The Second Key
ALWAYS LOOK SICKENING IN EVERYDAY DRAG
“I firmly believe that with the right footwear, one can rule the world.”
—Bette Midler1
Five wigs stitched together to make one giant three-foot-tall beehive wig; size 16 floor-length hand-beaded gown; rhinestone pumps with seven-inch heels; a tearaway cape made out of feathers—for drag queens and their costumes, nothing is too big, too outrageous, or too over-the-top. Drag queens are experts at using wigs, clothing, shoes, and accessories in the most imaginative ways to create their magnetic personas. They dress to command attention. They strut onto the stage with attitude, and the audience gets caught up in all the fabulousness they exhibit. Worcester, Massachusetts–based drag star Joslyn Fox explains: “I think a big part of the reason people love drag queens is because of the confidence they instill in people. When people see a queen on stage there’s that part of them that thinks, ‘If they can do it, I can do it,’ and that gives them that confidence to go ahead and wear that hot pink lipstick to school, or to go ahead and wear those fishnets under that skirt and feel sexy at work. Drag allows people to feel confident in expressing who they are.”2 Now we know that you aren’t going to drag it up big-time for the office, but you can take a cue from queens about how to focus on the outside so you feel more confident and powerful on the inside.
Have you ever stood in your closet and thought, “These clothes aren’t me?” Have you yearned to change your wardrobe into something . . . more?—more vibrant, more bold or colorful? Into something that makes a statement about who you really are? But have you given up because you didn’t know how to go about it? Well, hang on, because this is where we show you how! How to create that look, how to translate the power styling of drag queens with their wigs and makeup and shoes into something that makes you feel fiercely you!
Red Lipstick and Jumpsuits: How a Stylist Helped Overcome Everyday Drag Fears
Remember Garanimals? It’s a line of children’s clothing separates, introduced in 1972, that makes it easy for kids to choose coordinated outfits by themselves by picking pieces with matching hang-tags. (By the way, they still exist.) See, I (Jackie) have always been a Garanimals-type of gal when it comes to fashion. I’ve never been good at putting outfits together. When I found something I liked (shirt/pants/shoes), I would buy each item in three colors and then mix and match to make outfits.
Well, in March 2013 (way before Lady Trinity had emerged), I was preparing for a summer book tour for my new book on Lady Gaga. I had joined a small startup consulting company, and I really hadn’t been doing speaking engagements for the previous two years. As I surveyed my closet, I realized I had nothing to wear on my book tour. Shit! I couldn’t go on stage talking about Lady Gaga in this boring corporate-y wardrobe. I spied one somewhat fashionable dress: a classic Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress with splotches of forest green and brown. Pair that with some low-heeled black patent leather slingbacks and bam!—new speaking uniform. Now all I had to do was go to Nordstrom and get four more wrap dresses and a few more pairs of slingbacks, each a different color, and I’d be all set.
At Nordstrom, I was at the register with my armful of colorful new wrap dresses when I realized that I still didn’t really know how to put these together. What color shoes went with these dresses? What jewelry would be best to accessorize with? Should I get a new handbag? I mentioned this to the clerk, and she said, “You know, we have stylists here at Nordstrom, and they’re free.” A human Garanimals matcher! And it cost nothing. Bonus!
Two weeks later I came back to the store for my appointment with Irene Scott, one of their best stylists. I brought my four wrap dresses, in various colors. I brought my three identical pairs of slingbacks, in various colors. Into the dressing room walked a smiling woman in her mid-forties, with a sleek brunette bob haircut, dressed impeccably in skinny black pants with a strip of leather going up the sides, a tailored black jacket with white-and-black calfskin lapels and black suede high-heeled ankle boots. I commanded: “Irene, here is what I need. I’ve got my four dresses. I’ve got my three pairs of shoes. I just need to know how to put this together. So if you could just help match jewelry, maybe a bag, I’ll be set.”
“Ohh-kayy,” Irene said slyly, bringing her hand to her chin and slowly cocking her head slightly to one side. From that utterance I wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but it couldn’t be good.
“Put on one of the dresses with a pair of the shoes and let’s take a look.” Dutifully, I did what Irene said. When I walked out of the dressing room, she didn’t mince words: “Well, I wouldn’t let my grandmother wear those shoes. I know they’re expensive and Italian, but that heel height is too dowdy for you. And that dress? Meh.”
I was stunned. Did she just insult me? Did she realize that I had actually gone on stage wearing the same dress and shoes that she’d just disparaged? Did I really look that bad on stage? Why hadn’t anyone told me this outfit was so dowdy? She went on: “I Googled you. You wrote a book about Lady Gaga, right? And even based on my interaction with you just now, I can tell you that this outfit is not right for you. It’s not who you are. You are fiercer than that.”
Wait. What? For some reason, everything in the dressing room just seemed to freeze in time. I literally had goose bumps. Had I heard her right? She’d just called me . . . fierce.
Gobsmacked by this word, I just stood there speechless. Not having anything to say is not normal for me. I’m not sure anyone had ever called me fierce, at least not to my face. And here was a woman I barely knew who had said she could see this quality in me. How did she see this in me when I wouldn’t describe myself that way? Oh my gosh, really? Am I . . . fierce? I mean, Lady Gaga is fierce. Drag queens are fierce. But am I fierce? Well I guess if she believed it, there might be a kernel of truth there. Maybe I am fierce. I’m fierce! I. AM. FIERCE. The idea started to sink in that maybe, just maybe, she was right. What should I do now?
“Just hold on,” Irene said. “Let me go grab some things.” Fifteen minutes later, she was back with her arms full of clothes and shoeboxes. She began to hang the clothes up around the dressing room: a sleeveless black wool asymmetrical-hemmed dress, a navy blue leather jacket, slim-cut black pants with leather panels on the front, black suede ankle boots, and more. I must have had a really skeptical look on my face. “Trust me,” Irene said. “Just try them on.”
