaker 1: glamor drag and comedy drag, especially in my childhood, like
Speaker 1: someone like caught Yell, you know a show girl from
Speaker 1: the Lieberger was it was about glamor and then the
Speaker 1: straight guys like Benny Hill, dec Emery, Monty, Python, egg sausage, Egon,
Speaker 1: spa and bacon and spagon sausage and spa. They were
Speaker 1: wearing drag and they basically looked hideous. You know. It
Speaker 1: was a kind of misogynistic take on womanhood. So they
Speaker 1: work kind of separate in many ways, And what you
Speaker 1: see now is the real success comes when people combine
Speaker 1: them in. Rupole was one of the first people to
Speaker 1: do that. She's very funny, she's very witty. As the
Speaker 1: Queen of Sauca, you lacked spice, she wants to look
Speaker 1: elegant and beautiful and megastar, but she's funny as well,
Speaker 1: So I think that's a fairly recent thing, a brilliant
Speaker 1: combination of the two. They deride people on Rupa's drags
Speaker 1: for being, oh, she's too much of a pageant queen.
Speaker 1: So just being an air to a drawing is not enough.
Speaker 1: You have to you have to have some humanity because
Speaker 1: not everybody wants to lose themselves in the aesthetic vision,
Speaker 1: but everybody wants to have a good laugh. When you're
Speaker 1: watching RuPaul's drag race, don't you find yourself just I
Speaker 1: think I've been sitting here for forty five minutes with
Speaker 1: the biggest grin on my face, like it's the most
Speaker 1: life affirming show. And again it's like partsipering. You cry
Speaker 1: a bit, but mostly you just laugh and you think,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is insane. It's so fun. As
Speaker 1: of this episode's airing, there have been thirteen seasons of
Speaker 1: RuPaul's Drag Race, six seasons of Drag Race All Stars,
Speaker 1: two seasons of Drag Race UK, and spinoffs in country
Speaker 1: like Australia, Canada, Holland, Spain and Thailand. Drag has officially
Speaker 1: become a global commercial empire, and it's now a glitzy
Speaker 1: business that's not always reflective of the more d i
Speaker 1: y drag culture you might expect to find in your
Speaker 1: local gay bars. I asked Taylor Alexander what they think
Speaker 1: of drag Race and if they'd ever do it. Have
Speaker 1: I considered drag Race, yes, because I would love to
Speaker 1: be able to do. Drag is like my full time gig,
Speaker 1: and that's just it which some people are able to
Speaker 1: do in the city. You know, up until the pandemic,
Speaker 1: half of my income was from doing shows and doing drag,
Speaker 1: so I'm happy to get back to that soon. But
Speaker 1: what I ever do drag Race just because of the
Speaker 1: kind of like legal contractual obligations of being on Drag Race.
Speaker 1: Like recently there was this whole like expose about the
Speaker 1: latest season's contract. Provision A says, the producer has the
Speaker 1: irrevocable option to require you to appear as a participant
Speaker 1: in one cycle of series episodes. The next provision grants
Speaker 1: the producer the additional exclusive and irrevocable options to have
Speaker 1: you appear as a participant in five additional seasons, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, it could be cycles of this series
Speaker 1: RuPaul's Drag Race or Rupau's Drag Race All Stars. And
Speaker 1: the next part signs away your rights to all of
Speaker 1: the materials in the show, including the casting tape that
Speaker 1: you created and submitted to them. Basically, when signing this form,
Speaker 1: you're now legally obligated to participated into six seasons of
Speaker 1: RuPaul's Drag Race. I've chosen to do so. They could
Speaker 1: potentially own you basically from like four to twenty years.
Speaker 1: They could negotiate how much you get paid, what you
Speaker 1: post on social media, what kind of merch And it's
Speaker 1: just like, I don't need that as much as I
Speaker 1: would love like a national platform to showcase my artistry
Speaker 1: and be able to like tour in whatever off of drag.
