The truth is, people who have longevity are able to be aware of their public perception and take it and use it and make it work for them.
— Alaska
You have to take the tragic and turn it to magic.
My perfect day starts with putting on the teapot. Then I have tea in my favorite 'Golden Girls' mug and watch 'The Daily Show.'
I would like to see the breakdown of the binary way of looking at gender and sexuality.
Really, drag is like, 'Oh, I'm putting on women's clothing,' but it's just clothing. The people who assign it as being for women is the culture and society.
I was like, 18 and it was in West Virginia because I was allowed to get into the clubs in West Virginia, not Pennsylvania where I was growing up. And we went in and there was a drag queen on stage and she was huge and beautiful, but she was lip syncing to a song. I was legitimately stunned.
Music is really personal.
Well, I love Britney Spears, and I condider myself to be Britney Spears.
I'll be in, like, Starbucks or something and I'll say my order and someone will snap their head around and go, 'Whaat, Alaska?! Hieeee!' I find it nice because I can be alone in a strange city where I don't know where I am, and then if a fan runs into me I feel like I am among friends and family.
There's still an immense amount of discrimination that happens against trans people.
I was really scared that I would never be able to date anyone... because there was a huge stigma against drag. But the drive was so strong to do it that I was like, 'I don't care. If that happens, I'm fine.'
I think that my attitude about myself is something that I've been trying to work on - trying to be more positive and just believing in myself more.
Pittsburgh is an underdog city because it's been in a recession for a really long time, since the steel industry collapsed, so it has this underdog mentality. Yeah, there are a lot of people who are conservative, but I also think they want to rally around their Pittsburgh people.
I wanted a song my 6-year-old niece could listen to in the car. 'Everyday is Christmas' sounds like a sweet sentiment, but in reality if every day were actually Christmas it would be a candy cane-riddled hellscape from which the human race could never awaken. So we're lucky it is just a lighthearted Christmas tune.
I do believe the children are the future.
I care about 'RuPaul's Drag Race' a lot. It's given me a career as an artist.
The House of Andrews really invented what we know as polished, glamour drag.
Straight people love to steal from drag queens. It happens all the time.
Working out grounds you in your body and in the moment so if I'm ever feeling fuzzy headed a workout always helps check in with the moment.
I'm not a huge dancer onstage. In fact, I like not moving at all if I don't have to. But even just standing up for any given amount of time in 6-inch heels ends up leaving me feeling like I've been cracked in half like a rag doll after a few shows.
I think I first learned about Stonewall in Queer Theatre class at the University of Pittsburgh. It made me mad that queer people out at bars could be raided and arrested and harassed by the police just for being who they were.
I'm a giant person. I can't go and buy women's shoes in a shoe store. I don't even go in the shoe section because it just breaks my heart because the shoes are so beautiful, but they don't fit me.
My mom was really good at swearing growing up.
RuPaul is someone who I really look up to because he's very much a renaissance man.
I want to make the world a better place, and I think we can all work together to do that.
You can't control how you come across and if you try to then you come across looking like an idiot anyway.
I think that we've made a lot of progress in the years since the Stonewall uprising, and as far as equality for marriage and things like that go.
I always used to dress up in little girls' clothes when I was really young. Then I realized that boys weren't supposed to do that, and I got really shy. I didn't do it for many years.
I can be pretty, I just prefer not to.
Pittsburgh's definitely the city where I learned how to be on a stage, hold a microphone, and interact with an audience. It's where I got my chops as an entertainer and as a performer, so I'm grateful to the queer community there because they are active and vocal and they care about each other.
I think Christmas is a time for the whole family.
I've certainly had to find a balance for myself and I have to now schedule months where I say, 'OK, I'm not going to travel during this month.'
If I could send myself a bunch of snake emojis, I probably would.
As your newly crowned queen of Earth, it is my first royal decree that flats are sexy and nails are optional.
If people are laughing at you, you might as well be in on the joke.
Meditation is essential. I try to start each morning with a focus on the breath and three things I'm grateful for.
At the end of the day and at the beginning of the day, I am a man who dresses up like a lady who is from outer space. Not everyone is going to get that. Not everyone is going to be on board with that.
I was really grateful that The Vixen, especially, was on season 10 because she was having conversations about race. You can't ignore it, especially in the drag community, in the 'Drag Race' world.
It's always been that I feel more masculine in drag than I do out of it. I only get called 'ma'am' out of drag and I only get called 'sir' in drag.
I love 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians.'
I get to work a lot of times in nightclubs and large theaters, so I wanted to make music that is fun to perform in those settings. But I also wanted to contrast it with really serious, sincere ballads.
I love drag so much and it's a huge part of who I am but there's also another side that hasn't really gotten out into the music and I'm excited to show that.
So pride is a time for us to say we're here, we're visible, we're strong, we're able to organise and we're able to activate and work together as a community to make change. That's what pride's about for me. And it's really fun too!
The thing about 'Drag Race' now is that you don't really know what's going to happen when it gets to the end of the season.
I'm from Erie, Pennsylvania. We're just naturally really nice, I think. In a show like 'RuPaul's Drag Race,' that isn't always good.
Personally, I like drag that's a little rough around the edges, drag you can run around in it, drag you can get in the Uber without worrying about!
Drag is political.
My mom knew that I was gay. So she just came up to me in the kitchen one night, and she said, 'Justin, are you a homosexual?' And I said, 'Yes,' and that was that. She took all the steps, she went to talk to a family counselor beforehand to see how she should bring it up, and now my mom's my biggest fan.
Why sleep when we can do drag?
In show business, there's a lot of time when you're under contract, and you're not allowed to talk about things.
