Westminster hosted the ASW Drag Show Thursday night in the HWAC Special Events Room where performers showed drag is for everyone.
“The whole idea of drag is to expose the ridiculousness of gender by showing how much gender is a performance and not something we do every day,” said Faith Staley, Queer Compass program coordinator.
Some people assume that drag is when a male dresses up as a woman, but there’s actually a lot of different forms of drag.
“Gender is not just something that is inherent in our bodies,” Staley said. “Some women decide to do super feminine performances, some decide to do performances of drag kings and some decide to do performances of drag nonbinary.”
Drag queen, Moxxie Manix, dressed up as a Sagittarius Scorpio. She moved to Utah from Pennsylvania and lives in a bus with her partner and baby. She loves to do the show at Westminster because in Pennsylvania they don’t allow bio queens.
“A bio queen is a biological female that does drag as a female,” Manix said. “For me, it’s just a self-expression type of thing.”
Manix said she is an emotional person and is very manic, so drag is the perfect way for her to let that out.
“I dance enough in my backyard, so why not do it on stage,” she said.
Dan Dyridge, a student from the University of Utah, was another queen dressed as a Scorpio.
“I’ve always loved makeup, costuming, and performing, so to blend all of those together is a dream,” she said. “Drag is my favorite thing to do because I love telling a story on stage.”
Drag is for everyone, according to the performers, and for those who are interested or have any questions the queens and kings can be found on their Instagram page @westminsterdiversity or visit the Student Diversity and Inclusion Center website.
Staley said people can also take Dan Cairo’s May Term class called Hunty Couture and Drag Culture Theory.
