We need to talk about representation for queer people in the media and also in law. And there's a long history of drag queens leading those discussions in marches on the street and even in bars going back to the time of Stonewall and before.
— Sasha Velour
The truth is I do take drag really seriously, and I think that there's kind of a place for that - to see it as this political and historical art form, and to want to continue pushing it in new directions. And also honor the old directions as well. So I'm sort of like a drag intellectual/drag queen.
What I love so much about drag is that it has politics at its very core; drag performers aren't afraid to talk about politics in our community and the changes we need to see systemically in society.
Purple has always been my favorite color... but purple, when I was a little kid, was a color that boys weren't really allowed to wear. That's what all the kids at school told me. I filled my wardrobe with as much purple as I could possibly find, because who cares? Life's too short to dress by other people's rules.
I think Bianca Del Rio should be in politics.
The audience of 'Drag Race' and the fans of drag queens are often very surprising.
I have an art magazine about drag called 'Velour,' named after myself, and I have a monthly show called 'Nightgowns' that curates and presents some of the most creative and high-quality drag in a professional theater setting.
I'm an only child; I'm a very private person.
Absolutely anyone can and must do drag.
People are so serious about ourselves, and drag suggests that maybe it's all just a bunch of ideas, and we can be a little bit more flexible with them.
The cities that I go to where I can tell that they have a lot of different types of drag, I tell them that they remind me of Brooklyn, and I mean that as the highest compliment in the entire world.
I've found that embracing the things that make me a little strange and different from other people, and learning to love that, makes me feel beautiful and fashionable every day.
To costume yourself in the way that you fantasize, to make that a reality, and then to go right into the universe looking like an exceptional being takes a lot of courage.
I'd like to see drag really cultivate its political roots.
People started bringing their own personal work to 'Nightgowns,' and that's really when it started to become a really distinctive show.
My favorite thing about drag is taking one idea and flipping it on its head entirely.
Drag is literally so ancient that it predates modern understanding of gender, of transness, of queerness. Drag predates modern ideas of gender, of theater at all. Drag predates the word 'drag' itself.
Right when I was starting to experiment with drag, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and during her chemo treatment, she lost all of her hair. And for her, the idea of being a fem with no hair was really difficult.
That's what I wanted 'Pirate Jenny' to be: a queer, revolutionary fairy tale for the people that I love.
I love 'Threepenny Opera'; I was exposed to it as a little kid because my parents, my mom and my dad, had bonded, when they were dating, over 'Threepenny Opera' and introduced it to me, a child, who could barely understand it. But I immediately gravitated even from that early age.
Drag has always inspired people to come together to be joyous and fight for what matters. If we can do it through beauty and positivity and lip-syncing our favorite pop songs, then let's do it.
Racism is a problem everywhere, especially in this country, but all over the world, and especially within queer space.
Everyone who passes through 'Drag Race,' and especially the people who are able to have really big careers after the show, has a responsibility to the queer community to do a good job of representing queer people across the board to be kind and loving.
A superstar doesn't just use the spotlight for themselves.
Drag performance is really emotional.
Drag is about asserting your power and your brilliance and your importance.
I hope that people look at Brooklyn as kind of a drag utopia, because that's what it's been in my experience - all genders and bodies and ages doing drag.
I hope we see more avenues for representation. More TV shows and films starring queer people, especially QPOC and nonbinary folks, more mainstream press coverage of our artwork and fashion, and more representation of our interests within politics.
I'd say my fashion or beauty tip is to take the thing about you that makes you most distinctive and then exaggerate it. So if you have a little bushy unibrow, make it a dramatic unibrow. If you're balding, go completely bald.
I love hearing the same songs over and over again - as long as queens challenge themselves to come up with new ways of performing them.
I'm certainly not inventing anything new with drag.
The way I've always looked at drag has been a little bit different maybe than other people because the drag community that I started doing drag in is full of trans people and women and people of various educational backgrounds, of different ages.
Uniformity is not very interesting or sustainable - it's boring.
Trans women, trans men, AFAB - which is assigned female at birth - and non-binary performers, but especially trans women of color, have been doing drag for literal centuries and deserve to be equally represented and celebrated alongside cis men.
I went to Vassar College for undergraduate and studied literature and queer theory, and all of the above. And then I took a Fulbright scholarship in Russia.
The political nature of 'Threepenny Opera' is immediately visible. I just think that that's not always a part of acceptable and fun entertainment that we're exposed to - that political side.
Unfortunately, this world is not an easy place.
I want to see some queer politicians, some drag queens and drag kings running for office and shifting the way that policy is made as well.
It's so beautiful that drag is able to speak to so many different types of people.
I want to follow in RuPaul's footsteps, which is that combination of not just personal stardom but to really transform myself into a producer of drag. That's the way to make a lasting impact on the world of drag and... to make actual differences in the queer community. I think there's no better model for that than RuPaul.
Queer art is as much about starting conversations as it is about making dramatic statements.
Taking care of your mental health is important, and being able to model that for queer people who are out there every day dealing with their own struggles is very significant.
There are so many voices that tell people, especially queer people, that they don't have importance and regality.
I want to be an ambassador of Brooklyn.
Just in my experience as a drag queen, I've been able to connect with queer people around the world - and to see them connecting with each other over a shared love of drag!
My favorite diva is Dame Shirley Bassey from the U.K. I just love that every song she sings becomes crazy and intense with feeling. That's how I feel in my daily life.
'Drag Race' has made a lot more people into fans of drag, and that's allowed local communities to grow and flourish, but it's up to individual queens to share the spotlight with their communities. I definitely want to be one of the people who does that.
Everyone is welcome in drag. Everyone is important and valuable.
The truth is, a lot of people go to drag shows, really, for very light entertainment, and I think sometimes maybe we don't even give the audiences enough credit as to what they'd be down for.
From the second there was drag, trans people were doing it. And when cis women started being allowed in theaters, then cis women doing drag was part of theater.
