Netchick on Demand Show: Brandi Amara Skyy, 2 Fierce Dallas Faux Queens, and 2 Queens

Last night's Netchick on Demand show kicked off a VERY busy week for me: 2 full production shows, 1 commissioned blog, 1 pageant, 3 rehearsals, and the continuation of Project Nunway.

And if that isn't enough, i am still keeping up with my other blogs, editing the female drag anthology, transcribing my interview with the women of the "Bio Queen Manifesto," and writing my own piece.

*WHEW*

i'm one busy queen!

Check the pics of last night show plus scroll all the way down for a video!!

xoxox

All photos courtesy of LTF Productions (unless otherwise noted).

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Photo Courtesy of Vanity Storm

So now that you've seen the pics are you ready to see the show?!?!? Check it out!!

Project Nunway Part I - The Birth of a Brandi Amara Skyy Couture Project

So i'm really excited to be designing for Dallas' Project Nunway. The date has been set (April 27th) and a theme has been chosen, "A Fairy's Tale." i got paired up with SisterPlenty O'Cleavage (her name is EVERYTHING!) and when we met she told me her favorite fairy tale dress was Drew Barrymore's Ever After Cinderella gown (which i then informed her is one of my favorite movies!!!!!!).

The dress is GORGEOUS, but a tad bit too traditional for my style. My aesthetic relies heavily upon unconventional materials--paper, condoms, found objects, etc. So, i really wanted to marry my vision to what she wanted. Later in the week, i came across this David LaChapelle photo from Harper's Bazaar and fell in LOVE with the concept



A DRESS MADE OUT OF CELLOPHANE!!! HOW BRILLIANT IS THAT?!?!?

i had found the missing textile to my design!! So i sketched out a dress made out of fabrics AND cellophane (oh, yes with wings too!)

TA-DA!!

The beginnings of Nunway Couture has begun! This is a very raw sketch of what the dress will probably end up looking like. One of the perks of this project is that i get to sashay down the runway with my sister so i get to concoct not one, but TWO sickening couture pieces!!!!!

i'm soo excited about where this is going and i can't wait to get started!  i will be blogging throughout the project (much like this post) so keep to checking back to see how the look progresses (and transforms)!!

 

World AIDS Day & the DFW Sister's Red Dress Party

i attended the DFW Sisters Red Dress Party on Saturday night and had an amazing time. Great night, great people, great cause! Lots of mingling and people in the community getting together to remember those who have past, celebrate those who are still living, and raise money to find a cure.

There were drinks (oh yes, there were lots of drinks :)) and i came home with a HUGE bonus: my FIRST EVER DragonLady jewelry set. It was a silent auction item that is valued at $750 that i got FOR A STEAL!!! Want to see?

Isn't it AMAZING?!?!?!?

 i went, i conquered, i made a difference (and got some fabulous bling in the process!). Here are some photos  from the event. Enjoy!  



 Signing the veil of remembrance 

 



Me & Trisha Davis



All the DFW Sisters 

 

NvSr Blanche Davidian (DragonLady) & Onyx Anderson



For more pics of this amazing event click here. 





The Original Faux Queen - Miss Piggy

Dear Miss Piggy,

YOU had me "moi!"

i remember when we first met, you were a young piglet and came via postal mail in the form of a comic book, "The Muppet Babies." i saw you once again when you made your second big screen movie, The Great Muppet Caper. You were doing the most incredible water ballet in the fiercest costumes and i couldn't keep my eyes off you. i had to figure out a way to be just as fierce as you were. 

And then it happened!
i found you!
In spandex no less . ..

 

i did your workout like it was my own religion. i hung your pull-out poster on my wall as inspiration. i studied the record cover like it was a treasure map. i wished on star every night in hopes of adding even just a speckle of your flawlessness into my life.



But i still didn't feel any different. i still didn't feel glamorous. i was still no closer to your fabulousity than when i first started. Devastated, i did the unthinkable . . . i sold my record in a garage sale. i KNOW. i know. i was hurt.

Soon after albumgate, you wrote THE book that changed my life and became my bible:

WIGS!!?!?

FASHION?!?!?

i was on a roll to being a diva!