So I did. And I couldn’t believe what I saw. I looked like I’d just walked out of a fashion shoot for Vogue in New York City. Or maybe I’d just walked out of a record company’s office in L.A. having signed a contract for my new album. It was someone else. It was someone who looked . . . amazing. Could this be the fierce me that had been inside there all along?
“Now this is really you, right? I love you in all of this!” Irene said after I had tried on almost everything in the room. “So I have one more thing for you. Look at this. It’s a designer jumpsuit.” She pointed to a one-piece garment that incorporated a sleeveless top and pants. If you’ve never seen one, it’s like a onesie for women, only more fashionable. This particular jumpsuit was black with a white dotted pattern and wide pants that tapered in at the ankles. They reminded me of MC Hammer pants.
I said to Irene, “I’m sorry, I really liked everything else that you brought in. But that? That is a clown suit. Kim Kardashian would wear that. I would never wear that.” Reassuringly, with a sly smile, Irene told me that not everyone could pull this off, but she thought I could. I put the jumpsuit on and I guess it looked okay, but damn those pants! Who the hell wants big billowy pants around one’s hip area? She paired the jumpsuit with a hip black suit jacket and the black ankle boots. She convinced me that we should go down to the ladies’ shoe department, while I was still wearing the outfit, to pick out some better shoes to go with the ensemble. As we walked out of the dressing room and toward the escalator, I seemed to be catching the eyes of fellow shoppers and store employees, and they were checking me out. On the escalator, people going up turned their heads, and their eyes followed me as I went down. A Nordstrom employee we passed stopped me and excitedly wanted to know who had put this outfit together for me. I pointed to Irene, who was smiling like a Cheshire cat. In the ladies’ shoe section, an exuberant shopper came up to me, pointed at the outfit, and just exclaimed, “Wow!” Sold!
Great. So now this crazy woman had convinced me to buy every single thing I tried on. I made space in my closet for the “fierce clothes.” A month went by and I hadn’t worn any of them. None. Nada. Was this stuff really me? I didn’t know anymore. Every day when I got dressed in my old clothes, I would see the price tags still on the stuff from Nordstrom. The tags screamed at me, reminding me how much it had all cost. I really needed to at least try to wear some of this stuff soon; or maybe I’d just take it all back. I was already halfway through the book tour and hadn’t worn any of it. What a coward!
Disgusted with myself, I decided to take a chance at my next event, a keynote speech for a large marketing conference in Las Vegas. I packed the black asymmetrical sleeveless wool dress and gray peep-toe suede pumps for the stage and decided to give that damned onesie jumpsuit a try at the reception the night before. Irene had also told me to wear red lipstick with the jumpsuit (“It’s a MUST!”). I’d never once worn red lipstick in my entire life. I didn’t wear red lipstick—red is so bright and just screams, “Look at my mouth!” Well, if I was really going to do this, then MAC Russian Red lips it had to be.
At the event at the MGM Grand Hotel, I nervously entered the evening reception wearing my new jumpsuit, my red lipstick, the black blazer, and black suede peep-toe pumps. I was a bundle of nerves. Did I look like a Kardashian wannabe? There were about two hundred marketing directors from large corporations in a cavernous ballroom, and I gingerly approached a small group sipping cocktails around a tall table. “Hi. I’m Jackie Huba, your keynote speaker for tomorrow.”
After a round of great-to-meet-you’s, I will never forget what happened next. A fifty-ish woman in a corporate business suit walked around the tall bar table and approached me, only stopping when her face was just inches from my own. In a low forceful voice but with a beaming grin, she whispered, “You. Have. Balls.”
Seeing the confused look on my face, she pointed at my outfit and said, “That.” Then she repeated a little louder, “You. Have. Balls.” Bam! Now someone else was acknowledging that so-called fierceness I was supposed to have. In that moment it finally dawned on me that maybe it’s in there. Maybe it had been in there all along, and this act of wearing something outside my comfort zone had brought it to the surface. I now understood that I could own my own power and that looking the part helped me do it. This outerwear was helping me become the fierce woman that I’d seen glimpses of over the years but had mostly kept inside.
I’ve never worn anything from my old wardrobe since that aha moment. Irene has since helped me to overhaul everything from business wear to casual wear, including jewelry, purses, footwear, and coats. I’ve replaced my entire wardrobe, and now my clothes match my new fierceness. There is lots of leather, some sequins, and even fashionable thigh-high suede boots. Some of it reminds me of what a drag queen might wear at her office job! The above pictures show the overhaul of my everyday drag look.
Before
After
(Photos by Mira Budd Photography, David Heisler, Tina Hodnett)
Quick note on Irene: she’s now an independent stylist living in Seattle, Washington, and you can find her at IreneStyling.com.
Mastering Makeup, Wigs, Costumes, and, Thank God, No Tucking
Around the same time that I met Irene, I had become friends with the kingpin of drag entertainment in San Antonio, Texas, Rey Lopez. For a year, I had been driving the seventy-five minutes from Austin to Rey’s monthly drag shows because he was booking the queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race to perform. They were celebrities to me and I wanted to see them live. San Antonio had been a hotbed of drag for decades, and after a bit of a decline, Rey was bringing his city back to the forefront of the national drag scene. He booked the best queens that San Antonio had to offer as part of his shows: the hilarious Tencha La Jefa as the host, and as performers the dancing diva Toni R. Andrews, the sexy Nilaya Milan Raven, and the creative whirlwind Kristi Waters. And then he paired these queens with celebrity queens from Drag Race, and hot damn, it made an amazing show.
