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Published at 1:09pm
Published at 12:53pm
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MEET THE PANELISTS (below)
Which leads us to our last question: Drag has always been part of our experience and always will be. What is its everlasting appeal? Why won’t it ever die?
Ariel Schrag: I don’t want drag to die! It’s a way to differentiate yourself and live between the genders a little bit. Sort of like how gay men lisp to make a point—or maybe they feel more feminine at a certain moment and that’s how it comes out.
Kai Wright: You gotta look at something when you cruise, right? What do you get when you go to straight bars? A basketball game. I’d rather look at a man dressed up as a woman.
Staceyann Chin: It’s good to play with the lines. We’ve still got a long way to go in terms of acknowledging the multiplicities that exist in the world, and I think drag is pushing us in the right direction in terms of expressing a human condition. I know women who have hair growing on their faces. I know men who prefer high heels over sneakers. Everybody can’t be fit into a type, and the ones who do probably have to work really hard to stay that way.
Douglas Carter Beane: When a gay man does drag, it’s the most beautiful feminist statement. When straight men do it, you’ve got to train them not to be negative. I learned that from making To Wong Foo.
Christian Siriano: I love To Wong Foo! It’s so good, so fabulous.
Glenn Maria: Drag can be a release for a lot of people. People live in such a daily grind, so it’s very empowering to see someone fuck things up.
Douglas Carter Beane: It’s part of the tradition, part of the fun of who we are. If it weren’t for the drag queens, we wouldn’t have had a gay revolution at all. They’re our little George Washington patriots.
Christian Siriano: If you think of heterosexuals, they have white-trash women and trailer parks, and we have drag queens and trannies. I don’t know if I’m the one who can explain it. It’s, like, drag queens are just there. These answers are hard!
Douglas Carter Beane, 48
Tony-nominated playwright (The Little Dog Laughed and Xanadu) and screenwriter (To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar)
Staceyann Chin, 35
Activist, poet, spoken-word performer and self-proclaimed “lesbian Jamaican immigrant”
Glenn Marla, 25
Outré plus-size trannie performer
Ariel Schrag, 28
Author of the autobiographical graphic novel Awkward, and former writer for The L Word
Christian Siriano, 21
Project Runway winner, hot trannie mess popularizer
Kai Wright, 34
Author, Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay,and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York
Josh Stevenson
Wed, May 28, at 11:27pm
There is SO much wrong with the last comment made by Christian Siriano. He's being racist, classist, and transphobic. First, he's implying that all heterosexuals are white. Then he equates gender variant people with the class-biased stereotype of "white trash".
Josh Stevenson
Wed, May 28, at 09:10pm
There is SO much wrong with the last comment made by Christian Siriano:
