Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think this is a trait that runs throughout the queer community, the obsession with the hyper-feminine female villains. And we see it in Disney movies and in movies like 'Death Becomes Her,' and in characters like Poison Ivy and Catwoman.
Not to be rude to my sisters, but I don't listen to drag music. I listen to everything from punk to Italo disco to Appalachian country music, but I don't know what their records sound like. I hardly listen to my own records. I'm like Cher!
I like money but I love performance art and it goes hand in hand. I'm not the 'Titanic,' I'm 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show.' I'm not a blockbuster, I'm a cult classic. I think my strong but cult-like fanbase expects me to challenge norms.
The first thing I do when I get up is pray and meditate to center myself for the day ahead. I ask for inspiration in my creative endeavors, guidance in my relationships and patience in my journey. It's a great way to get focused for the day.
I am a Sagittarius. Two people live within me. One's a very savvy businessperson; the other's a party girl. Part of me is a very sensitive, connected, balanced person, and the other part is a selfish, fame-seeking asshole. Terrorist, really.
So my reason for doing drag, at first it was because I wanted to express this thing I had kind of stored deep down inside of me and now that I've let this thing loose, this monster out into the world and I kind of got that out of my system now.
Drag has come a long way and people are respecting it, and giving drag queens and other people who defy gender norms more chances than they've ever been given before, but it's thanks to people like RuPaul, especially, who set that momentum going.
Most drag queens dress up as super women, as an over exaggeration of the female form, because we like women, usually powerful women. I think that's why we are so over exaggerated; we are an amplification of the women who empowered us in our youth.
Drag artists are more men than real men. You need a lot of courage, personality, and guts to go out there. Even if you look good or you look bad, you still need to have all of those things to be on stage. You're going to get criticized by everyone.
The idea behind Jinkx is that she's a single mother and failed actress. One time she went out to a gay bar with her son, who's a gay adult, and started singing torch songs on the bar and became a hit. Now she's every gay boy's favorite cabaret act.
Now that we're seeing that you can be a really masculine football player and a homosexual, you can be a really girly boy who likes to dress in women's clothes, I think that it's just been adding to the whole discussion about homosexuality and society.
What motivates me is the chance to improve the world in my own special way; to contribute to the fight that all artists are fighting. I want to hold the mirror up to society and help them see themselves more clearly. I also love just making people laugh.
I very much treat my stage persona of Jinkx as a character I've created. Some drag artists do a look-based glamour act, and when they talk they're mostly just being themselves. In my case it's not Jinkx the drag queen, it's Jerrick Hoffer as Jinkx Monsoon.
I really think my fun personality is my ace in the hole. I will never claim to be the most beautiful or most talented queen, because I can think of many queens who fit that description. However, it's my "charisma" that takes me to a higher level in my drag!
My first drag role was the character Widow Simone in the ballet 'La Fille Mal Gardee.' She's a crazy social climbing woman trying to marry off her daughter to the wealthy town idiot. And in the middle of the show, she gets to perform a clog dance. I loved it.
Don't be afraid of wearing a lot of makeup. Like, a lot. Your eyes deserve to be showcased. I think it's important to just remember that whatever you think you hate about yourself, there's a way to counter that with makeup and make that part of you beautiful.
I was raised Catholic primarily by my mom's side of the family. But at 18, I found out there was an adoption in the family, and that I was of Russian Jewish descent on my mom's side. After that, I started to look more into the philosophies and culture of Judaism.
It's not enough to just be a good singer. You have to know where your roots come from. If you sing jazz, you should know all about jazz. You should look into, as much as you possibly can, the history of it, so that you're and educated and well-informed performer.
After I went on 'Drag Race,' I was allowed to do so many things. I was allowed to do theater, commercial work, television work, modeling, fashion design, and it was great. But the thing with reality television fame is that it's got a pretty quick expiration date.
A lot of people call horror movies 'campy,' and I can certainly see why they think that they are, but being a product of the 80s, I didn't notice that they were campy - I came from a campy generation. I mean, Ronald Reagan is campy. But I don't think they're campy.
There's a difference between being a drag queen on TV where the masses can tune in and watch, and then at a nightclub where you have to be a certain age to get in. There's a different decorum. We're all trying to push boundaries, but also trying to stay in our lane.
Sometimes when I'm working with RuPaul, I can't even look at her without feeling so emotional about the process I went through, and what was before the competition and what happened in my life after, and what it's done to millions of gay disenfranchised freaky kids.
Some people say, 'Oh you're a weird queen. You're a punk queen.' All queens are weird! I don't care if you're in a sickening gown or dressed as an octopus. You are treating every day as if it were Halloween. You are donning a character and a persona that isn't real.
Anybody who has been following me right from the get-go, even prior to being on 'Drag Race,' has known that my platform has always been about spreading love and spreading light and celebrating identity. It's always been very positive because I feel like we need that.
Sharon Needles is definitely Pittsburgh - always rough around the edges, a little ignorant, a little uneducated. And she's dead. And Pittsburgh is, after all, the zombie capital of the world, a little financially lower class, and just all-around a gritty, rough city.
I'm inspired by my surroundings. That's why I create dresses or videos around simple everyday things! I also love playing with nostalgic things from my childhood like cartoons. I like my art to trigger some sort of memory from my viewers, something they can relate to.
I prefer to be gender fluid or non-gendered and I dress in drag almost every day of my life even if I'm not in my full Jinkx Monsoon persona - I'm the kind of person who does not dress like my assigned gender and I wear makeup every day and sometimes wear wigs as a boy.
