I knew I was attracted to boys and loved all things feminine! I kept this side of me to myself and my best friends growing up, who really didn’t see anything strange about it.” “I still was not out at this point,” Alexus says. She soon entered her first drag performance in the small Pennsylvania coal town of Weishample. “I was just having a day!”Īlexus hit high school and upped her Halloween game. “I had no idea that it was drag or gay,” she says. With Cyndi Lauper and the Pointer Sisters blasting, she would wrap herself in knitted blankets to lip-sync and dance for her family. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)ĭaniels’ first memory is of her great-grandmother’s jewelry box. Daniels, the drag family matriarch, was the child of a coal miner and textile worker who was “born with a female spirit.” She works at the local hospital as an MRI aide tech. Among them:ĭrag queen Alexus Daniels lip-syncs to “Heart of Glass” by Blondie as she sits on the lap of a smiling and consenting audience member and others take photos during the “Daniels Family Values” drag show at the Heritage Restaurant in Shamokin, Pa., Saturday, April 16, 2022. The Associated Press followed the Daniels family for more than a year. “And drag now can be a place or a thing to show people like you that you don’t have to go to the cities. because there’s no one like us here, there’s no one that can understand us. “There was a curse being a queer person in a rural town - the curse is that we’ll move. “I never had a person like me growing up,” Trixy said, “and now I get to be that for everyone else. Soon that seaman, Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Kelley, who just reenlisted, moves from a base in Norfolk, Virginia, to one in Spain, with plans to pack a wig “and maybe one or two cute outfits but nothing over the top” for Harpy-style shore leave.Īpart from the twins, the drag performers in this circle are family by choice, not genes. Navy sailor who’s had three deployments on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Jacob Kelley, who performs as drag queen Trixy Valentine, is an LGBTQ+ activist and educator with a master’s in human sexuality. Not plain, not simple, but also bedrock, rising above ground only in culturally adventurous cities. The other, back to before Shakespearian times, is drag, a loud, proud and seismically flamboyant artistic expression of gender fluidity. One tradition is the view of family as mom, dad and kids, plain and simple. Here two very old traditions mingle - and mostly happily, it seems, in contrast to the fierce political winds ripping at drag performances and the broader rights of LGBTQ+ people in red states from Utah and Texas to Tennessee and Florida. In a string of towns running along a coal seam, the sparkle of small-town drag queens and kings colors a way of life rooted in soot, family and a conservative understanding of the world. Or they’re reading in gardens to children dressed in their Sunday best - Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors” is a favorite book for performers and kids alike. Or they’re lighting up local blue-collar bars and restaurants with Mimosas & Heels Drag Brunches for bridal parties, members of the military, families and friends. They’re hosting sold-out bingo fundraisers at the Nescopeck Township Volunteer Fire Co.'s social hall, packed with people of all ages howling with laughter and singing along. (AP) - Deep in Pennsylvania coal country, the Daniels drag family is up to some sort of exuberance almost every weekend.
DRAG QUEEN SHOW TV
The critically acclaimed second season was lauded by Variety for uncovering “deeper truths about small-town America that are often presented through a reductive lens, while finding the nuances of life and diversity.” One of Esquire’s “10 best TV shows of 2021,” the season was praised for having “so much heart” by NPR, and Decider applauded it for being “the kind of show that can actually bring legitimate change to life.SHAMOKIN, Pa. In each town, the queens inspire their “drag daughters” to express their genuine selves in front of their families, friends and communities, at times facing increased opposition and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation laws. George, UT Brevard County, FL Jackson, MS and Sussex, NJ to share their stories, increase awareness, and promote acceptance in their communities by participating in one-night-only drag shows. In Season 3, the queens recruit a diverse group of local residents from Granbury, TX St. Follow renowned drag queens Bob the Drag Queen, Eureka O’Hara, and Shangela as they continue their journey across small-town America, spreading love and connection through the art of drag.
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