Transvestite - Includes drag queens, a small segment of the transvestite population. A person (mostly male,) often straight, who dresses up in the clothing of the opposite sex. More likely to be in the closet 'cause straight people are more tight-assed. Transvestite behaviors can range from wearing women's panties under your ripped jeans and Hells Angels jacket, to living as a woman every day.
Transsexual - Someone whose gender differs from their sex. Some transsexuals are on hormone medication, and a few each year are permitted/can afford an operation to bring sex&gender into alignment.
If I hadn't seen the reactions around my "progresive" office (Patrick aside, of course), I wouldn't have believed it. But it's totally true - even seemingly reasonable people are appalled at the pictures I shot of the Wave and Blue Moon shows. There were some crazy reactions out there, all the way from Patrick's "Chicks with Dicks" comments to Barry's "God, that's disgusting," the office was up in arms and kind-of grossed-out by the pictures. (You were spared the best/worst, depending on how you see it.)Maybe it's cause I talked to the girls in their dressing rooms. Maybe it's too many years of progressive, PC education. Or maybe I'm just cooler than those sexist pigs at the office. Because, frankly, I think that kind of thing is rude, and I guarantee you so do the female impersonators. The point isn't that we should laugh at them cause they still look like guys, or because "they can't get their genders straight," because they probably have it more togther than a lot of us.
Through these people who push the boundaries of sexuality within a realm they still feel comfortable with, we have the opportunity to become more enlightened about ourselves and humanity in general. I wasn't offended at all by these girls. They're all well-spoken, funny, and put on two really good shows.
Female Impersonator shows are not new, even to Anchorage, and neither are drag queens. I hope you can guess which came first. "I used to dance in the straight clubs around here before the Blue Moon [started female impersonator shows 5 years ago,]" says Misty Dawn, who danced both as a man and as a woman.
Female Impersonator shows in Anchorage have been few and far between, however - the only choice being the Blue Moon show every Wednesday (which has recently been expanded to every other Saturday.) The format changes quite often, but the addition of the Wave show provides all-new drag-viewing opportunities. The Wave started their Wednesday-night Female Impersonator show, "La Cage Aux Wave," three weeks ago (which, a friend of mine points out, should in fact be "A Wave," but who's paying attention to such minor details?)
Reminiscent of a Thai floor-show, the Blue Moon show is pretty traditional - all the dancers are men, and each plays a specific type of fantasy character. The BM show features smooth transitions between acts while The Wave features an emcee between every act, which I felt broke up the continuity of the show too much.
However, I thought the sex/gender mix and match at The Wave was highly creative and brought the art of female impersonation to new heights. They have real women vocalists, a singing drag queen (all the rest lip synch,) and a couple of "boy drag" numbers.
The Blue Moon
Frankly, I dicdn't expect such a polished, well-put-together, female impersonator show when I went to the Blue Moon. But five years of practice and honing has paid off. All of the impersonators do a great job of appearing to be women - good-looking women, and the dance numbers are all well-done.
There ar e currently six members of the Blue Moon team. One of them asked not to be included in the article, so this is the last you'll hear of her. All of the impersonators are men, except for Zardin La Donne, who's a woman, pretending to ba a man, pretending to be a woman in both real-life and at the Moon. She has earned the title of Closet King of the Imperial Court of All Alaska, Alaska's largest repository of professional drag queens. The Imperial Court is the international Drag Performaer's association, and Alaskan members travel the nation and the world to participate in conventions. Alaska's chapter hold the fifth largest convention in the state - Coronation, where the Empress is crowned yearly.
Misty Dawn is the originator of the show, and a Past Empress of the Court, a non-profit charitable organization that also facilitates nationwide and international networking for Alaska's drag queens. "When you go to another town looking for work, it helps to have a lot of contacts, and to have received a title," says Brittany La Mar Barrington, a tall blond bombshell.
The show opens with "Anything Goes," a standard female-impersonator-type song. Three dancers come out in black teddies, black lace gloves, heels, and wide-brimmed, funky hats. I was worried by the first act, becuase the dancers had little facial expression, but the lip-syncing was first-rate. I soon realized that the lack of facial/body expression was part of the song, or else they warmed up fast.
