Can I be a drag queen safely in a red state?

Your Other Dad says start online, then look for the blue bubbles

When I first read your question, I wasn’t sure if you were serious. “Drag queening” (which makes it sound like a sparkly cousin to dry cleaning) isn’t really the common term for what you’re talking about — doing drag — and I wondered if it might be a joke question, of which I get a fair number. But the second half of your question about living in a red state makes me think that the language choice reflects that this subject may be new for you and that you don’t know many people who do drag.

Let’s start with the fact that it’s great that you are interested in trying this new experience. If you’re living somewhere conservative, this may not be a pursuit that is very popular and even accepted. (Or it may be seen as something people do on TV or elsewhere — but less welcome in person in your own community.) So your desire to try on a new persona shows a strength of personality. It’s not always easy to explore your own interests or needs outside the norms of your community.

Related posts:

U.S. police kill far more people than police in other countries, even though most of the calls they respond to are for non-violent offenses.

As the emergence of digital technologies has transformed the news industry, the way that journalism is taught and learned in the college classroom and in campus-based journalism laboratories, or news…

Having been one of the founding data scientists at several startups, I have witnessed how decisions are made differently around piecing the machine learning pipelines together. In fact, it is widely…