Speaker 1: It's just like being tied to a brand that I
Speaker 1: have no control over. It's just scary and also so
Speaker 1: I just think for me, I'm best doing what I
Speaker 1: do here in the city of Atlanta. I really see
Speaker 1: myself being here for decades and kind of creating my
Speaker 1: own legacy in terms of like Drag Race and kind
Speaker 1: of like how it informed me. I'm the kind of
Speaker 1: person that's always critiquing Drag Race, but I will watch
Speaker 1: every single episode, probably like multiple times, just because you know,
Speaker 1: it's the only like big mainstream kind of representation of drag.
Speaker 1: There's like other smaller drag showcases on a bigger platform.
Speaker 1: But I think for me, I would much rather not
Speaker 1: see people kind of competing, but more so just like
Speaker 1: highlighting the amazing drag communities that we have here in
Speaker 1: the country. Like one of my goals eventually it's like
Speaker 1: do my own show where I travel from like a
Speaker 1: city to city and like highlight one drag show and
Speaker 1: show like their whole process of like getting into drag
Speaker 1: and why they do drag and what dragged us for
Speaker 1: their communities, and you know, I've I've done shows in
Speaker 1: like places like you know, Spartansburg, South Carolina, or like
Speaker 1: during North Carolina, which has an amazing queer community that's
Speaker 1: way smaller than Atlanta. But the love and be affection
Speaker 1: and the intent and creating those spaces, especially for more
Speaker 1: marginalized folks in like rural, more conservative areas, I think
Speaker 1: that needs to be highlighted. As much as I love
Speaker 1: like the pageantry and the glitz and the glamor drag race,
Speaker 1: I also love like the true grit of like regularly,
Speaker 1: regular everyday drag performers. What Taylor is getting at is
Speaker 1: a question I've also thought to myself. Is drag becoming
Speaker 1: too big? Too commercial? People used to say that about
Speaker 1: drag in the nineties, you know, so look where we
Speaker 1: are now. People always say that, Oh they said it
Speaker 1: about the counterculture, about punk, about everything. Oh it's going
Speaker 1: to become blah blah blah, diluted commercialized. I never worry
Speaker 1: about that because people are so surprising and protein and
Speaker 1: a lot of drag queens may become very household names
Speaker 1: or you know, integrated into the culture, but there's always
Speaker 1: going to be radical ones who find new ways to
Speaker 1: be assaulted and crazy and fun and provocative. It's just
Speaker 1: the nature of the beast. There's always going to be
Speaker 1: new ways of looking at things, like this new obsession
Speaker 1: with meticulous artistry that's become such a signature part of Drag.
Speaker 1: Now there'll be something after that that comes along keeps
Speaker 1: it alive, because this is a great form of satire,
Speaker 1: you know, and satire is sort of getting lost a
Speaker 1: bit in our culture. Good satire, but Drag Queens now,
Speaker 1: they're still good at satirizing masculinity, femininity, stupidity, political issues.
Speaker 1: They amp it up every season that show. They find
Speaker 1: new ways to reinvent the medium and make it more
Speaker 1: extraordinary because they are very imaginative, creative people. So it's
Speaker 1: actually something I don't worry about. All I see is
Speaker 1: like magical creativity and enough to go around and easily
Speaker 1: enough to propel this movement into a new, unforeseen, extraordinary,
Speaker 1: apocalyptic craziness. I can't wait, not to quote RuPaul, but
Speaker 1: to quote RuPaul, Drag will always be punk. I don't
Speaker 1: think that she fully believes in that in practices that
Speaker 1: on her show, but Drag will always be punking. D
Speaker 1: I Y it will always be messy, it will always
Speaker 1: be not the nicest, clean cut, you know, one and
Speaker 1: a half hour kind of production that Rupau's Drag Race is.