We quickly move into a series of about 20 more songs, featuring single dancers, groups of dancers, and a wide variety of costumes and musical styles. Each dancer has a favorite style of music, costume and expression that continues throughout the show.
Obviously each was playing a specific type of fantasy person. Jamyka ShantÚl is one of the most incredible dancers on staff, playing a hard-edged personality, often a dominatrix with a whip or other instrument of sexual torture. "Me, I'm just a bitch," she says later in the dressing room. The highlight of the show for me was when Jamyka stole a baseball hat from the guy sitting next to me. Two songs later, the hat was placed on a chair in the middle of the dance floor, and I knew this poor guy was in for an embarrassing treat.
- She whipped him, sat on him, teased him, and finally handed her whip to a female audience member, who went over and whipped poor Robert some more
Jamyka grabbed him and put him in the chair, where he lowered his head and covered his face with embarrassment at first, but them kind-of got into it. She whipped him, sat on him, teased him, and finally handed her whip to a female audience member, who went over and whipped poor Robert some more before returning the whip to Jamyka. When he returned to his seat, I asked him if they put him up to it, and he denied it to the hilt. Jamyka had a slightly different story.
"Robert is a straight friend of mine, and we have an agreement that I can't embarrass him. When I pointed out that he seemed highly embarrassed, Jamyka said, "Well, I get tougher on him every week. This is the first time I sicced an audience member on him, and I think it worked out pretty well."
Another definite highlight of the show was when Jamyka danced to the song, "I fucked your boyfriend," a club mix of a popular song. She then engaged in simulated fellatio, prone on the dance floor, to refrains of "Fuck me."
Taylor is the quintessential Reba McIntyre impersonator. She sings country songs with the perfect dance and expresions, though she doesn't get into it with the audience as much as others. Brittany holds the Imperial Court title Miss Gay Alaska, and dances to mainly top-40 tunes. A tall blonde, she looks great in the tight, shiny leather and silver outfits, and seems to have a great time teasing the audience.
Misty Dawn, originator and 5-year veteran of Blue Moon female impersnattor nights, is a pre-op transsexual. Misty considers herself a man, though while she's working she likes to be identified as a woman, as do the rest of the dancers. Misty takes on the persona of a Diva from the '20s or '30s, and dances with small steps, in not-too-revealing clothes. Her large breasts seem like a big asset in the female impersonator business, and her management skills are clearly present - the show was pulled off without a hitch.
Misty's weirdest act, clearly the most bizarre and humorous in the show, features Misty in an ugly dress, adorned with black horn-rimmed glasses, frizzy green hair, gigantic pink slippers, and a heavily-padded butt. She walks around the room to the tune of one of the Fly-by-Night band's favorite tunes "Don't Mess With My Tutu," and gives a condom to audience members in exchange for tips. The crowd really went wild over the act, especially when she bent over and wiggled her gigantic padded butt. I found it especially humorous when she gave condoms to four 70-year-old lesbians who were RV'ing around the country. They couldn't hold it together, showing each other the condoms and lauging hysterically.
The Wave
The first thing you notice at the Wave show is the emcee. From her starting-gun bellow-cry "Those bitches tied me down and made me look like a real drag queen," to making customers engage in stupid antics for more Wigstock tickets and posters than you can imagine, the emcee is a highly visible part of the show. I don't know why they were giving away so much Wigstock junk, but a lot of people were into doing stupid stuff for free promotional materials, so to each her own.
One of the biggest highlights of the show for me was the addition of real female vocalists. One of the biggest detractors was a preponderance of slow love songs. Danya set me straight after the show, saying that the slow love songs allowed for a lot more emotional impact, and afforded the vocalists the opportunity to fully explore their range. TouchÚ!
The show opens with one of the female vocalists. Not only was her voice really excellent, she was getting tips right and left - almost as many as Misty got for her "Don't Messs With my Tutu" act.
The next act featured Danya doing a Barbara Mandrell song. I thought she was singing at first, was amazed at her lip-syncing ability, and chalked it up to my being fooled by a real vocalist beforehand. But it was like a triple-mindbender, because she was in fact singing. Not only was this unusual in a drag show, it's practically unheard of. Her voice was so good that I was easily fooled.
