I’m a drag queen. Here’s what my art really is.

Drag might seem as if it’s about deception. You dress up as a gender different from yours, and in a way that’s not quite real. Men dress up as women, women as men, people who are neither as either or something else. Even the word “drag” emerged from a hidden language. It was called Polari, a code of sorts used by gay people, convicts and traveling entertainers to help them make community in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first queer and transgender pioneers to “put on the drag” lived their lives in the shadows, at a time when queerness was criminalized and police assaults common.