When I started thinking about writing this book, Rey was the first person I wanted to talk with. I felt that in order to write a book with drag queens as a central focus I would have to do drag myself. I can’t remember how I came to this crazy conclusion. Part of it was that I wanted to be credible as a writer talking about the concept of drag. And part of me was exhilarated by the thought that I could become something like the drag queen rock stars I saw on television! I could take creative and performance risks, all under the guise of doing research for the book, which gave me the cover to try something wacky and be able to justify it to other people. Did you see what I just wrote there? I felt I had to “justify it to other people.” At this point in my life, I still cared too much about what other people thought.
I had heard of female drag queens but had never seen one in person. I didn’t know what people in the drag business thought of them. Rey had allowed women into some of his amateur drag shows and was totally accepting of them. As Rey was my resident expert on drag, I implored him for help in how I might be able to do drag myself. He didn’t hesitate. He picked up his cell phone and called Kelly Kline, his very good friend and the most revered drag performer in Austin, Texas. I had seen Kelly in person hosting the drag shows on Sunday nights at a local Austin gay nightclub, Oil Can Harry’s. She had a commanding presence, and honestly, I was in awe and a bit afraid of her. If you were on your phone during a show or weren’t paying attention, she would call you out from the stage, even playfully confronting you personally if she felt the need. And now Rey was asking her if she would help me learn drag.
“Kelly! It’s Rey. Hey, I have this woman here, Jackie Huba. She needs a drag mother. Can you help her? She’s in Austin.” Kelly, now on speakerphone, instantly responded: “Yeah sure! Send her my way. Give her my phone number. No problem.” Then he just hung up. Wait, what? What in the holy hell just happened? I have a drag mother now?!
A drag mother is often the person who first puts someone in drag. She is a mentor who teaches newbie queens the art of drag—theatrical makeup, wig styling, costume styling, the art of lip-syncing—and for male drag queens, how to tuck. I’ll explain tucking, for the uninitiated. If you are a male drag queen creating the illusion of being a female, you have to learn to tuck or conceal your genitals by fastening them up and out of the way with adhesive tape. It’s not an easy process, so I hear. So it’s helpful to have a mentor teach you where to tuck them and how to tape them all in place. Luckily, I didn’t have to learn how to do that. Now not all queens are lucky enough to have a drag mother. Knowing this, I nervously called Kelly to set a date to meet her.
I was not prepared for what I saw when Kelly arrived at my apartment a few weeks later. I knew she was a transgender woman, but I didn’t realize how different she would be from the fierce drag entertainer I had seen on stage so many times. She was in her “day drag.” An attractive curvy Latina in her early forties, she had her shoulder-length black hair pulled casually back into a ponytail. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and was dressed in black casual pants and a short-sleeved, red Wonder Woman T-shirt. She was demure, reserved, and earnestly polite. This person seemed completely different from the sexy, assertive, outspoken, gregarious queen clad in Texas-sized wigs and long sequin gowns that I knew from the stage. The difference in the two Kellys illustrated to me how the creation of a persona through dress can completely change how people perceive you.
We talked about how she had first gotten into drag in Brownsville, Texas. Her friend’s parents owned a gay club in town, and they used to let her in while she was still underage. She became enamored of the drag performers she saw there and decided she wanted to try drag herself. She entered an amateur drag talent competition and won. Then she entered the world of drag pageants, which are very similar to the beauty pageants that we have all seen on television. Drag performers are also judged on talent, swimsuit, evening gown, and a Q&A with the judges. Shortly after Kelly started doing drag, she won, in quick succession, Miss Brownsville Sweetheart, Miss Brownsville USofA, Miss Rio Grande Valley USofA, and then went on to compete for Miss Texas USofA. Now, twenty years later, she has won too many pageant titles to list. As an experienced winner, she began to help other queens prepare for pageants, as well as mentoring new queens in the art form as their drag mother. These new queens are called her drag daughters, and Kelly has had over forty! Currently she hosts the top drag show in Austin every Sunday night, as well as other shows around central Texas five nights a week. Plus she has a day job as a makeup artist. She is one of the hardest-working people I know.
I was grateful and overwhelmed that Kelly volunteered to be my drag mother. I asked her what I should expect to learn. What she told me next has implications for all of us trying to create a fierce drag persona:
You’re Jackie right now. On stage, you’re going to have to be a totally different person. Drag is about more makeup, more hair. Drag is over-the-top personality, performance, appearance, and confidence. It’s a totally different level. You’ll be wearing wigs. You’ll be wearing as many bobby pins as we do. You’re going to be wearing three or four pairs of eyelashes like we do. You’re going to be contoured. Your boobies are going to be up to here. We’re going to make you look like a totally different person. It’s also nerve-racking as hell to perform as a character in front of so many people, because the moment you come out, you get judged by people no matter what. It’s a “Well, let’s see what you can do” kind of a thing.3
Kelly suggested we meet up at the local MAC Cosmetics store, which sells a staple brand of makeup for all kinds of theatrical performers, so she could advise on purchasing a starter kit of makeup. Kelly was like a kid in a candy store picking up foundation, concealer, eye shadows, eyebrow pencils, bronzer, blushes, eyeliner, lipsticks, lip pencils, mascara, and cosmetic brushes. In the coming weeks, Kelly spent hours at my house teaching me how to beat my face. Men who are trying to create the illusion of being female with makeup have to feminize a face with masculine features. Since I already have a feminine face, the idea was to use makeup to change my features to look like a different person. I still had to learn all of the makeup tricks that male drag queens use, including covering up one’s eyebrows in order to paint on new ones. Kelly taught me how to contour, which involves using light and dark shades of makeup to sculpt the face into the proportions that are desired. I also mastered the art of applying and stacking false eyelashes because, honey, in drag, the bigger the better.
Wig styling is also a must. For my first performance, I learned how to pull my short brunette bob back, add on a black ponytail extension, and then spray the rest of my hair with black hairspray. It’s that easy to change your hairstyle and color. Many queens will stack wigs in order to build volume. For my second performance, Kelly taught me how to layer two long brunette curly wigs on top of each other to create fullness. Then, for additional height, she took a short bob wig, turned it inside out so it became like a ball, and positioned it under the two other wigs to boost them higher. Some queens will put four or five wigs together for volume. There is literally no limit when it comes to how big one’s hair can be.