Tina Bridges, a performing vocalist at The Wave on other nights, also sang live. Her voice seems destined to hit the big-time, with a low, throaty quality and an intensity that blew me and everybody else in the room away. She came close to tears, and was often too absorbed in her singing to notice that people were lining up to give her money.
Destiny was also highliht of the show, presenting the crowd with yet another gender twist in an already well-mixed "drag show." While he dressed as a woman for a couple acts, he took the unique step of dancing in male clothing and some women's makeup, a form of entertainment he dubbed "boy drag." Smoke, lots of swirling lights, and acrobatic dancing were his hallmarks as the shirtless hunk shook his stuff before a cheering crowd. He and another dancer did a routine to the B-52's "Love Shack," that involved a well-dressed couple dropping their suitcase and engaging in simulated sex on the dance floor.
Above all, the most dramatic difference in the venues was the lighting at The Wave. Lots of lasers, smoke, and special lighting effects serve to raise the experience to a psychedelic level, and the wall of TV screens in the background pulsates with distorted color and video of the crowd and the dancers - a truly postmodern experience.
The Interviews
After each show, I asked the tough questions and got the straight answers, because you may be too embarrassed to do it yourself. Frankly, I'm not so enlightened that I didn't put my foot in my mouth a few times, especially at the Blue Moon, where I fumbled around asking Misty how she self-identified (seemingly the same as everyone else - a man, except when wearing women's clothes,) and struggled through questions that hit at the heart of gender issues most of us don't talk about.
The Blue Moon's dressing room is far from the action, making costume changes difficult. "We have to run all the way up and down the stairs - in heels - to change our costumes and get back to the stage," says Jamyka. But the accomodations are nice - plush chairs, lots of mirrors and a wide array of costumes adorn the space. The show had been held upstairs in the past, but moved down to the floor to accomodate ever-larger crowds.
The dressing room at The Wave is more an underground piping/duct area, where none but the shortest people can walk without fear of minor head injury. A single chair and mirror grace a high-ceilinged section, but the space serves well nonetheless and has a certain industrial charm about it. At least it's close to the action.
My toughest questions centered around "Why do you do this?" which seems a little accusatory. Why do I do what I do? I also wanted to know what dressing as women meant to them, how the show fit into the rest of their lives, and in general what their "sexual orientation" (whatever that means) was.
- "This ain't The Crying Game, baby. Most of us have day jobs."
All my questions were answered, and more. The basic thing, as you may imagine, is that all of them do it for different reasons, and experience transvestitism in their personal lives to varying degrees, though most consider themselves gay. Most have been or are members of the Imperial Court, and about half have been title holders at some point. By far, the majority say, "It's just a job," and a fun thing to do. When Destiny asked another dancer, "Are you staying in drag and going out," I realized that it's entertainment for many of them as well, but not a full-time thing. As Jamyka warned the would-be suitor, "This ain't The Crying Game, baby. Most of us have day jobs."
Costumes for drag queens are especially expensive, though some like Sasha have found a way around it, "I got this dress at the Salvation Army for $1.90," she says, "and it looks great." Others are not so lucky. Brittany's story is the more common, "We spend a lot of money on clothes," she says, "The Blue Moon pays for production number customes, but we have to buy all our own clothes for our personal numbers. It can get very expensive, and I know exactly how much I spent, because I deduct it on my taxes. I spent $6,000 last year on drag."
One of the main differences between the Blue Moon and the Wave is the degree of freedom the dancers have, at least according to folks at The Wave, some of whom have worked at the BM in the past. Not only do they have complete freedom over the music and style of dancing they choose, they can also sing during the numbers, or even dress as men. The whole cast is invited to produce or choreograph production numbers, wheras at the Moon Misty and Kristara do them all. Furthermore, dancers at The Wave are totally free to work at the BM, or anywhere else they choose.
The Wave shows run Wednesdays in the same time slot as the Blue Moon. The reason for chosing this time, according to Trina, had nothing to do with the Blue Moon show, but rather was a decision based on which night would be best for a drag show.