Drag Cap & Drag Snaps: Gaybingo Dallas, Bellydancing, and Miss Gay Dallas America

February has been an extremely busy month and it's looking like March is heading in that direction as well. In addition to my days in drag, i have also gotten back into bellydancing--Miabella at Crescent Moon Studios is one of the most loving and amazing women i have ever met.

Here are my favorite Drag Snaps from this past week. Enjoy!

Female Drag Queen Anthology (Originally titled: Faux Queen Anthology)

Hello dragsters! i am uber excited to announce a new addition to the female drag queen anthology family!!!!!!!

Kentucky Fried Woman is coming on as our burlesque editor! She is a fierce and fabulous performer, one of the co-authors of the "Bio-Queen Manifesto," and my new and AMAZING lifelong friend!!

Photo Michelle Yoder Photography

Here's a peak at all the dragtastical things she has done:

Kentucky Fried Woman is an Oakland, CA based danceer and drag performer/emcee/producer and social justice activist. She co-founded and performs with several groups including ButchBallet & ButchTap. She also played Hermoine Granger in Hogwarts Express: The Musical and collaborates with many bay area queer performance artists. KFW is known for her wacky events like the always themed Kentucky Fried Woman Show. KFW started performing in the queer cabaret community with the Santa Barbara based troupe the Disposable Boy Toys in 2000 and went on to found the Seattle-based ground-breaking, fat positive  queer performance group the Queen Bees before relocating to Oakland. She is available to speak, produce, perform and emcee events and also teaches classes and facilitates workshops on a variety of subjects related to bodies and identity.

i LOVE this woman and i'm so excited to have her on board!

YEA!

The Female Drag Anthology Deadline--EXTENDED!!

Happy New Year dragster and drag lovers! i hope your year has gotten off to a fabulous start!

i received so many emails in December from people wanting to submit to the female drag anthology, but they were unable to make the deadline because of the chaos of the holidays. Not one to want to miss any FABULOUSITY, i decided to extend the deadline!! YEA!!! Which means you have until April 30, 2013 to get your drag stories in!!!

In case you need a refresher, check out the call for submissions here.

May your days be dragful and gay!

Bio Queen Manifesto Interview

i am VERY excited to announce that i have the honor of interviewing the 4 AMAZING women who co-authored the Bio Queen Manifesto. The interview is being conducted in 2 parts and i finished the first half last night. What a liberating and exhilarating experience!

As a community, we have such a rich history that we do not necessarily know about because it's scattered all over the place. The Bio Queen Manifesto is such an important piece of our drag history and the manifesto itself is nowhere to be found on the Internet. The myspace page where i originally found it has since been taken down. So i have published it in its original form here. Go read it. It's good stuff. It's a piece of our history that i hope to capture panoramicaly in the interview; the final edited interview will be included in the Female Drag Queen Anthology.

I can't wait to share it with you all!!

Faux Queen Projects and Other Fun Drag Queen Stuff

Wow!! What an EXCITING week this has been!!!

I love drag pageant  filled weeks!! One of my favorite things about the drag world is that we are family; we are a community of people who love the same thing: drag and everything that the art form comes with (well, maybe not everything. let's just say most things). Every time i am at a pageant, or performing, or watching my favorite drag performers i think to myself "i love my life. i love my drag community and i'm really lucky that i get to experience it this up-close and personal." i get so overwhelmed sometimes that it makes me want to rhinestone "i love drag" on body and go flashing people on the streets. i'm not of course, but the point is i could and i would.

Anyway, because of my love (obsession) with drag i have dedicated a huge chunk of my life to it. And that dedication includes mass amounts of projects centered around my life source. Here are are but a few of my drag projects in the works.

i'm really excited about the female drag anthology that i'm putting together. i've had some AH MAZE ING responses and i can't wait to share them with you!

i'm also working on a drag magazine called: T|Dragzine which will be both an online and print drag mag catering to all your drag needs! i'm hoping to launch it October 8 (but if you need an immediate drag fix, you can visit my other blog dragspirations for instant drag-gratification).

Perhaps the most personal (and the one project that scares me the most) is my book on faux queens. i've been working on it for the last year--it's my MA thesis rebooted and redragged. i'm labeling it creative nonfiction because it really is a hybrid of genres: memoir, theory, biographical, historical, academic, autoethnographic, and--to some--horror. j/k. Maybe not. i'll be posting some snippets, trailers, and previews at my personal website, www.brandiamaraskyy.com, go check it out for the up-to-date tea on this and other projects.

In addition to all the above fabulousity, i am still performing at Gaybingo Dallas every third Saturday of the month, have a couple of drag pageants to prepare for, and LOTS of dragtastic costumes to whip up!

Can you say tired boots?!?!?

