Has risen to become more popular than ever. Correspondent justin san diego explores drag pageantry and safety. If i have an incredible ballot and can come out with my jewels and my gown and have everyones breath taken away just because i stepped out, i love that. Anthony micheli, also known as Alina Maletti galore started performing in drag in 1992. Alina is my wonderwoman, as a young person i didnt always feel handsome or beautiful so thats the positive she makes me feel beautiful. Drag queens or performers, we get up on the stage and we perform for you and we take off the makeup at the end of the show, its an artistic job, its an artistic way of expressing yourself. In between shows at local clubs, micheli competes in drag pageants. You have interview, talent, gown and onstage questions for most of them. But miss continental is about beauty, poise, womanly. Miss gay america is just like miss america you have the different facets interview, talent, presentation miss gay usofa is about outstanding performance, gown, and interview. He is also competing for entertainer of the year. And e. O. Y is about how inventive you are. You travel for a year so this financial reward as far as that is concerned, you get lots of gifts and prizes and things. But then there is the accomplishment micheli has utilized his platform to raise awareness and money for charities. My mom died four years ago and i did awareness about dementia and alzheimers. One year we didnt have enough money for gay pride. So they called all of the drag queens together and asked us to perform on the street of stockton. And we raised so much money for gay pride. The bay area has become more accepting of drags since micheli started to perform in 1992 back then, you still didnt want to see drag queens walking on the street at night time. So why would you wanna see them in the day time . And we did our own little parade and walked the streets and did a show for them and it was dangerous for us at that time. Its changed to the point that you had to be beautiful and thats all that was accepted. Then it went to us when you had to be talented and that was all that was accepted. Now you can be a comedy queen. Were living in a lifetime now were everything is accepted as long as you dont harm anybody. Micheli says hes helped many young adults get into drag and adding them into his drag house or drag family. I have almost 50 children. The drag family is all about making sure everyone is protected and taken care of. You have to be in school or on the way to graduating and have a job because you can not help anyone else if you cannot help yourself. So being a part of my family meant you have to be able to someday help others. When we come back, well take a look at how drag has evolved over time. [music] [music] welcome back. Weve seen how some men have experienced san jose drag. Now well take a look at the future of drag performing and how it is expanding to include different styles. George downes, he goes by the drag name Woowoo Monroe has an aesthetic opposite of micheli rather than appear womanly, downes tries for a comedic, artistic style. This is all the Foundation Work that i do so foundation, highlighting, contouring. Other drag queens have their own makeup tips i wear four pairs of lashes on each eye i love just big, thick lashes. I love a dark lip. I love lots of blush. In my first year i probably spent well over 1500 to 2000 on makeup and wigs many drag queens say that the bay area is safe and has more opportunities for them. Its so easy living in the bay area five minutes down the road theres a drag show. Where as in college i had to travel an hour. Im actually a Deputy Sheriff in San Fransisco. Im very aware of my surroundings. I notice when people are following me nick nelson, or Madison Mcqueen started his drag career at his college in south dakota six years ago. It was like my first night out, i looked like like a complete trainwreck. And i went into one of the bars and one of the like, like the very very straight bars in my college town, got turned down. Which is totally cool, walked out and have drinks thrown at me. I think that i was wearing three wigs at the time. So it didnt hurt too bad. Some drag queens struggle getting acceptance from their friends and family. I cant do drag at home. Is a thing so i have to bring all my stuff. I have to go out and either get ready at someones house or get ready at the venue. Some people at the place i live at just dont understand it or it scares them physically. Theres just something about breaking gender norms that people dont get or makes people uncomfortable. People like seeing things categorized and put into boxes instead of being put into seven layers of tights and then getting into high heels. My mothers Biggest Issue is that she thought that i was gonna become a woman [laughs to himself] im like, no mom im fine being a man. My mother is a staunch republican. Funny enough, she said you know i might even have some clothes i can give you. I was like, no mom you dont have anything id wear. Not all drag queens are biologically male. A faux queen is a person who lives as a woman and performs as a man dressed as a woman. And some drag involves dressing up like men. A drag king is a woman who dresses as a man and performs lipsyncs. Out of drag goldstein and young are in a relationship together they have used it for charity as well as to celebrate goldsteins sobriety. When i turned five years sober and 40 years old. I asked if i could be in the sober show. Probably 95 of what i do is about charity work. We specifically, mad dog and i, raise money for the queer lifespace, which is a lgbt counselling organization. We also raise money for aids lifecycle of course. I rode in that. Twice a month, downes hosts a show called circus at renegades bar. I wanted to bring a show to san jose that featured performers that were out of the norm. That could think out of the box and be creative. And not do just cookie cutter drag. Being able to take a song and not take it for its face value but use the words that