As my drag character is inspired by Trinity from The Matrix, I decided that my costume aesthetic would be sexy, use the color black, and include boots. My first performance had a fetish theme. I shopped at Le Rouge Boutique, a store that calls itself “Austin’s Emporium of Sexy” that sells sexy lingerie and novelties. I got a black bra with silver pointy studs on it, a black pleather cincher with silver flat studs, black fishnets, and a black high-waisted brief. I ordered thigh-high matte black boots from Amazon. And to top it off, I found a long, sleek black pleather jacket with small black sequins and black and teal feathers shooting out of the shoulders from the best costume store in Austin, and perhaps the country—Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds.
It took a lot of guts to go out and perform in this newfound getup. If it had been Halloween, when everyone is dressed up, and with a few cocktails, no problem! But for a woman in her late forties, with her ass hanging out a bit below a bodysuit, her boobs pushed up to the sky, and sporting thigh-boots, it was very daunting. However, the key to drag is to own how you look and not care what other people think. I don’t have the body of a twenty-five-year-old. But I feel as sexy as I ever have in the long, luxurious brunette hair that I’ve always wanted. And so what if my ass is hanging out? Let this be a lesson to you! If I can go balls to the wall and become a female drag queen, you can take the first steps and make wardrobe and makeup changes in your life!
Not only was Kelly a drag mentor, she has also become a cherished part of my life. Though I am older than she is, to me she feels very much like a mother figure. She always had an encouraging word as I was learning these foreign makeup techniques. She listened to me go on and on about my insecurities in tackling drag as a woman and told me to just go out there and be fierce and own it. I was stunned when I saw a comment Kelly posted one day on a Facebook video that someone had captured of one of my performances: “[Lady Trinity] worked it out!! So proud of her!”4 I instantly burst into tears. You see, I’d always longed for my parents to express pride in what I did. My parents are good people, but they’ve never been able to tell us children how they feel about us. Maybe it is their blue-collar background, or just their natural stoicism, but in all these years, I’ve never once heard “I love you,” and certainly never “I’m proud of you.” So when I saw Kelly’s comment, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t realize how much I had missed this type of parental love until I experienced it. This may be why I feel such affinity with my LGBT friends, who often have to create new families in their lives because their own biological families do not accept them. While not outcast by my family, I still am not close to them and have had to create my own family with my friends. In the drag world, drag daughters often take the last name of the drag mother, out of respect. Though I didn’t take the last name Kline for my drag persona, I still feel part of the “Kline family” and treasure my relationships with Kelly and my fellow drag sisters.
notes FROM THE STAGE
If Drag Can Make a Man Who Looks Like an NFL Lineman Look Fierce, What Excuse Do We Have? Meet Latrice Royale!
With a colossal wig and high heels, Latrice Royale towers over everyone at seven feet tall. She has a buxom frame and confidently describes herself as “large and in charge, chunky yet funky.”5 Latrice’s style is old-school drag pageant glam, with huge wigs and floor-length, shimmery sequin gowns. She may be a big girl but Latrice knows how to accentuate her swerves and curves. She uses corsets to cinch in her ample figure. At forty-two years old, Latrice (real name Timothy Wilcots) has been doing drag in southern Florida for over two decades. Latrice says drag saved her life. She is open about her eighteen-month prison stint for drug possession when she lost everything. After being released, she returned to drag, and it became her savior. She got back on her feet and made drag her full-time job. She competed in drag pageants but never won, most of the time coming in as first or second runner-up. She was looking for a national platform and auditioned for RuPaul’s Drag Race, Season 4. She made it on to the show and became an instant fan favorite known for her soulful lip-syncs and infectious laugh, like the Aretha Franklin of drag.
Latrice Royale
(Photo by Marcelo Cantu)
While some larger queens on the show used their size as an excuse for not looking good, Latrice never wavered in her self-confidence. “I have no time for insecurity. All the things I was insecure about I either had to love it or love it more. People prey on your insecurities, so why give people something to prey on? You can’t be large and in charge and be insecure.”6 In fact, Latrice is not afraid to flaunt her gorgeous figure, even on the biggest of stages. In 2014, she was tapped to lip-sync Gloria Gaynor’s hit song “I Will Survive” on a music and fashion showcase called “Fashion Rocks” broadcast on CBS. She started the performance in a floor-length black coat, which gave way to a skin-tight, gem-studded brown body suit that showed off her curvaceous figure. It was a glorious balance to the now slim and trim Jennifer Hudson, who joined Latrice onstage during the song.
Latrice lives every day by her mantra, “It’s OK to make mistakes. It’s OK to fall down. Get up, look sickening, and make them eat it!”7 Translation: rise above your downfalls in life, and always look amazing while dismissing the haters. She explained to me in an interview, “I live by that because . . . people are going to be there trying to be negative or whatever, but the best form of revenge is success. If you can turn it around and take the power away from them, and make them eat every word they ever said, that’s the ultimate. That’s how I get my kicks when I get some of that, for real.”8
So many of us have body issues, wishing we were thinner, taller, or just something we are not. Latrice is a shining example of loving who you are. And if all the trappings of drag can make Timothy Wilcots look and feel this good as a woman, then it can do the same for all of us.
notes FROM EVERYDAY QUEENS
The MOB Wives of Richmond Are Magnificent, Outspoken, and Beautiful
“Everybody needs a queen in their life,”9 or so says Anelica Mark-Harris, the de facto leader of the MOB Wives of Richmond. MOB stands for Magnificent, Outspoken, and Beautiful, which aptly describes this group of gregarious women from Richmond, Virginia. Ranging from ages fifteen to sixty-one, these ladies have brought drag queens into their lives, and the association has transformed them. For forty-two-year-old married mother of five and small-business owner, Anelica, it all started with her fortieth birthday two years prior. She was going through a self-described midlife crisis and was not in the mood for a party. Her friends were pleading with her to do something big to celebrate this milestone birthday.