Speaker 1: Drag will always be for the people, by the people,
Speaker 1: and not as like nice and polished. And I think
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. Do I think that the audiences who engage
Speaker 1: and drag have changed and will change the future absolutely,
Speaker 1: Like even like the first shows in my career, those
Speaker 1: audiences were, you know, mainly like queer and trance people,
Speaker 1: but over the years, more and more like sis gender
Speaker 1: heterosexual people are just like coming to show. I think
Speaker 1: drag will always be kind of like nitty gritty. If
Speaker 1: Drag Race, you know, wants to continue and change and
Speaker 1: more from being a long running staple American television, I
Speaker 1: think it's going to have to go back to a
Speaker 1: certain kind of d I Y elements. I feel like
Speaker 1: Drag Race has really changed since season nine. I feel
Speaker 1: like season nine is where we saw kind of more
Speaker 1: like polished ready for TV. I'm trying to get an
Speaker 1: Emmy Award nomination kind of producing. You know, Even like
Speaker 1: season three, season four, those were incredibly like d I Y.
Speaker 1: They were like so many challenges where they had to
Speaker 1: make their own outfits, and you know, it was so
Speaker 1: much of those based more on performance and not so
Speaker 1: much like story producing. But I really feel like the
Speaker 1: past few seasons have just gone straight into that kind
Speaker 1: of like, alright, this is a television reality show and
Speaker 1: not so much like a drag competition show. So it'll
Speaker 1: be interesting to see how Drag Race transformed over the
Speaker 1: next few seasons, over the next few years. But I
Speaker 1: think of the drag regardless of Drag Race, has always
Speaker 1: been d i y, has always been gritty, has always
Speaker 1: been punk, and I hope they gets more punk. I
Speaker 1: would love to see. It's like, you know, mainstream note
Speaker 1: variety around drag goes up that like the kind of
Speaker 1: weirdness and quirkiness of drag just gets even more and
Speaker 1: more visible. So we've heard what drag was during the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, and we've heard what drag is today. So
Speaker 1: what's the common thread that ties all of these vast
Speaker 1: interpretations of the art form together. Why does drag exist
Speaker 1: in our world in our culture. Well, here's simon. I
Speaker 1: feel like drag is a visual thing. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was this theory back in the nineties that why are
Speaker 1: men drawn to the idea of cross dressing or trans
Speaker 1: vestis um or you know the millions of words that
Speaker 1: have been used over the years. Why are men drawn
Speaker 1: to that? And there was this theory that for the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, during the twenties century, women owned what was
Speaker 1: known as the visual realm. So there is no male
Speaker 1: equivalent to Marilyn Monroe, there is no male equivalent to
Speaker 1: Gene Harlow, there is no Linda Event, Julista, Naomi Campbell.
Speaker 1: You know, they have this incredible power that just purely
Speaker 1: comes from if they show up, there's this free song,
Speaker 1: this magical thing around women. They continue to own the
Speaker 1: visual realm. That's why you have phenomenon's like Golden Age
Speaker 1: of Hollywood, Lady Gaga, all of it. And then men
Speaker 1: wearing women's clothes was seen back then as being sort
Speaker 1: of a power grab, a very complex paragraph because it
Speaker 1: was like, I want to have that, I want to
Speaker 1: own the visual realm. I want to walk into a restaurant.
Speaker 1: Everyone's looking at me. I'm Liz Taylor, I'm Marilyn Monroe,
Speaker 1: I'm an injury evangelista. Men used to record the motivations
Speaker 1: to where women's clothes as being this incredible sense of freedom,
Speaker 1: like I'm no longer the bread when the male burden
Speaker 1: is lifted and I get to own this visual realm
Speaker 1: that women. I think it remains to be true. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a gay man, but I love to look at femaleness,
Speaker 1: even if it's a drag queen. You could never build
Speaker 1: a show around a bunch of people dressing up as
Speaker 1: lumba jacks and roadwork. I don't know, maybe if it
Speaker 1: might be fun, but never say never. But there's something
Speaker 1: about the Medusa like power. And you see on RuPaul's
Speaker 1: drag race very clearly when they walk into the workroom.
Speaker 1: At the beginning, they seem very young, very ang new,
Speaker 1: these young boys, and then suddenly the two foot taller
Speaker 1: the hair is out to hear. Drag queens are very intimidating.
