I enjoy a good drag performance and southern queens are among the best. Some of the best-known drag performers in the U.S. are from the South.  RuPaul (Atlanta, GA), Lady Bunny (Chattanooga, TN), and Lypsinka (Hazlehurst, MS) hold celebrity status in the world of drag.  RuPaul achieved superstar status in the mid-1990s with his hit song “Supermodel (of the World)” and a short-lived talk show on VH1.  He is once again riding high with RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Drag Race has featured many a southern drag queen in its competition to find “America’s next drag superstar” and this year is no exception. In fact, Bianca Del Rio (Roy Haylock), the winner of this year’s competition hails from New Orleans, but currently lives in New York (or better yet, hotel rooms since she is now performing around the country and out of it, too.)

I attended my very first drag show in 1990 in Greensboro, North Carolina, at the now defunct, but long-lived club known as The Palms.  I was quite nervous about it and I learned my first lesson in drag shows–do not sit near the stage or you’ll likely be drawn into the performance.  In my case, I sat at a table near the dance floor and before I knew it a very tall and plus-sized performer, who was offering her illusion of Madonna (circa Blonde Ambition Tour), walked over and grabbed one of my hands and placed it on one of her–cough, cough–cones.  As nervous as I was about that interaction, needless to say, I was henceforth hooked on drag–especially southern drag performance.

I went back to The Palms after that and saw drag illusions of Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, and Dolly Parton–gay icons all–who were staples in the pantheon of southern drag performance. (Dolly still is.)  When I moved to Mississippi a year after the cone incident, I became familiar with an entire world of drag performers with names like Misty Love, Rose Petal, Deli Delmonte, and Katrina Del Ray.  I even judged a couple of pageants, including Miss Dixie and Miss Sweetheart.

Drag pageants in the South mirror beauty pageants for those born biologically female.  There’s usually a talent portion, an evening gown competition, and even a question round. The effort and money put into drag performance (and especially the pageants) is really impressive, especially when you consider that many a young queen I met in Hattiesburg, MS, was working a minimum wage job or might have been a struggling college student.

Drag, of course, isn’t just about pageants, but it IS always about performance and I’ve always appreciated the talent that goes into it.  Southern drag has changed a lot since I first went to a show.  Today, you will see all kinds of drag performance (comedy, goth and celebrity illusion) and I enjoy the variety that’s out there, but I will always have a soft spot for the pageant girls.  They are the gift that keeps on giving.