The MOB Wives of Richmond (from left to right) Arletha Phillips, Bessie Mark-Dillard, Anelica Mark-Harris
(Photo by Sharon Poole)
Before she knew it, her friends had taken over. Instead of the small get-together they had first described, they invited over a hundred people to her house, including six drag queens. Anelica, her mother Bessie, her aunts Arletha and Gloria, her teenage daughter Christina, and a few friends had been frequenting a local drag brunch for a while. Someone had invited these queens over to give Anelica a drag makeover for the party. Now sporting a blond curly wig, a fabulous over-the-top outfit, and big, blingy jewelry, Anelica was taken aback when she looked in the mirror: “It was just like an epiphany for me, where I just cried. ‘Oh, my God I’m gorgeous.’ ”10 It was a transformation that she didn’t want to end. She wanted to experience dressing like a drag queen every day.
Anelica fully embraced the drag queen aesthetic from that day forward. She doesn’t go out without a blonde lace front wig, of which she has many. When asked why the blonde hair, her response was straightforward: “Because I feel pretty in blonde hair. This is me. Why does black hair on a black girl have to be normal? . . . That’s my thing, blonde hair is me. The makeup, the jewelry is me. This is just me, like I said.”11 She has custom-made dresses and outfits, each more sparkly and over-the-top than the next. She instructs the designer to add tags to the garments labeled size 0.
From then on, going to the drag brunch quickly became a monthly, then a bimonthly occurrence. Furthermore, everyone in Anelica’s crew—her teenage daughter, her two aunts, and her mother—now dresses in drag queen couture. At the brunch, they started drawing attention among the audience of mostly straight women because of their looks, but also because they were the most raucous group there. Anelica told us: “This once a month [outing], all of us going to the club and just letting our hair down, is the coolest shit ever. This is our time just to be kids again. Our time to be college kids again. Just to get in a club, get silly for that two and a half hours and have fun.”12 The queens in the club jokingly began referring to the different groups of women using a “Housewives” designation, referring to The Real Housewives of Orange County reality television show and its spinoffs. One group was nicknamed the “Atlanta Housewives,” another the “Beverly Hills Housewives.” Vega Ova, one of the queens from the club, anointed Anelica’s group the “Mob Wives,” referencing a different housewife reality show series. Why the Mob Wives? “Because we were the loud, obnoxious wives,” Anelica laughingly told us.13 Her group got the joke, but decided to turn the word “Mob” into an acronym for Magnificent, Outspoken, and Beautiful.
It wasn’t enough for the MOB Wives to just look like queens. They began performing as queens as well. Bessie Mark-Dillard (Anelica’s mother and Christina’s grandmother) decided a few years ago that she wanted her birthday party to be a giant drag show where she was the star. She transformed her large backyard into a club, complete with a stage, a sound system, a DJ, rows of seats, and a bar. Local queens lip-synced dance numbers until the star of the show, Miss Bessie (her drag moniker), came out for her performance. The first two years Bessie performed Etta James songs. This past year, her sixty-first birthday, she lip-synced to Beyoncé. We watched the video of this party on Bessie’s Facebook page. Miss Bessie emerged from behind a curtain made of shimmering gold foil tinsel, bedecked in a floor-length, body-hugging, strapless gold metallic gown, and proceeded to lip-sync the house down. We asked Bessie what part of performing in drag she enjoys the most. “All of it. Oh my God. The people, they love you so much. You cry when you are doing it. You actually feel like a movie star. It is not like karaoke, you actually feel like a star. You feel like that person that is singing. You become that person.”14
Bessie and her sister Arletha are now performing in drag pageants in Virginia, sometimes competing with male drag queens. Arletha says: “[What] I love about competing is when I get dressed up, it’s like a whole new ball game. I am the beautiful one in the room. Everybody’s thinking that they are beautiful, but you’d be surprised when you’ve got somebody doing your makeup, you’ve got somebody doing your hair, fixing your clothes. When you look in the mirror, it’s almost like Cinderella. You’d be like, ‘Oh my God, look at this.’ ”15
Even Anelica’s daughter Christina, now fifteen, loves drag queens. She started going to the drag shows when she was eight, first accompanying one of her aunts. She told us: “[The queens] have their dresses: they’re big, beautiful, and [bejeweled]. They have the big hair. . . . When you look at them, it’s like everything you want to be. They’re so brave and they dress the way they dress. They don’t care what people say.”16 Christina was so inspired by the confidence of the queens that she concocted an idea to wear a tutu to school every day in the sixth grade; this would be her drag. Anelica arranged for local drag queen Millenium Snow to come over every day before school and style a complete tutu-centered look for Christina, including makeup. Not many grade-school students have a stylist, let alone a drag queen stylist. Christina’s looks were mostly a hit at school, but not with everyone. “A lot of people looked up to me. When I started wearing them, people started going, ‘Why’d she start doing that?’ There’s always the [negative] people that [say], ‘Why is she wearing all those clothes?’ The drag queens built my confidence up. They don’t care what people say. It built my confidence up a lot and it’s like, well, I want to wear tutus at school.”17 So she did. Some people might be leery of letting their young children interact with drag queens. Christina has a message for them:
I think it would help a lot of people to be exposed to drag queens. . . . I don’t see anything wrong with that at all. . . . [Drag queens] have the mic and they’ll tell you, “You can be whatever you want to be.” And you have the confident [queens], the ones with the big hair. Like, they don’t care, so why should you? I think this world would be much better if [more people] were exposed to more stuff like that.18
The MOB Wives, through their strength of personality, have built a worldwide following. At drag events around the world, you can’t miss them with their signature chant, “Ain’t no party like a MOB Wives party because a MOB Wives party don’t stop. Toot toot. Beep beep.” They began hosting their own MOB Wives–branded shows in Richmond, as well as crowning their favorite queens with the title of Miss MOB Wife. Queens as far away as Georgia, Florida, and Ohio have inquired how they can compete for this title. Anelica explains that they came up with the honorary title after one of their favorite local drag queens kept competing in pageants, pouring her heart into them, but never winning. They wanted the queen to know that she is always a winner in their minds. Now Anelica crowns whichever queen she deems the most deserving. She explains: “Drag is an art form and a community of people that are forgotten people. Once [the queens] have those three hours of fame on the stage, everyone wants to line up and take pictures of them, but what do they do when they go home? Who follows them? In our case, the MOB Wives of Richmond follows them.”19
The MOB Wives are benefactors to the local drag queens in Richmond because they want to give back to the people who have so enriched their lives. Local queens are not like the celebrity Drag Race queens, who can often make drag their full-time job and tour the world. Doing drag is expensive, with all of the wigs, makeup, costuming, and so on, that it requires. Local queens often have full-time jobs and work hard for the modest fees clubs will pay along with tips from their audiences. Anelica advises everyone to go to his or her local club and befriend a drag queen. They’ll appreciate the love, and you’ll get a close-up education on how to be fierce!
