Few words are more contentious in contemporary American politics than “gender” and “drag.” As a performance of knowingly overemphasized femininity, masculinity, or other gender expression, drag is both an art form and an entertainment category. And because drag is often used to explore sexuality and gender in defiance of social norms, it can also be a form of political activism.
Drag is not new, and neither is opposition toward it. Dr. Lady J, a nonbinary trans woman who holds a doctorate degree in Musicology from Case Western Reserve University. She describes herself as “the world’s first drag queen with a PhD dissertation on drag history.” She traces the origins of drag to the 1860s, in Victorian England, when Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park — homosexual men who performed as crossdressers — described their performances as “drag.” That was the first recorded use of the term. Since then, drag has taken on a life of its own in global popular culture.
In March 2024, the Kentucky Senate passed Senate Bill 147, which seems reasonable at a glance: it prohibits adult-oriented businesses from operating within 933 feet (approximately one city block) of schools, churches, parks, education centers, and other places where children might congregate. However, the bill also includes references to drag performances, effectively making gender play in performance art comparable to human trafficking. This conflation of drag with criminal behavior is giving MAGA. As counterpoint to this anti-queer ideology, three Louisville-based performers share what drag means to them.
Witch Hunt, But Make It Fashion
Raised in Hardin County and now based in Louisville, Salem VycthTryells is a Black drag queen and a cast member of The Va Va Vixens Burlesque and Variety Troupe. Salem started dancing at the age of five — first in tap, and eventually in ballet, hip-hop, jazz, and modern. She was inspired to start performing drag after a friend brought her to The Connection Night Club in the Highlands.
“My breakthrough performance was with the Hardin County Playhouse of the Sunshine Boys,” Salem says.
As soon as she was old enough to travel to Louisville on weekends, she started performing in a small coffee shop that hosted drag shows for people who were not yet old enough to get into The Connection.
Although drag is still considered transgressive, Salem considers it to be just as valid as any other form of entertainment. “Some people are interested in going to events like Louder Than Life or to a Taylor Swift concert, while others go to places like Le Moo Drag Brunch and Drag Con.”
Despite the anti-drag language of S.B. 147, Kentucky is still home to talented performance artists like Salem. “Drag has opened the doors for a lot of us to [become] community leaders,” she said. “Drag will always continue to inspire and bring people together.”
O Kentuckiana, Have Mercy On Us
Mercy Kiss is a 20-year-old gender ambiguous drag artist who describes themselves as “a club kid fashionista.” They are a rising star on the Louisville drag scene.
“When I was growing up in the middle of nowhere, I always wished there where more opportunities to get on a stage, or at least some positive encouragement towards this, but not until I moved to Louisville did I start to find these,” they said. “I’ve been establishing my roots in this scene over the past two years I’ve learned and grown so much.”
The process of styling their costumes, make-up, and wigs, and booking shows with a community of like minded Louisvillians creates a reciprocally supportive network of drag performers. Mercy acknowledges that their looks and their delivery might not always be highly polished or picture perfect. “But when a performer takes the stage and is in their element,” they said. “I hope [it] inspires others to live their lives just a bit more true and raw.”
“Especially in a place like Kentuckiana, drag is precious,” Mercy said. “I think we would all be a lot better off if we could live a bit more freely and unbothered by what anyone else is doing or has to say.”
It’s All Drag, Baby
33-year-old Vic Leone is a writer, an actor, the senior program coordinator at the Louisville Pride Center. He is also a drag king. Assigned female at birth, Vic presented as feminine for most of his life. “I am not a cis woman, and I’m not a cis man, but I am a man,” he said. “And it’s somewhere on the trans spectrum.”
Vic discovered his love of acting while still in high school at age 16. “When I found theater, I found a community.”
His love of drag developed in parallel to his medical transition. “Vic Leone was the moniker I came up with,” he said. “But the more I began to feel confident in my ability — and myself — the more Vic Leone felt like not just a stage name, not just a moniker, but an identity.”
Although he usually performs in masculine drag, rather than the feminine drag often associated with the form, his feelings about finding community in drag echo the sentiments shared by Salem and Mercy. “You’re in a world where there’s a lot of people like you. So I get to be around a lot of trans women who are queens and people of a non-defined gender.”
Drag was an integral part of Vic’s coming out and transition processes. While he started performing in a masculine style make-up, he has since relaxed his looks. “I found that I didn’t need to do the contour that I used to do … because really, at the end of the day, paint or not, it’s all drag, baby,” he said. “Everything we put on — just to even go out into the world — is drag. You know, how we want to be seen by people is drag.”
Like Salem, Mercy, and other Louisville-based drag performers too numerous to list, Vic feels that drag is especially important to the queer community in places like Kentucky “because it’s a place where we can literally be seen — from the inside out.”
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 13, 2025.