Anyway, i'd love for you to drop me a line and let me know your thoughts!!

Now i'm going to go get my drag on!

xoxo

female drag anthology call for submissions - revised

so i have redrafted the call for submissions to the new drag anthology i'm editing. since i've redrafted it, i have received so many great and exciting responses. read the revised call below or click on the link.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS - NEW ANTHOLOGY ON FEMALE DRAG PERFORMERS
Calling ALL Performers of “Feminine” Drag: Faux Queens, Burlesquers, Bio Queens, Femme Dragsters, Female-Female Impersonators, and Drag Queens![1]

Title: TBD

Who: We are looking for female identified individuals who love performing “feminine” drag including but not limited to: bio-queens, female-female impersonators, high femme dragsters, burlesque, faux queens, drag queens, etc. If you are performing as a drag queen or in woman drag, we want to hear from you!

About the project:  This anthology will explore drag from the not-often-written about or discussed female perspective. In majority of drag arenas, female performers are frequently over-looked, undervalued, and are often not  considered to be doing drag because of their choice to drag their birth gender as opposed to its opposite. But over the past few years, female dragsters have slowly begun to emerge, impact, and fashion their places in discourses of drag, gender performance, and queer consciousness. We want this anthology to create a tangible space in which we, in all our drag forms, come together to tell our stories, share our experiences, analyze ourselves in our art, and help pave the way for other female performers. Our goal is that this anthology ignites a dialogue that bridges us to one another, introduces us into discourses of gender performativity and gender identity, and ultimately deepens our connection to the fabulously flawless world of drag.

                                         

What we are looking for: Everything!! We want to engage with all aspects of women performing drag and highlight our diverse voices within it: our personal definitions, our relationships (if any) with drag queens, our lived and/or academic theories, our drag personas and how they developed, and our insatiable need to perform femininity on stage. But we also want to touch upon what goes on behind the scenes by considering questions pivotal to the female drag and drag community: is there something deeper that  bio-women need to understand before proclaiming, “I want to be a drag queen” and/or claim their place in drag? What does the emergence of female identified performers in the world of drag mean for traditional drag queens and drag theory? Is it necessary to be a lesbian and/or queer in order to perform drag? Some other ideas that could be explored:

·         Personal stories and essays on why/how you came to drag

·         Why did you choose the identifier that you did to describe your performance of drag?

·         What does drag mean to you?

·         How would you define the drag that you do?

·         Poetry about your life in drag

·         How have you been perceived by the drag community?

·         Your experiences in the drag community

·         Some of the reactions to your performances

·         Does the drag community in your area embrace what you do?

·         Funny stories, the craziest thing that’s happen to you on/off stage, worst performance, favorite performances

·         Do you believe there’s a difference between all the various female performances of drag, i.e. burlesque, faux, and traditional drag queen drag? Why or Why not?

·         Is your drag performance also your identity?

·         What inspires you? Who are your biggest influences?

·         When and how did you first learn about the female drag community?

·         Tips for those new to the world of the drag. Best advice?

·         Has your acceptance within the drag community changed because of the way you identify?

·         For the bio-female, can/is the desire to be a drag queen a transgender space? Why or why not?

·         Do you have a drag mother? If so, how did that relationship come about?

These are all just ideas to get your creative drag juices flowing! Please don’t limit yourself with this list! We want your experiences, your creativity, and your words. We would also love pictures of your performances, your drag mother, your first time in drag . . . send it all! (But please don’t forget to include your name—drag or real—and some detail about the pictures.) Please forward this call for submissions to any and every one you think would be interested.
               

Anthology information: Publication date will Summer 2013 with a to-be-determined publisher.  We will keep you posted on the project status.

Submission Guidelines: Please include a short bio of yourself. Email your submissions to: submissions@fauxqueens.com or mail them to: Female Drag Anthology, PO Box 195212, Dallas, TX 75219.

Submission Deadline: January 1, 2013

Please feel free to send any questions, comments, and/or ideas to:

baskyy@fauxqueens.com

For more information on faux queens and/or to join our virtual community, please visit: www.fauxqueens.com and/or www.facebook.com/fauxqueens.

---

[1] This call was originally titled “The Faux Queen Anthology.” However, we received a lot of emails about wanting to submit, but being unsure if this anthology included their performance or identity because they didn’t necessarily identify as a faux queen. So we have modified the call to reflect the anthology’s inclusivity that wasn’t adequately portrayed in the initial call. If you consider what you do drag, then we want to hear about it!!

http://www.fauxqueens.com/female-drag-anthology/

fauxqueens.com

just got a face lift!! the website looks amazing and i can't wait till the forum is open and running on Friday!! happy fauxing!!

www.fauxqueens.com