The Psychology of Enclothed Cognition
What we wear is surprisingly complicated. Especially for women. Most men can get by relatively unscathed by choosing to wear either jeans or khakis with a decent shirt for work, downgrade that to a T-shirt and cargo shorts for the weekend, or upgrade to a suit, and they are golden. But women and their clothes are much more complex. We have learned through the media and decades of sometimes painful socialization that what we wear matters. Each occasion brings with it a host of expectations and concerns about what to put on our bodies. Does it look good? Is it (according to society) age appropriate? Will it attract just the right amount of positive attention without putting our safety at risk?—because we know that catcalls aren’t just annoying, they are also associated with real danger. Can one move and walk in it, and does it even fit? It can be very tempting to ignore fashion and societal pressure and just wear whatever we want without worrying about all this—the world be damned! But I (Shelly) want to offer a word of caution. What you wear doesn’t just send a message to the world; it also sends a message to your own brain. Because everything that you put on, that you enclothe yourself in, not only broadcasts outward who you want to be perceived as, it also broadcasts that same information inward to your own psyche. In other words, what you wear affects how well you think and how good you feel about yourself.
A research study at Northwestern University tested this very idea.20 Their research led the team to coin the term “enclothed cognition” to describe the systematic influence that clothes have on their wearer’s psychological processes, that is, on how their mind works depending on what they’re physically wearing. Researchers gave two separate groups of people the same white coat. They told one group it was a lab coat for doctors and the other group it was a painter’s coat for workers. Then they measured each group on how well they did on mental exercises that tested the subjects’ ability either to pay attention to fine detail or to maintain sustained attention. The results varied according to two factors: the symbolic meaning of the coat and the physical experience of wearing the coat. In other words, if the subjects thought it was a doctor’s lab coat and they also put it on, they tested much better. It’s not just what’s hanging in your closet, it’s what you actually put on that matters.
So let’s work our way around the wardrobe and the implications of the things we wear. For instance, shoes. To be precise, high heels. They make us feel more powerful, which makes us look more powerful. Timothy Judge, a professor of business at the University of Florida, examined the data differences in income for people who did the same jobs, focusing on the height of each person. He calculated that every inch in height corresponds to $789 extra in pay each year, even when gender, weight, and age are taken into account. He completed a meta-study of the research around this, including the implications of height for social esteem. The theory he examined implies that taller people are perceived by others as being more competent, and this carries with it greater expectations, which have a positive effect on self-esteem, which then motivates the person to perform better. Those who perform better earn more money. He also reports that the Bureau of Labor and Statistics confirms the monetary value height has for earnings. An extra six inches, for example, generally results in an extra $4,734 in annual income.21 The taller you are, the more capable you appear and feel, and the more money you can earn.
Now let’s talk about lingerie. Because, believe it or not, there have also been academic studies on our undies. Christina Tsaousi, in her doctoral dissertation for the University of Leicester in England, examined the choices women make when buying underwear and determined that, although in the past these purchases functioned only as supports for what went over them, it appears that our underwear serves as a method of changing the way women feel about themselves, their bodies, and their identities. We construct who we are as women by the choices we make in the lingerie department. How we clothe and care for our private parts informs our minds about how we understand our gender, and even our sexuality. Tsaousi discovered that women chose their underwear not only for its function but, more importantly, for the way they wanted to be perceived by the people who might see it. For example, if they knew that their athletic teammates or gym partners might see them in the locker room, they wanted to wear undies that were socially acceptable in that venue, which usually happened to be cotton and not visible in workout gear. If the women were visiting family members, or even in-laws, they wanted to make sure they packed “respectable” panties. But if they anticipated a possible sexual encounter, then they would choose to don the most seductive lingerie they owned. And in doing so, they informed others, and themselves, about their identity.
This study shows us that the way we care for ourselves by the panties we put on is also the way that we form our identity as sexual people.22 It appears that our panties perform for us! So if you truly want to experience yourself as fabulous, then it’s probably time to change your panties no matter what situation you are going to be in. White cotton probably isn’t doing the trick, ladies! So the next time you’re shopping for underwear, pick up some “power panties”!