But life happens. i became a teenager and i forgot all about the world of one diva pig because i was too distracted by the world of clothes, shoes, boys as drag divas, and love. Yes love. i had lost sight of the origins of my flamboyantly diva self.

i had forgotten you.

But you, my darling diva, will not be denied. You did NOT forget about me.

20 years later you reappeared when i least expected it--in a place that i would have least expected to find you--a vintage record store.

You had come back to me!!! You had forgiven me for selling you in the first place and for forgetting about you. We were back together. 

i brought you home and dusted off my bible. As i listened and read, i started to remember all the reasons that i fell in love with you in the first place: because you did not let your appearance dictate who were were, because you didn't take any crap from anyone (not even your Kermie), because you were always a lady despite being born a pig, and you did all with great style, grace, and attitude. 

And then it hit me.  

After all those years of trying to be you, i realized that i found you through just being me. You were never going to really tell me your secret to your flawless self, i had to go out and find that divaness for myself by myself. i realized that THAT'S what you were trying to tell me all along when you said, "the secret of getting that marvelous present you always wanted is to go out and buy it yourself." --i finally did that. i went out and created myself into the marvelous present/queen that i always wanted to be. My queendom was the only present i needed. i just had to need and want that queendom so badly enough that i would go out and find if for myself. And i did.

i still do.

We are kindred spirits, Miss Piggy. i, like you, am a little speckle of drag glitter-glamour where you would least expect to find it. 

kissy kissy from your forever devoted subject,



moi

How can you not LIVE for this FLAWLESSNESS?!?!?!?

Want more Miss Piggy fabulousity? Check out this amazing website: http://www.misspiggyfans.com/

Faux Queens the Book: Working Introduction

So with some tweeks of course, here is a sneak peak of the introduction to my work on faux queens.
___________________________________________________________________

    It’s a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I’d be a drag queen.
                                                                                               Dolly Parton (qtd. in Stevens)


     I was seven years old and I was obsessed with Dorothy’s ruby red slippers. I watched The Wizard of Oz over and over again fast forwarding to the parts that featured the shoes. I needed those shoes in my life, and I was determined to have them.  I rummaged through the all-too-big hand-me-down heels my mother gave me when she was finished with them and found the perfect pair to prep for transformation: a caramel-latte-colored, faux snake-skin, three-inch heel. I asked my mother to take me to the craft store where I had her purchase five tubes of red glitter. Armed with this glitter and an unstoppable imagination, I layered the entire shoe with Elmer’s glue and then covered them completely with those tiny red prisms of magic until I had created my very own pair of ruby red slippers. Fast forward to 2009: I am playing a modern-day Dorothy in a drag show and I am watching my drag mother, Jenna Skyy, somewhat in disbelief, as she transforms a pair of white knee high boots in almost the same way I had: red spray paint, spray adhesive, and buckets of red glitter into those same shoes I had created for myself over twenty years ago. At that moment I knew there was no real distinction, save for biology, between me and my drag mother—I, like her, had always been a queen.


     As far back as I can remember, I have always had an affinity for all things considered to be and accepted as gendered feminine/female excessive. From Dorothy’s ruby red slippers, to my obsession and need to be Miss Piggy—the way she could change her look at the drop of a hat (sometimes literally), I have never been one to shy away from all things shiny, sparkly, and rhinestoned.  So I am not surprised to find myself surrounded by books on drag queens, hyper-feminine female performance, and any/all things excessively marked feminine. Still, despite however closely and deeply connected I was or might have felt towards the drag queen community, there was still one obvious and blaring question that I couldn’t escape: how and where does a biological female (cisfemale/ciswoman) who loves and feels she is all things drag fit into this gay male-dominated community? And then, on a randomly ordinary kind of day, I stumbled upon my answer: in the Wikipedia drag queen entry nestled in-between the various definitions and descriptions was a new term that I, in all my years in the drag, academic, and LGBT communities, had never heard: faux queen. “A faux queen or cisqueen is a female performance artist who adopts the style typical of male drag queens. A faux queen may be jocularly described as ‘a drag queen trapped in a woman’s body,’ though few are female to male transsexuals” (Faux Queen 1).  Needless to say, this discovery set me off on a firestorm of Googling, YouTubing, and endless searches for literature, pictures, articles, personal testimonies—ANYTHING that would manifest and deepen my understanding of this new subset of  drag. My searches led me to small bouts of victory and sporadic revelations: I learned there was a faux queen pageant in San Francisco that began in 1996 and ended 2005 (where was I!?!?) and that more cisfemales than I could have possibly imagined claimed, right along with me, to both feel and identify as a “drag queen trapped in a woman’s body.” But it also led me to more questions and new obstacles: why wasn’t there more literature and scholarship on us? Why and how could I have not heard about these gender performance rebels in all my involvement with my local LGBT and drag communities and academic pursuits?