are in it and come up with a different meaning for them. I was actually in a pageant last year and won the title of miss California Gold i think it was the first time they ever had a bald queen win a pagent like that. Downes says the increase in campy drag has helped expand the drag community. In the bay area particularly. I think some of these other drag queens that are better, more avantegarde have really pushed the envelope of whats acceptable in the drag community. I think that is the biggest growth that ive seen since i started doing drag. If i could make somebody smile or make somebody laugh or make somebody think. You know thats worth it to me. Now when we come back, we will sit down with three drag queens who have very different styles and a young fan of drag. Stay with us. [music] welcome back to this edition of equal time. Where our focus today is on the drag queen culture. Lets meet our guests hi, my name is george downes, my stage name is Woowoo Monroe and ive been performing drag for the last three and a half years here in san jose. And i host a show twice a month. Hi my name is rockem sakura, my real name is brian bradford. Im a local anime, jpop sort of nerdy queen in this area. And ive been performing drag for almost one and a half years. Hi my name is sophie scrivins. I live in san jose and i was born and raised here. And i attend a lot of drag shows in the bay area. Hi my name is tony micheli i go by the name alina miletti galore. And ive been performing for 18 years. Im an old queen. And im justin sandiego and ill be the correspondent on this episode. Very good, thank you all for being here and sharing your thoughts. What im curious about is that a lot of the public is looking at this now going, how did they get into this, what drove you or what drew you to the drag queen culture . Lets start with you george. Amazingly enough it was an accident. I went to a party kind of with crazy costumes. I wore some pink eyelashes and painted my goatee pink. I wore a pink tutu and had a blast and kept blossoming from there. And friends kept inviting my drag persona to parties and i wound up at a part one time and the Club Promoter came up to me and he said you have to come perform at my club. And i was like, okay i guess i will. Very cool and tony, your situation, probably the same thing . No, mine was i wanted to compete in pageants. Really . The one thing that i had in common with my mom was that we loved watching miss usa, Miss Universe and miss america. And i always wanted to be miss usofa or Miss Universe or miss america but you have to be a girl. So i found out there was miss gay america, miss gay usofa and miss gay universe. And i went on to compete in pageants. So i loved competing in pageants and thats how it started for me. Very cool, self confidence seems to be the key of the energy im sensing from all of you. Talk a little bit about that brian. Well, i mean, you have to be really confident in the drag community. In order to confidently come out in a pair of heels and like 70 pounds of make up. And to look like youre doing something. Thats like difficult. Mhmm. For a lot of us that kind of confidence comes naturally. And its something that draws us to the stage. And kind of makes us what to perform every time. At least for me personally. Very cool though, thats alright. Sophia. Sophia i started to go out and see drag queens when i was in high school or college. And i enjoyed it, a lot of my friends, a lot of the Community Came out. Tell us about your experience. I think i first got into drag with jeffree star when i was in Like Middle School on myspace. Just kind of went from there, i found out about tranny shack in San Fransisco and so my big plan was when i turned 21 i wanted to go to every show. Then its kind of changed since then, but and you enjoy it . No, yeah i love it. And i was going to all of Peaches Christ shows in san fransico before i was 21 because there arent a whole lot of shows that you can go to when you are underage. But at least i was attend all of those ones. Justin . I just think its one of the most under appreciated art forms. I just hope one day there can be a museum of drag queens. Just because i think they should be honored at a higher level. Tell me why. Its very multilayered i think, theres makeup, theres the actual stage performance theres costumes, hair, makeup. Some people go into singing. Or acting or pageantry and theres all different types of avenues for this art form. Artistic expression, major part of it. But lets talk about the social impact. Weve gone through periods of time, i know in my lifetime, when this couldnt be on television. We would not be talking about this and now, we seem to be kicking the door down talking about this. Why do you think that is . What made that change happen . I think that society is ready for something different. Weve always been in the background and we come in, we go out, we come in, we go out. So if youre fortunate to be around when we are riding an upwave. Then you take it for all you have. Rupauls drag race, i remember when she first came out. I wasnt so happy about it but then im looking at all the different avenues shes made for us. Because i was under the assumption that it was going to be like Reality Television where you got on there and you made i dont know if i can say this but you made a fool of yourself. And, because thats what sells. A lot of us, i know for sure theyve done a lot of that too. Theyve done some creative editing with their show. But were serious about what we do. Im like we get out there, were entertainers just like everyone else. And for the academy of arts and designs, we would like a sag card. Because we work just as hard as everyone else whos out here doing movies and things like that and were not getting paid for it but we would like a sag card because theres a lot of us that are female impersonators that could use the insurance and Different Things like that. So the mainstream that we have is that everyone is accepting of us but i just wish that the community would treat us as