Even despite the increased visibility, Chang’s typical fee for gigs still ranges from NT $1,000 to $1,500-or between just $30 and $50 in U.S. The drag king salon was an apparent success: Chang would go on to represent the Taipei drag scene on a global scale in the recent Netflix docuseries, Midnight Asia. An avid metalhead, Chang dressed up as Till Lindemann of the German band Rammstein, workshopped their persona at the salon, and performed as Dan Dan for the first time. Instead they were quite literally recruited into drag in 2017, when Taiwan’s sole drag king at the time hosted a “salon” at their house in the hopes of creating a drag king family. While many of their friends learned about drag through Drag Race, Chang-who started performing as Dan Dan in 2019-doesn’t watch it. Darice Chang, a Taipei-based freelancer who performs as Dan Dan Demolition, said these rampant inequalities meant they were unable to make sustainable income from their art.
They are still waiting for their art to be seen as valid by a culture that continues to ignore even the basic fact of their existence. Drag Race is one of the few avenues that drag artists have for being launched into mainstream fame (or at least relative stability), and without even the hope of that source of this potential revenue stream, many drag kings are struggling to see a way forward.įive entertainers from around the world told VICE that drag kings are finding ways to thrive outside the hegemony of Drag Race, but they hope for a day where they don’t have to.
The omission isn’t just an issue of representation for representation’s sake but one of economics, in which the creative labor of an entire community isn’t being valued. Dragula, a similarly competition-based drag reality show from the Boulet Brothers, beat Drag Race to the punch three years ago-crowning its first drag king winner, Landon Cider, in its third season.
#OVER MEET DRAG KINGS SERIES#
The current reigning winners of both the flagship series and its spinoff, RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, are both trans: Willow Pill and Kylie Sonique Love, respectively.īut despite all of these “firsts,” RuPaul has yet to feature a drag king on the long-running program. There was Peppermint, the show’s first openly trans-feminine contestant, and Gottmik, the first trans-masculine performer to compete on Drag Race. Although the reality show has long faced controversy for trans-exclusionary comments from its titular host and its casual transmisogyny, Drag Race has provided a platform for drag artists who challenge the notion that the art form is just for cis men. That’s largely thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race, a multi-million dollar empire that’s accrued 39 Emmy nominations, won 19, and spawned more than a dozen international franchises (and counting). While the struggle for visibility is all too common among drag kings, drag as an art form is more mainstream than it’s ever been. “You see Trixie, Katya, and Alaska, people like that becoming super successful after being on RuPaul, and we just don’t have the same opportunities. Just keep doing the show.’ Until the point comes when I’m done trying to show that I matter as a drag king and as a performer.” My crazy mind is like, ‘Man, just keep going. “It’s just the entertainment industry has to catch up to the fact that drag kings are very relevant and very much needed in this community. “There’s an ability for kings to make a living doing this,” Henrietta said. Payment from drag gigs-which, for them, ranges from $50 to $400 before tips-rarely recoups the cost that goes into makeup ($20-$50 for drug store products), costuming ($20-$50 for drug store products), costuming ($600-$800 for gems and an array of cheap $50 suits), and transportation (around $1,000 for cab fare, in order to avoid harassment on the train). As an undocumented person whose access to work is limited, Henrietta’s only sources of income are drag, burlesque, and part-time private cheffing.
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