Speaker 1: That's part of the deal. They grabbed the power center
Speaker 1: in the room and people love it. Taylor Alexander has
Speaker 1: a different perspective. I think that drag has always been
Speaker 1: a way for people to not only entertain a perform
Speaker 1: for people, but to off like navigate spaces where if
Speaker 1: they were out of drag they probably would and be
Speaker 1: as accepted, which is sad to say there's a history
Speaker 1: and queer community of drag reformers often also being activists,
Speaker 1: are also being you know, marginalized in some capacity. You know,
Speaker 1: when we think about like historical figures, we think about
Speaker 1: you know, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia rivera miss Major, so
Speaker 1: many other icons who on top of being you know,
Speaker 1: trans women and sometimes sex workers, were also drag reformers.
Speaker 1: And so I think sometimes the history is muddled because
Speaker 1: language changes so much where people are like, oh, she
Speaker 1: was a drag queen, she wasn't a trans woman, because
Speaker 1: you know, transgender, the term that we use all the
Speaker 1: time nowadays, really didn't come into like public conversation into
Speaker 1: like the late nineties and really didn't pop off like
Speaker 1: on the internet and to like you know, the men
Speaker 1: two thousand's early two thousand tens. And so sometimes our
Speaker 1: history gets forgotten or gets kind of muddled, or it's
Speaker 1: hard to decipher because it's hard to translate actions and
Speaker 1: identities you know, of forty fifty years ago to like
Speaker 1: to day. Like I feel like every single month there's
Speaker 1: a new way to identify, which I think is beautiful,
Speaker 1: but it also should harken back to our past to
Speaker 1: understand that drag and gender has always meshed with each
Speaker 1: other and have always been inside of like this weird coexistence.
Speaker 1: I think that drag and gender both playing to the
Speaker 1: idea that nothing is clean cut, and I think it's
Speaker 1: one as it may seem. I think that's a beautiful
Speaker 1: thing that I think people are really starting to understand now.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes especially with the on flaught of RuPaul's
Speaker 1: Drag Race, you know, especially those outside the community, but
Speaker 1: even inside the LGBTQ community are informed by that. So
Speaker 1: they're thinking trans people can't do drag, They're thinking trans
Speaker 1: people shouldn't be represented, and now we have this public
Speaker 1: conversation where that's completely incorrect and has never been historically accurate.
Speaker 1: And so I think, especially with this last season the
Speaker 1: Drag Race, they're really trying to correct their previous hiccups
Speaker 1: and kind of like explaining to the public, both the
Speaker 1: queer public and the kind of like cis gender head
Speaker 1: sexual public, that drag and being trans are having a
Speaker 1: trans identity can coexist and they always have been, and
Speaker 1: anybody who tells you otherwise it's just you know, completely
Speaker 1: like uneducated. Just to end on a fun note, here's
Speaker 1: a super cut of some of the best catchphrases coined
Speaker 1: by queens from Drag Rags. Miss Banjie, miss Banjie, Miss Sandy.
Speaker 1: Oh honey, all this shade, Honey shade comes from reading Yes,
Speaker 1: Mama boots the house down for your nerves. Work, Look
Speaker 1: out range, little girl, I'm jump I'm not joking. Let
Speaker 1: it go, tired ass, show girl, show girl. At least
Speaker 1: I am a show girl. Go back to party City
Speaker 1: where you belong, back rolls, hollo it out Party. This
Speaker 1: episode of Ephemeral was written and assembled by Trevor Young
Speaker 1: and produced with Max and Alex Williams. Simon Dunan is
Speaker 1: the author of Drag The Complete Story, available wherever books
Speaker 1: are found, and follow Taylor Alexander on Instagram at t
Speaker 1: A Y l O R a l x n d
Speaker 1: R to keep up with all their events, including Southern
Speaker 1: Fried Queer Pride, which works to support trans and queer
Speaker 1: people all across the Southeast. For more on everything you
Speaker 1: heard here, visit our website Ephemeral dot Show, and for
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite show.