     This work is an exploratory journey into the world of drag: the art, the illusion, the queens, and how the cisfemales who love them make sense in it. While ciswomen performing various forms of femininity, sexuality, and women’s roles is not new, cisfemales performing drag in the gay male drag world is emerging as something unique. Among the various forms of cisfemale drag are female dragging male—drag kinging, woman dragging woman—burlesque or neo-burlesque, and woman dragging man dragging woman—the faux queen. While I touch upon notions of burlesque, particularly neo burlesque, I am not equipped nor do I have the experience and knowledge in this art form to begin to hypothesize what female/drag performances and identities mean to other cisfemale performers of drag. While I take into account and believe these gender performances carry their own gender, political, and social connotations that bring with them their own unique perspectives and relationship to drag, I do so only in relationship to the drag world and to faux queens. What follows is a narrowly focused snapshot into the complex panoramic world of faux queens. My ultimate goal is to illustrate how the faux queen relates to and transforms drag and gender; I argue that the very act of a ciswoman performing as a gay man performing as a “woman” and the choice to more closely align and identify with a drag queen’s version of femininity (what I call flamboyant femininity) is exactly the kind of transgression that queer studies, academia, and the LGBT community need to embrace in order to expand their definitions and beliefs about gender construction, gender performance, and gender identity.  My work on drag is about carving out and creating new spaces between preexisting ones for myself and others that I could not find in anyone else’s theories, scholarship, and media that surveys women, gender performance theory, gender identity, and drag.  

Faux Queens - The Book

Here's a sneak peek into my book in-progress about faux queens. This is the as-of-now preface--i am more than sure that it will go through many more edits but i wanted to show you where i'm starting from. Drop me a comment and let me know what you think!!

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.)

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

happy pride eve dallas!

from one diva to the city of divas, have a safe, fun, and uber-gay pride eve dallas!! 

miss lifewalk pageant video

look what just got delivered to me!!
so excited to watch it!! yes!

brandi amara skyy faux queen performance collection

so i've been working on finding & putting together a collection of some of my favorite performance with gaybingo dallas and various pageants. i created a youtube channel with some of these performances.

i was trying to find the first show i did as a faux queen at gaybingo, but that search continues on.

check out some of these videos and let me know what you think!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL99EE9905D785EDFE

make sure you check out my channel and add me to your twitter!!

youtube: http://www.youtube.com/thebrandiamaraskyy
twitter: @brandiamaraskyy

miss highland park america judges!!

what an amazing evening! take a look at the flawless judges this year! so honored to be a part of this team!

brandi amara skyy - miss lifewalk 2012 talent

so i know it's been a while BUT...

i'm uber-excited to share with you a fan made video of my cosmic love florence + the machine talent.

let me know what you think!!!!

pics coming soon!!

full drag pageant mode

hello kats and kittens! i have been obsessing about my package for this pageant, Miss LifeWalk, for the last couple of months and i'm finally at a place where i feel that it's going to be unbeatable. right now i'm still amidst all the sewing, stoning, and rehearsing for both gown and talent. while i don't want to post too much until after the pageant, i do want to show you what i've been up to. here are a few pieces and parts that make up my drag package. keep in mind the categories: presentation, gown, fundraising, and talent.

well, we all know what these are, but what could i possibly be using then for?!?!? 

there's a lot more where these came from!

i didn't make this but this may (or may not) be a hint to my talent!!! adore!

and lastly, here is a peek inside my drag factory. this is my sewing area in my drag room:

please forgive my partner's fingers-always the jokester!

i can't wait to post everything in detail!!! i still have a lot of work to do but it's coming along flawlessly!!



