In my early career I was sort of anti-drag. I said, 'Drag is dumb and boring, and I want to be an effing weirdo and go crazy and rebel.' But now it's like I've come to respect and understand how deep and traditional drag as an art form is.
People pull from drag culture because drag artists are - it's the ultimate art form and it's the last underdog art form. I mean, even clowns have college, you know what I mean? Drag queens, you have to learn drag from another drag queen.
The truth is I do take drag really seriously, and I think that there's kind of a place for that - to see it as this political and historical art form, and to want to continue pushing it in new directions. And also honor the old directions as well. So I'm sort of like a drag intellectual/drag queen.
'Drag Race' doesn't claim to represent drag as a whole. 'Drag Race' is a reality show. If you see real drag shows, we just do drag and respect each other's art and who your real identity is - name, gender, hair color, anything.
The inspiration of my drag is the history of drag, the long tradition of drag queens being at the forefront of queer activism. That informs my drag style, and in a sense, that is the direction we need to go in the future.
I do drag. Just because my drag is not the drag of Creme Fatale or Holy McGrail doesn't mean it's less drag. I perform live; I just sing with dancers. It's drag on a different level.
At the end of the day, I just love drag so much that it's not enough for me to be a successful drag queen. I want to do right by my drag community as a whole... creating opportunities for other performers, documenting and uplifting amazing drag, and generally just contributing a lot of love and respect to our fabulous little world!
Drag will always be a dynamic and powerful art form, and it is my duty now to honor the artists who have come before me while continuing to pioneer my own path and history by being open to growth and change as a human and a drag superstar.
I was doing drag as just a hobby on the weekends to let my hair down. I never thought of drag was going to be my career and what I would be doing for the rest of my life. Once I made it onto 'Drag Race,' I'm like, 'Oh, OK - this is my calling.
I love that drag is political. For me, one of the reasons I started doing drag was reading about how in the past, drag performers were able to organize the queer community and move us forward.
I want to do something that is not just a pastiche of drag that's come before but is really authentically me. I try to tune out all the drag that's out there and tap into the drag that I was doing when I was a little kid - when I didn't even know the word 'queer' or that gay people were out there.
Nowadays, 'Drag Race' shows how fantastic and amazing drag queens can be, so audiences won't sit through a boring show anymore. You have to keep people entertained.
You can have a beard and do drag; you can be a woman and do drag. I've met faux queens. I've met kings. Anything that you want can be considered drag in the context.
I always did what I thought was interesting. I always just did what caught my fantasy. Looking like a woman, that was never the criteria for me. It was always to do drag. And drag is not gender-specific. Drag is just drag. It's exaggeration.
Personally, I like drag that's a little rough around the edges, drag you can run around in it, drag you can get in the Uber without worrying about!
I want to literally quit drag and go live in the woods somewhere and write music for my favorite female singers, like Miley Cyrus or Kacey Musgraves. I would love to be able to write music for them and hear these women I admire sing my songs. That would be like doing drag without having to get into drag myself.
A drag queen is one that usually goes to a ball and that's the only time she gets dressed up. Transvestites live in drag. A transsexual spends most of her life in drag.