I should practice what I preach. It's a lot easier to show and teach people how to love themselves than it is to do it yourself. I still struggle with it sometimes. I wish sometimes I could always feel that I'm good enough, smart enough and gosh darn it, people like me!
It's like, 'Oh, great, drag queens can excel!' - but then the ceiling is so low. You're only allowed on the first floor; you're not allowed to go play with the big boys upstairs. Even RuPaul, who's a massive success, has been limited to where her music career can take her.
I love taxidermy. I collect taxidermy. I'm fascinated by the art of taxidermy. But on a more artistic level, I look at taxidermy as pulling something from the wild and taming it, and posing it in a style of your own personal pleasure that will last forever, and ever, and ever.
If you have to mask the things you're insecure about, go ahead. Wear four pairs of pantyhose, pad your hips, boost your boobs - whatever it takes to walk out of the house feeling like you own the world. Because there's no reason to waste your life hating something you can change.
I have a lot of female fans, and I feel like in this day and age, as a drag queen who is a female impersonator, I need to show my love and respect to all those female fans out there, especially my young ones who are learning about how to love themselves and love who they are in every way.
First, it was a big deal for girls to dress more like guys. Then it was a big deal for straight men to be metereosexuals and care about their appearance in the way that a gay man would. Now we have to take it a step further - men should be able to not wear men's clothes if they don't want to.
I watched 'Drag Race Thailand' without any subtitles or voiceovers or anything; I don't speak Thai but I do speak drag, so I felt like I understood exactly what was going on, even though I couldn't speak Thai. I didn't understand anything they were saying but I knew exactly what was happening.
I think my favourite thing about doing conventions is the parents taking their kids to see their favourite drag idols, because open-minded, progressive parents are making such a change in the world right now. The more open-minded these kids are being raised, the more hope I have for the future.
When I'm doing an exaggerated character, I hope it's clear I don't think this is how women do, or should, act. There's aspects of Looney Tunes in drag. But there's something poignant about a man dressed as a woman, talking about gender. It can make you realize how similar the genders really are.
Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Rihanna, all of these artists that we do love - you see so much of what we do, the personas, makeup, hair, fashion - like, all of is now incorporated in pop culture, and a lot of it has to do with drag, because we over-exaggerate everything, right? We take it out to the next level.
I never stop working, I never stop creating. And I never sit around and wait for the industry to need me. I force the industry to want me by continuously creating what I do. And in this age of airplanes and Internet, it's not about where you are, it's more about what you do. But I travel every single day.
I think the reason people are propping up drag queens is because it's popular with the fans that identify with them, so we're great for marketing. We're not allowed to be the Christmas tree, we're just allowed to be the decorations, and I still think we're looked at as clowns by a majority of the society.
I feel like I am just an entertainer. It does not matter what form I take to perform and entertain. I think I deserve being called a performer because you don't call Tyler Perry a drag queen. You don't call Will Smith a drag queen and all the other mainstream artists who use the aesthetic of drag to entertain.
I hope people realize that drag queens and queer people, we're not just archetypes and stereotypes. We're human beings with a lot to share. And a drag queen doesn't have to just be a clown, she can also be like a cooking TV personality or like a DJ, or a talk-show host. We should be able to infiltrate TV everywhere.
VANITY' is a celebration of beauty, self-identity, and self-respect. We want people to leave the show feeling okay to accept themselves - not to hold back and be ashamed of the extravagances they like to indulge in. We should be able to celebrate these things because they are part of living and we all strive for them.
Coming out as nonbinary was a response to a lot of criticism I got when it leaked that I'd be playing a nonbinary character on 'Steven Universe.' I never really had the words like nonbinary or gender fluid or gender nonconforming until after 'Drag Race' and that's when I first started identifying publicly as nonbinary.
I think that people are taking our artistry a little more serious compared to when we started. They are of course fascinated and entertained by who we are as performers and what we do in terms of our artistry, but a lot of viewers identify with us as human beings. I think that that has helped change how people view drag.
Ever since I was a kid I just thought that women had the better outfits, women had the better hair, women got to wear makeup. I just got jealous of what women got to do onstage. You dress up a man and ultimately it's just a different variation on the same kind of suit. There's a whole wide world of what women wear onstage.
Sometimes I'm not even really quite sure why I do what I do - do I do it because I like to show that I'm an educated person to exploit these certain things artistically and, in my opinion, in a very smart way - or am I just a punk rock brat that likes pushing people's buttons and relishing in the negative reaction? I can't tell.
Am I in the Forbes 100? Absolutely not, and I'll never be there. But for the first time I make so much money that I feel poor, like I have to cultivate and protect this fortune. But I never had more than $20 in my pocket before RuPaul's Drag Race so I feel so privileged with money, it's terrible. I bought a $300 beige t-shirt today.
I can't speak for the Jewish population, but I attribute my sense of humor to the tragic moments of my life. The best way to overcome certain tragedies is to develop a thick skin and sense of humor about things. Of course, I am very politically conscious and careful about my comedy. But when I do push an envelope, it's with a purpose.
I am a pig! I love to eat! i will eat anything! If you put it front of me, I will put it in my mouth, even if it doesn't taste good! And I can't stop eating until all the food is gone. It's probably one of the contributing factors as to why I became a drag queen. I can eat whatever I want, because I can just strap myself into a corset!
Drag really isn't just about exaggerating and celebrating femininity. Some drag queens want to look like monsters, some drag queens want to look like hot dogs. Really what it is is just dipping your toes in all the swimming pools of identity and allowing yourself. Because society really tries to compartmentalize humans in a certain way.