drag queens, rhinestones, corsets OH MY!!

i'm sooo excited to announce that i'm guest blogging for THE corset hook-up for RuPaul's Drag U - Corset Connection!!! what could be better than drag queens and corsets?

check out the blog here

Please make sure to leave some good vibes & comments on the blog - I'm aiming to be THE blogger :) xoxo, b

faux queen photo journal

i'm excited to share with you my photo journal from the appendices of my thesis entitled, "Faux Queens--Fauxing the Real: Biological Women, the Art of Drag, and Why the Real IS Drag and/or How I became a Drag Queen and/or How to Paint a Drag Mug."  i'd love to hear what y'all think!

i'm entering another drag pageant!

yep, that's right!!! after taking last year off, i've decided that it's time to strap down my lace-front wig, throw on my fiercest costumes, and head back into the cut-throat world of drag pageants. this year i'm thinking about doing 2 . . .

i've also decided that it would be fun to document my pageant progress: from conception to creation to performance to crowning. make sure you keep coming back for more updates or never missed a rhinestoned step of my journey by following my blog and/ subscribing via email. this is going to be one crazy glittered ride!!

here are some pics from the first drag pageant i ever entered and the one (yes one, i was first runner-up) drag queen who beat me.

miss lifewalk 2010, brandi amara skyy, first runner-up

backstage painting my mug

my presentation gown made of pictures of those who have died/survived/working towards a cure for HIV/AIDS.

right before i went on stage.

my VERY unconventional gown. i wanted to do something different. the back of the ribbon was made out of tiny AIDS ribbons.

on stage for gown

talent!! i did a live version of lady gaga's paparazzi. the two dancers are my two best friends: jenna skyy and manny castro. you can kinda get the progression with these pics. i have a video, but need to figure out how to upload it :)

couldn't use fake blood so i had to create the illusion of it

crowing. i won: spirit of lifewalk, miss congeniality, overall talent winner (which i really wanted!!), and first runner-up.

2010 miss lifewalk

winner: anita nother

1st runner up: brandi amara skyy

2nd runner-up: bambi (can't remember her last name, but another faux queen as well)

drag-cap

whew! what an amazing, fun, intoxicating (tequila!),and very tiring weekend. the show, the costume, the performance was f l a w l e s s!! as promised here is a recap of the drag-(re)creation of m.i.a/madonna superbowl. enjoy!

i wanted to recreate the m.i.a headpiece with the feel of the black and gold costumes of the vogue dancers. so i made a make-shift fabric skirt, shoulder pads, and a face mask for the opening vogue dance number and then did a quick change into the m.i.a headdress and skirt.

for the shoulder pads i used fun foam for the base, hot glued my skirt fabric to cover, and hot glued a pair of $5 earrings and a $1.95 necklace.  

the face mask was something i decided to do last minute because i didn't want to do another head piece. this was my inspiration:

i used her mask for inspiration

i bought eight 99 cent mardi gras masks and hot glued them in a pattern that i liked. i added another string around the top part of the mask to keep it closer to my face.

cheap party city (yep, i'm a party city queen sometimes--ain't no shame in it) masks

here's the finished mask

immediately after the vogue dance break i rushed backstage to do a quick change. i took off the fabric skirt and the face mask and put on the skirt and the headdress.

the skirt was pieced together from fabric and trim bought at golden d'or (if you are ever in dallas this is a must-go-to for drag place!)

starting to come together

so i was originally going to use the headband (shown in pic) as the base of the headdress, but then i found this amazzzz-ing cesar-esque piece at a costume shop that i used instead. the fringe on the sides was made out of $1.50 earrings, the earrings that came with the necklaces i used for the shoulder pieced that i forged together, and $4.00 coin trim i bought at michaels. i bought a $7.00 necklace from a place called rainbow that served for the around-the-chin chain look.

i ended up ditching the headband, but kept all the other materials

here's the front of the finished headdress. i used one of the trim links from my skirt

side angle

ta-da!!   dragmation done! as a bonus, here are some behind the scene and onstage shots!

michael playing lmfao and me

mask, shoulder pads, and i used new and old necklaces to create the chain effect

during the show

the 3 queens: asia o'hara, jenna skyy, and me