LEXINGTON, Ky. _ No one really wanted to host the show at the Bar Complex one Saturday in late December.
Uma Jewels was scheduled to host several shows the next week. Billie Blaze kept quiet before slipping off into the showroom to catch up with some friends. And Georgia Peach sat at the end of the dressing room, avoiding the issue. Eventually, Dolly Parts gave in and asked Kali DuPree to split hosting duty.
So it was DuPree who took the microphone after the group's opening number and scanned the crowd at tables surrounding the stage: the regulars, the mixed groups of men and women, the older gay men sitting further in the back. Eventually, DuPree settled on a bachelorette party sitting near the front of the stage. She started asking the bride-to-be questions: was it her first drag show ("yes"), why was it her first drag show (shrug), why hadn't the cute man in her bachelorette party taken her to a drag show before (he tried).
"OK, I'll see you back here in four months, after you get divorced," DuPree said.
It was just another example of someone being newly initiated into the world of drag.
Drag has gone mainstream. There's 'RuPaul's Drag Race,' the Emmy-winning reality show on VH1 that names "America's next drag superstar." Drag queens do makeup tutorials on YouTube, pick up massive followings on Instagram, appear in Oscar nominated films and get featured in songs by Drake, Beyonce and Kesha.
In Lexington, Ky., they raise money for charities, read books to children at Wild Fig Bookstore and host brunch at Lockbox and other restaurants.
"We are the freak show, baby, but they come with the dollars," said Dolly Parts, 24, about drag brunch. "Those middle-aged white women have paid my bills many months because they bring money and they love it."
There has long been a discussion among LGBTQ people about what mainstream acceptance will mean to queer culture _ a culture born from oppression, with a gay bar often standing at the center. And a staple of gay bars _ from Berlin in the 1920s to Lexington in the 2010s _ is the drag queen.
Now, in Lexington, those drag queens are finding themselves performing more and more for straighter audiences.
"I'll say it," said Helena Handbasket, 55. "Invaded. That space has been invaded."
The Lexington drag scene
Robert Morgan, 70, was underage when he saw his first drag queen perform. He snuck in through the back door of what is now the Bar Complex and sank quickly into a seat by the door.
There, standing on a Formica stage on top of a baby grand piano, stood Leigh Angelique, lip-syncing to the Timi Yuro song "What's a Matter Baby."
"She was absolutely breathtaking," Morgan said. "She was so beautiful and so sophisticated. She looked as sophisticated as anything Dionne Warwick ever looked."
Things were different when Morgan started going to the bars in the late 60s. It was the early years of the push for gay liberation and Lexington's gay scene was very much still in the closet. Going out was still formal; guys would wear a coat and tie.
As for the drag queens, they tried to look as ladylike as possible.
"It wasn't a unique scene here in Lexington, it was what you would have seen in gay bars in other cities too," Morgan said. "It was very much, you look like a woman, you move like a woman, you do all your gestures, there was no room for craziness."
Just going out in public dressed as a woman then was considered crazy _ and possibly illegal.
In the '70s, the Lexington Police Department used an ordinance that prohibited "wearing disguises" to arrest drag queens. According to an article in the Lexington Leader, police arrested four drag queens at the Gilded Cage in 1970 after they received a tip and sent undercover police officers to the bar for two nights.
"The men were wearing make-up, wigs and dresses and were pantomiming recent hit records for the bars patrons when they first arrived," the article said.
Morgan was part of the generation seeking gay liberation, the generation that wanted to end the raids on gay bars and allow the queer community to live out and in the open. He felt he was considered a threat by the established gay community that had led a closeted life.
When he first started doing drag, Morgan, who went by Peggy Fury and then just Fury, took a note from big cities like San Francisco and New York, and adopted a more edgy look.
"It was almost circus-like and the old drag queens hated that," Morgan said. "And if you went in the clubs, people were put off by us, they were not happy and you were subject to ridicule and rejection."
At one point Morgan's act involved a trash can, a jug of wine and a Loretta Lynn song. He would be carried onto the stage in the trash can, pop out and then own the stage as a foul mouthed, big drinking blonde, lip syncing to Fist City.
While Morgan said he feels like there's animosity toward drag queens, even within the gay community, Anthony Smallwood (who performs as Helena Handbasket) said when he was going to drag shows in the '70s and '80s, before he was a performer, he thought there was a reverence for the queens.
"Oh my gosh, when they came on stage people were two and three deep with their dollars in hand just mesmerized by the show," Smallwood said. "You don't really get that as much, no matter how good the person is, no matter how big their name is."
Lexington has kept up a drag scene for decades despite the Lexington Police Department's raids. Through the AIDS epidemic. Through the fight to protect people from being fired or denied housing for being LGBTQ (still ongoing) and through the effort to achieve marriage equality.
"I think it's funny that Lexington has had such a constant scene even when things have ebbed and flowed," Helena Handbasket said. "In some capacity Lexington has always had a drag scene and is known for that all over."