Now on to the outfits you wear that anyone can see. How can you dress to be a more fierce, fabulous, powerful you? In the 1980s, women learned to wear power suits that were a reflection of the Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher. As the first and only female prime minister of England, she was also the first modern political power dresser. She was famous for almost always wearing a blue skirt suit with big shoulder pads. For her, it was her armor. “I’m always safe in it,” she said in a TV interview from 1984.23 Her goal was to dress in a way that emphasized her ability to demand the same respect that men in suits garnered and at the same time maintain her own sense of femininity. Millions of women in business and politics adopted a version of Thatcher’s power suit.
Since then, though, the female version of this eighties staple has morphed some to adapt to the particular field that businesswomen occupy. In 2013, Laura Abassi studied the clothing choices that female professors made on campus. She discovered that, although the dress norms for male professors have become much more casual, even without a written dress code the women still felt the need to dress in structured suits or dresses in order to gain control in their classrooms and avoid appearing overly sexual.24 This confirms the Rule of Three T’s that is currently making the rounds in women’s business wear: No Tits, Toes, or Thighs.25 Women are painfully aware that introducing sexuality into the workplace can be a minefield. It’s a bit different in the fashion industry, where the ability to artfully adapt the latest trend into something that looks both individualistic and beautiful is highly valued. In fashion, the business strictures for conformity are trumped by creativity and personal expression.
Whether it’s a doctor’s lab coat, a politician’s power suit, a professor’s respectable choice, or a fashion designer’s creative ensemble, the clothes we wear have an influence on those around us and on our own self-image. The value in choosing something bold, risky, or fabulous is that we can experience what it is like to obtain more attention, and with it, perhaps more personal power.
notes FOR YOUR DRAG DIARY
How to Look Sickening and More Tips on How to Dress for Power
Let’s move on to help you determine what clothing makes you feel powerful. This will involve going outside your comfort zone or we’re not doing our job! We’ve tapped Jackie’s fabulous stylist Irene Scott, who has been helping women look their best for the past ten years, to help guide you on your way to dressing for power and confidence. You won’t believe you’ve waited this long.
No More Oatmeal Dressing Pledge
“Oatmeal dressing,” as Irene describes it, is a “kind of nondescript, non-exciting [way to dress]. It’s kind of just disappearing. It’s comfort, but it’s in a way that it’s blah.”26 Sweatpants. Flip-flops. Baggy T-shirts. Oversize sweaters. These might be fine for cleaning out the garage, honey, but not for showcasing our most fabulous and confident self. We’re not kidding. We want you take a “No More Oatmeal Dressing Pledge.” Say the above pledge out loud. Or even better, go to EnterTheQueendom.com/pledge and print out the pledge. Fill in your name and post it in your closet. Take a picture of it and tweet it to @jackiehuba with the hashtag #NoMoreOatmeal.
Just a note here: sometimes we are dressing to impress others, and there is nothing wrong with that, if that is your intention. But what we are talking about in this chapter is dressing for ourselves. We are taking a lesson from drag queens (and psychology) that we can change the way we feel by how we dress. If we dress more fiercely, we can feel more fabulous and confident. You decide what you want to wear or don’t want to wear, but know that if you want to feel bolder on the inside you must pay attention to what you wear on the outside.
Now that we’ve made the pledge of what we are not going to do, let’s talk about how to dress to feel more powerful. Keep an open mind. Irene, our master stylist, shares her advice for taking fashion risks:
Whatever your lifestyle or occupation is, it never hurts anything to put your toe in the water and try a little inner rock star, or inner drag queen. Give it a whirl. See what the feedback is. I’ve had a billion conversations where I’m talking people into things. I’m like, “Just try it. Just do it. Just wear it.” Every single time, they’re like, “Oh my god, I just loved it!” There should be always something where you go, “Well, I’m a little uncomfortable, but, god, that would be fun!”27
So let’s have some fun! Experiment with the following ideas and record in your Drag Diary how each action you take makes you feel. Also note if the feeling of confidence you gained by changing your look helped you accomplish something you wouldn’t have done before.
Start with One Bold Statement Piece
The easiest way to start, according to Irene, is to incorporate one thing into our wardrobe that is bold. Because we perceive it to be bold, just wearing it makes us feel bold. It could be a statement accessory, perhaps something in a bright color, or even a chunky necklace. Another idea is to create a power stack on your wrist with a wide-band metallic watch and a wide metallic cuff (three inches or more) of the same color. Remember those wide metal bracelets Wonder Woman wore that could deflect bullets? It’s the same idea here. Or the bold statement piece could be your shoes. A bright-colored shoe looks good on everybody. Try a red one! It’s not just for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
Be a Minimalist
Irene advises having a punch list of basics that can be mixed and matched as your starting point. All women should have a well-fitted black suit or pencil skirt. A crisp white blouse. Dark dress pants in either black or navy. A dark pair of jeans. You want to have those basics that you could wear for ten years. Go and spend the money on some good-quality items. Then you can elevate the look and add power by adding the statement pieces we mentioned previously.
Even leather pants can be a staple, says Irene. “You should have a version of a rock star piece in your closet, even if it’s just one thing. It could be a leather jacket. There should be something where you put it on and think ‘I’m a little badass here.’ ”28 Trust me on the leather pants. Irene talked me into them, and I love them. She’s even talked her mother who is in her seventies into them, as well as some of her clients in their sixties.
Use Power Colors
Bright colors like red and orange bring out power. They are bold and draw attention. Black as a basis for your outfit is always powerful. Just make sure you aren’t wearing all black—black shoes, black suit, etc.—or you’ll just be the black version of oatmeal.
Red on the lips is also a power statement. Miss Fame, a megatalented makeup artist and supermodel drag queen, suggests that if you’re a woman who’s looking for the warrior within, get a red lipstick. She advises: “Honestly, a red lipstick, a matte red, or a shiny red lipstick will make you feel powerful, I swear. Find the right shade. Maybe it’s an orange tone or a blue undertone. Those are colors that you can find depending on your skin color. . . . It showcases your mouth so your voice will be seen, because people will look. . . . You’ll have to command that lip. A lot of people go, ‘Oh, I can’t rock that lip.’ Yes, you can. Everybody can rock a red lip.”29 Russian Red and Lady Danger from MAC Cosmetics are two good red shades to try.
