Everyone is welcome in drag. Everyone is important and valuable.
Sasha Velour
Uniformity is not very interesting or sustainable - it's boring.
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 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.
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.
I think sometimes you have to imagine a fantasy world in which we are represented and visible the way we should be.
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.
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.
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'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.
My own experience of gender has been about a lot of fluidity. In drag, I like to combine aspects of masculinity and femininity and rewrite the rules for those.
Siouxsie Sioux was such an inspiration when I was a teenager because I connected with these goth college students who listened to this genre of music. She showed me that femininity didn't necessarily have to look the way that I was familiar with. It could be more exciting and much more identifiable.
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.
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.
For me, my greatest weakness is also my greatest strength: I'm a complete overthinker about everything.
I've always tried to twist the ideas of beauty that are maybe considered to be ugly by the mainstream. I was already kind of toying with that when it comes to baldness, which came from a discussion with my mother about how to be considered a beautiful woman if you're bald.
'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.
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 think Bianca Del Rio should be in politics.
There's so many more themes of drag than just fierceness.
Unfortunately, this world is not an easy place.
I grew up in this house of intellectuals, and for me, it wasn't, like, a negative thing. And what I've discovered is, for a lot of people, it is. But I think knowing history, liking to talk about ideas - like, I just genuinely like to geek out and go on these intellectual thought journeys.
Drag is about asserting your power and your brilliance and your importance.
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.
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.
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.
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 want to be an ambassador of Brooklyn.
We still live in a country where there's disproportionate violence faced by our community, especially trans people and trans people of color. I think activism within the queer community continues to need to focus on those issues first.
It was definitely my grandmother who introduced me to fashion.
Pride, to me, is a celebration of the past because we have come such a long way from the very first Pride parade marking the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, so it's a celebration of all that we've accomplished.
It is important to me to keep fighting for the rights of those who cannot.
I've learned that I am a complete workaholic and that no amount of sleeplessness or exhaustion will keep me from taking on new or ambitious projects. That is both a good quality and a terrible one, I think.
For a while, my favorite movie was 'Vertigo.' Everything in that movie was captivating to me.
I like a little Barbra Streisand!
Drag should push the limits of what is considered fashionable or beautiful.
Some people play it safe in the world of drag - I'm guilty of it myself, sometimes - but I hope to always be a voice that encourages people to buck trends, follow their instincts, and do good in the world.
There are so many voices that tell people, especially queer people, that they don't have importance and regality.
Absolutely anyone can and must do drag.
I want to do something that is not just a pastiche of drag that's come before but is really authentically me. I try to tune out all the drag that's out there and tap into the drag that I was doing when I was a little kid - when I didn't even know the word 'queer' or that gay people were out there.
I want to show people it's not elitist to be a deep thinker.
The audience of 'Drag Race' and the fans of drag queens are often very surprising.
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.
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.
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!
I'd like to see drag really cultivate its political roots.
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 want to do performance that inspires people to be true to themselves and has tangible impact on the community. Not just because I want to be a role model - I just think it's the best way to honor the tradition of drag.
I'm an only child; I'm a very private person.
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.