Now, the drag scene in Lexington is kept alive in part by bachelorette parties. Bars where most of the clientele weren't allowed to get married almost five years ago are dotted with "bride to be" sashes and matching outfits.
"There were always straight people touristing gay bars, especially in the big cities," Morgan said.
But when something that was always considered underground, even illegal, hits the mainstream, when a show about drag queens wins Emmy's, when there is a national tour and conventions and spin-off shows, when drag queens are reading books to children, is it still possible for the art-form to be edgy?
"I think it's about as apolitical as you can get," Morgan said. "At one time we thought just dressing in drag and raising hell on the streets was a political act. You didn't have to have any kind of slogan or what you were for or against. Just being there was a political act. Now it's so accepted that it's got no political power whatsoever."
The good and the bad of drag performances
For Uma Jewels' first performance on a Saturday in December, she was giving the crowd neon in a short yellow dress and a bright pink wig. She danced and lip-synced and collected dollar bills from the crowd to the song Glamorous by Fergie.
"I f _ -ing hate that song," Jewels, 34, said shortly before Thanksgiving. "But I go out and do it because it gets the women going."
Jewels said she feels a pressure to perform to a straighter crowd, more so than when she started performing in drag six years ago, mostly because she doesn't want to be boring. So you'll hear Shania Twain ("that gets the straight women going") or Fancy by Iggy Azelea ("it's what the people want") or Glamorous.
"People are here to be entertained," Jewels said. "And if I go out and do all the songs I want to do it's selfish of me and it's probably not entertaining. So I do music that probably appeals to a broader audience and it's a little soul crushing, but it's part of the business."
Part of the reason the crowd at a drag show may appear more straight comes from the gay bar's declining importance among LGBTQ people. With the internet and dating apps and the increased social acceptance of LGBTQ people at "straight" bars, the traditional gay bar has become less of a cultural touchstone.
"If you were gay and you wanted to see the scene or be gay, you had to go to the bar," Morgan said. "You might be able to pick people up on the street anonymously, but to cruise and get to know and shop a little, the bar definitely. But do young people feel that need any more?"
It also served as a place that built a sense of community.
"The gays would come out to gay bars to see gay entertainers to see gay celebrities, it was creating a community," said Uma Jewels. "And for me, we continue that tradition except now it's not just for gay people. It's also to entertain the masses. Which, in a way, does destroy gay history just because you're expanding it to include a straight audience, to infiltrate the straight world."
There has been no better vehicle for drag queens to infiltrate the straight world than RuPaul's Drag Race. The show premiered in 2009 and has built a large following, large enough that the show was able to move from Logo to VH1 in 2017 and has started producing spin-offs in other countries.
The show has had an impact on local queens as well. It has popularized a specific aesthetic ("they're all look queens," Jewels said) and has brought higher expectations for what a drag show should look like, both in the queens outfits and their performances.
"Back when I started I was told you wear the body, you wear the hair, you wear the jewels, you wear the nails, all that ... " said Billie Blaze, 38, (William Aaron out of drag) who has been performing since age 21. "Now you see the girls not wearing the body, wearing the boobs, all that. And Ru Paul's drag race has done that."
Being a drag queen is expensive _ between the wigs and the makeup and the outfits it can run up thousands of dollars _ and the new standard is being created by queens with larger budgets.
"I got into drag race seeing all the stars from that show and being like 'OK to be a good drag queen, I need to keep up with the standard of that,'" Parts said. "So I spend all my money trying to have something new every week, always trying to come up with something new, because if we aren't matching the level for what they get when they go to a Drag Race tour show that we're not meeting their expectations."
The show can serve as an entry-point into LGBTQ culture, not just for queer youth looking for representation on TV like Dolly Parts, 24, who offstage goes by Maxwell Morgan ("I was like that's it, that's what I'm supposed to be doing."), but for straight people too.
"I think Drag Race is to thank for that and them getting to see it in a more mainstream light," Dolly Parts said of more straight people attending shows and brunches. "It doesn't seem as seedy."
There is also a sense of empowerment that comes from the art-form, which is part of the reason it has been a staple of gay bars for so long and has an appeal to a new audience.
"If you're bold enough and courageous enough to put on a dress and high heels when that is not the gender that you are assigned and you are going out in front of the public, there is a certain amount of courage there that a lot of people don't have," Helena Handbasket said. "It gives (people) courage to be themselves."
"If by doing what I do and if by being who I am that's making a political statement, then I hope everybody hears it," Handbasket said. "Because I'm not making any apologies."
When John Rhyne goes home, his parents don't know he performs as Uma Jewels in Lexington. He says they don't really like or talk about the fact that he's gay. So even if, as Uma, he may have to perform some songs he doesn't like, even if some of the newer crowd that comes doesn't tip as often, he says the mainstreaming of drag is probably a good thing.
"I'm just one person, I'm not big enough to speak for the gay world," Jewels said. "For me, it's worth it in the long run."