Step Up to Heels
Flats are for quitters. Now hang on, don’t get too riled up. Yes, flats are comfortable and they are better for your feet and your posture. I (Jackie) went for comfort (or so I thought) over style by eschewing heels of any kind for most of my life. But since being transformed by the world of drag I now truly understand the power of heels. I often perform in high-heeled, thigh-high boots, so, honey, you know I’ve gotten over my indifference toward heels. The thing about heels is that they change our posture, our gait, our height, and they can also change how we feel. They can make us feel more powerful. If you’re a heels gal then you already know this. If you’re not convinced and don’t normally wear heels, give it a try. Get it out of your mind that wearing heels equals searing pain in your feet. There are heels out there that are much more comfortable than others and also look good. For heels that you need to wear for more than a few hours, here are a few things to keep in mind:
1. Look for good-quality shoes, which will cost you a bit more, but it’s better to invest in one good pair of expensive heels than three pairs of heels that kill your feet.
2. Stay under three inches as a rule.
3. Stay away from skinny stiletto heels, as they put too much weight on too little surface area, although Shelly swears by them.
And if all else fails, pick the most badass shoes you can find: any attention-grabbing low pump, a bright and shiny flat, or even a powerful purple combat boot!
If You’re Not Wearing Nails, You’re Not Doing Drag
This is actually the title of a song by one of my favorite drag queens, Alaska Thunderfuck 5000. Many drag queens love their long, adorned press-on nails. In the lyrics to the song, Alaska is jokingly making fun of lazy queens who don’t bother to complete their female illusion by adding nails. Nails are a staple of the well-dressed queen. I never used to paint my nails until a few years ago when gel nail polish was introduced. Now you can walk out of the nail salon with completely dry, hard nails that won’t chip and will last for about two weeks. This has changed my life! I am never without my nails done. I like to make my ring finger on both hands into an accent nail, either in a different, complementary color or by adding a thin layer of glitter polish on top of the main color. Having your nails done just completes your look. You look and feel put together and ready to tackle the world. It may be a small thing, but it can make your hands look as dressed up as you are.
Get a Stylist or Personal Shopper
It can be invaluable to find someone to help you develop that fierce style. A good stylist or personal shopper can bring together pieces that you would have never thought of before. If you’re like me, who really needs the fashion expertise I don’t have, they are a godsend. Lots of stores have free personal shoppers to help you. Of course, then everything you buy will be from that one store. But for big department stores or stores with a wide variety of items, this works well. Stores that have free personal shoppers include Anthropologie, Club Monaco, J. Crew, Macy’s, Madewell, Topshop, and of course my go-to, Nordstrom.
If you want someone to come to your house and check out your clothes closet, then you are in the market for a personal stylist. They usually work by the hour or have set fees for specific services, such as auditing your current wardrobe, updating your wardrobe with select pieces, or creating a completely brand-new style. A great way to find a good stylist is to ask your well-dressed colleagues and friends for recommendations, or simply find one on the web through Google or Yelp.com.
For the Drag Curious
For our advanced readers, here are some ideas to really push your boundaries. You will be amazed at how liberated you feel once you try them.
• Go out on the town in a wig. You heard us, a wig. Find a wig that makes you feel like a completely different person. We could write an entire chapter on how to shop for a wig, so here are some quick tips. If you are looking to experiment with a wig and not pay a lot of money, check your local costume store. You can also find inexpensive wigs on Amazon.com with many under twenty dollars. If you want a wig that is more realistic looking and you have the funds to spend, shop where the drag queens shop, including websites such as RockStarWigs.com, WigsandGrace.com, or BobbiePinz.com. These higher-quality wigs can run from $40 to $150. Or try the Cadillac of wig sellers, WigsByVanity.com, with wigs priced from $100 to $250. Looking for wig-styling advice? Check out the thousands of YouTube tutorials. Once you have found your wig, it’s time to go out on the town. If you are lacking courage, find a friend or two or six and make it a girls’ night out, with all of you in your wigs. Of course, cocktails can be very helpful if you are feeling skittish about it. Here’s the thing: you might look a little over-the-top, but who cares! Go to dinner and then head to a dance club in your city and dance the night away. You’ll have a blast, trust and believe!
• Get a complete drag makeover. This one is a bit more difficult but completely worth it. The best person to do a drag makeover is a drag queen who is also a makeup artist by day. You might need to go to your local drag shows and chat up the queens. Find out if anyone does makeup for their day job and then hire them. They should also be equipped to style a wig for you. For your outfit, go to a local costume store, vintage store, or Goodwill. Find the most over-the-top outfit that your drag persona would wear.
• Go to your next costume party in drag. This is a no-brainer! It’s a perfect opportunity to get yourself up in some drag. Everyone will be in costume, but your look is going to be sickening the house-down boots! Bonus points if your drag look makes you unrecognizable to your friends. In fact, make this your goal. Look as different as possible from your real self. As I pointed out in the last idea, you may need to hire a drag queen makeup artist for help with all this.
We’d love to see any or all of the things you’ve tried in this chapter. Make sure to take pictures and post them to social media tagging @jackiehuba with the hashtag #FiercelyYou.
Drag queens are masters at dressing for power. They command the attention of a room just with the over-the-top things they wear. All eyes are on them from the moment they step onto the stage. But it’s also how they use their bodies in the costumes that creates power. When was the last time you spent money on an outfit that felt fabulous in the dressing room, but the minute you walked into an event you started to doubt yourself? Wouldn’t you love to be able to keep that great feeling all the time? To know how to move your body in a way that feels good and reminds you of your worth, your power? Then let’s sashay a few more steps farther into the Queendom!