'Family Friendly Drag'

To which they claim, 'There's no such thing.'

Feb 28, 2023

This dad comes up to me in Helena last week because during an LGBTQ Lobby Day speech I noted I was “the Elf” at the Saturday family friendly drag show two days earlier.

He wanted to thank me because his daughter (like 8?) could not stop talking excitedly about me—that "Elf Girl!"

I did Angel of The Morning which is a crowd fav song as I reveal wings that eventually even light up, then a really high energy Madonna tune “Time goes by...so slowly...” in which I'd learned a tricky shuffle dance I practiced over and over…and over. In heels. (Just block heels for that particular one, but still. Tis exhausting lol.🥵)

I mean, I might make it look easy lol, but a “Polly Pocket” Tik Tok whatevs dance takes forever to rehearse along with other timed choreography. I don’t just walk around and lip sync. For me, there has to be like this whole complex ‘dance narrative’ with different build ups, and it makes sense if you’ve seen me.

If I may brag, I learned how to do Liza Minelli's ‘Mein Herr’ dance from the film/Broadway show Cabaret verbatim by practicing 2-ish hours a day 4-5 times a week for 3 weeks. This probably isn't something a fascist can fathom as being “art” if used in drag performance or theater for that matter, but guess what? It totally is. (It also must he noted the film is also about Nazis who'd ban such things.

Speaking of, unfortunately, and as in many places across the U.S, this drag show had been threatened to be disrupted by local white supremacists online along with disturbing calls and threats of violence.

Pictured: Nazi bastards being bastards.

So with heightened security—I had personal escorts who took me to and from the show—and law enforcement presence, I wandered the area a bit waiting for my turn to go up.

One kid stared up at me and another stunning queen really wide-eyed, totally fascinated. I noted to a fellow queen, “I’m like that kid’s core memory now!” and laughed.

“Core Memory.” Me listening to muh songs before I perform. All fierce-like. Game mode on lol.

I was glad they were able to be fascinated by our artistic look that we put a lot of work into.

Anyway, while I’ve always admittedly been kinda been like meh on doing fam friendly drag shows, a sort of shrug and, “Anything for the kids!” only because of a personal preference to do 18+ bar shows where I do occasional goth and metal songs to mix it up, to find out that there was such an appreciative little kid fan out who couldn’t stop exitedly talking about the Elf Girl Drag Queen all weekend made my day. Because I knew she wasn't the only one.

As a parent of a daughter, I can easily imagine her talking to dad, “And her elf ears were so cool! They looked real! Wonder if they were? Hah! And when she all of a sudden raised those the wings?! Oh my god that part was so pretty! Then did like a clock dance and then some Tik Tok dance right after to that other song?! I sooo wanna learn that how to do that! What song was that?!😁”

In the midst of so many ugly threats, after hearing so much negativity, it made me realize how important this art was especially in a rural Montana state like ours where there were literal Nazi threats to disrupt it along with legislation being passed to try and ban it with local politicians calling us groomers and pedophiles as if that were political discourse.

One queen was quoted in an anti-drag bill testimony:

“No one wants to get up at zero-dark-30, put on 50 pounds of makeup and get into child-appropriate clothes, perform G-rated, but we do it because our community asks us to."

Adria L. Jawort Publication

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