The construction of a written body of work is really no different than the art of illusion: start with an empty page—a blank face. You begin by playing with the general layout, gathering your ideas, main points, and (perhaps) quotations onto the page–layering foundation on the face, a bit of shimmery highlight, and a gradient of shades for contouring. You write yourself in(to) the work (whatever that means to you); after all, the personal is political—add a burst of color on the eyelid and your signature trademark (mine is a random rhinestone on my face). You then incorporate the scholarship and opinions of others whose works both support and challenge your own—create your body shape by adding foam hips, “tucking,” and a stuffed bra (or prosthetic breast plate—know in the drag world as a “tit bib”). You top it all off with an overarching conclusion or “ending”—throw on your highest pair of heels, wig/hairpiece, and your one-of-a-kind handmade costume and viola! Fiercely flawless, you have just attempted and completed both your first written body of work and your first “drag body” of work. However, we know that neither is as simple as my analogy might suggest. Complications occur: you find that your writing contradicts itself; you try to blend colors on your eyelid that don’t work well together; you can’t put your ideas into words let alone get them on paper; you confuse inspired by with replication, and creative freedom in your makeup for painting hard.[1]
Sometimes colors, materials, and ingredients do not blend well together—oil-based make-up with water-based cream, spray adhesive on bare skin, metal-set rhinestone jewelry with a chiffon gown. Other times you just need the right kind of tool/brush—one specifically made for shading—to help foster the blending process. In this work, I attempt to be both the brush and its strokes as I blend vantage points within subjects of drag, the drag queen, and its newly emerging component: the faux queen. Bridging, blending, finding points of connection within the multifaceted (and heavily opinionated) world of drag is not necessarily easy, nor are drag’s ideas often conducive to one another; however, I feel that finding these moments and places of connection is necessary in order to explain and show this world —a world which is very standoffish to outsiders—in the most panoramic view possible, to the communities that need it the most: queer studies, academia more generally, and the LGBT community. It is from a place of honor and respect for all the drag queens who have opened their art to me that I begin the blending process of the various hues that make up the rainbow of our community/myself: the student trying to (creatively) find academic form and function amidst all this abstract tulle, glam, and AB Swarovski crystal gowns and shoes; the voice and performance of the drag queen trapped in my body who joins the gay male drag community in love and admiration, not competition and/or appropriation; and the bio-female who is so attracted to this world of gay male drag that she has dedicated her life and this entire work trying to find her and other’s home/place within it.
[1] In the drag world, the phrase “painting hard” is used when the make-up is not blended properly, i.e. the make-up wears the queen not the other way around. Color, texture, design . . . anything that the mind can image is game in drag make-up; however, the key to the perfect “mug” is to blend it all together. (“Mug” is drag slang for face.)
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