In this brief dialogue, two speakers reflect on drag performance as a cultural legacy, describing how drag artists confront personal shame and trauma yet use their art to entertain and heal audiences. They emphasize the resilience required to keep performing despite judgment, and they honor a departed community member, acknowledging her lasting impact on their shared legacy.
I always like to think about us as drag artists as a part of this legacy, and everybody who does drag in any kind of way is a part of that history.
At that moment, I realized there are still a part of me who was ashamed. I still have a lot of shame on my body, but the fact that we do this— I do this all the time— and that moment just made me feel like, oh my God, we drag queens are doing something other people in this world will do. We are risking ourselves to be ridiculed, to be Subject to judgment, but yet we show up. We show up and despite our traumas, we use that as an inspiration to entertain people. We are actually healers. We give people the opportunity and the space to be entertained and be healed and see something in us that they haven't figured out themselves on their own.
Absolutely. And I think above all, the desire regardless of the outcome to get up and do it again is what I think— that resilience is what makes a drag queen.
Exactly. To lose someone that's part of us, we, all of us get affected. I got so affected.
I think she's part of our legacy. We'll always remember her and the impact that she's made.