an art form and pay the people. You know the insurance comment kind of begs the question. Can it sometimes be dangerous . Can it be unsafe . Do you have people that come after you, give you a hard time . Go ahead brian. I mean, in the year and a half that ive been doing drag, i havent been in any personal interactions with anyone who would be like a predator or someone who is like a general, like, threat to my well being. But there are people who constantly kind of badger you for like sex and things like that. Because people just like, dont understand the difference between drag and like, fetishes. Drag is fetishized a lot. People just dont understand or make the connection. Social networks or social medias a really bad place. I got, someone had actually followed me on facebook and called me. They were from albania and he, im driving down my car. He says, may i speak with alena . And im like, this is alina. And then he goes, this is such and uch and im from here and im coming to where you live to have sex with you. They actually said that . They actually called me and i had to take my phone number off of facebook. Wow. These are things that happen. And im like, im married and ive been with my husband for 18 years. A lot of us out here arent looking for sex. Were looking to perform and entertain. But there are a lot of people that do this as a sexual gratification. Im just not one of them. Going back to what you were saying earlier about the whole sag cards. A lot of queens do it as a pay check or as a job yes but is the pay really that good, because i hear a lot of you guys have other jobs on top of it. It can be, but it doesnt no. I can travel, i compete in pageants like i said before, and we have a thing once you make the tape then you get paid more. So i made sure i made the tape whenever im competing. By either winning or being in that top 10. Then you get booked to go across the country to perform and then you have a set price that you use. Then they pay you to come out, then if you do that constantly, you can make your living. However its hard to do that when you have a family. Its hard to do that when you have another job. Another job is not gonna let you go away to do this. So with drag, if you wanna make living with it you have to be all in or not. No in betweens there . There cant be an inbetween because you will not make a living at it. Theres a lot of jobs you can do that you go to your job for 8 hours a day and thats your job. Then you go home, and you have a life after that. You cant do that as a full time drag queen if youre gonna be a full time drag queen, its full time 24 7. Exactly really . Because you may have to do a job at 2 oclock in the afternoon or you may have to do a job at 2 oclock in the morning. You have to go where the check is. The sad part about being in drag, if you do not know how to make it work if you dont know how to franchise like, alina miletti is franchised as an llc. So if you dont know how to franchise yourself then you dont have insurance. You dont have medical insurance, you dont have there are a lot of drag queens that die, and they cant afford to bury themselves. So theres things that you need for health, you know, and welfare. Thats why most of us work and have jobs where we have benefits. And ive always been fascinated, sophie ill be bringing you in on this conversation. When i was in college, i could get a bunch of friends of mine, women and men to come from the dorm or come from the community and want to check it out and they would enjoy it. They didnt go back though and invite people to come with them. Did you have that problem . People want to join you . Come see them perform . I mean it depends, i have brought a lot of different people to shows ive convinced people to get into it whether they liked it or not so i mean it kind of depends. With a lot of like straight men, ive really tried to get them into it. Like boyfriends ive had and its been like half and half. It really depends. It all depends on your individual creative tastes. Its not for everybody, you know, some people, its kind of like going to see a movie. You go see the movie the movie was nice its not like im gonna go see that movie again. So, if we get you out there one time, our advertisement is word of mouth honestly. So if we get you in there one time and you enjoy it, you let somebody else know about it and i promise you that if you tell 10 people about it, atleast 2 or 3 of those people will come back and theyll tell someone. Thats how we bring it in. Our places are not always packed out the door. But the people who do come in and see us, they do enjoy us. How much of your personal Life Experience you infuse in your program, in your effort . Do you tell them a little bit about your family or do you not talk about it, is that off limits or . Oh i do, i do. So do i. I mean a lot of us, its funny because i work in Law Enforcement for my day job. Which is completely the opposite direction but yeah i joke about my regular job at my show, to my audience. And you know, a lot of people i think thats probably what a lot of people find it interesting its like, that persons a cop during the day . [laughter] do your buddies ever come and watch the show . Actually they do, i have a few coworkers that come pretty regularly to my shows. Ive had a lot of coworkers that have come once or twice. And then i have coworkers that dont want anything to do with it. The biggest thing about drag and our coworkers i work with a lot of females and everytime they see my pictures theyre like, who does your makeup . You need to show me how to do your makeup. And ill tell you straight up, i know how to paint this face. Not anybody elses. [laughter] and im like, i can try but i know what looks good on this one and i do pretty good by that, i tried painting other people, oh my gosh, no. What are some of the steps you do in transforming . Shave. Constantly id imagine. Hello [laughter] half of my face when i do drag is just glue. Glue down the eyebrows, glue down the sideburns and then glue the mouth shut. You do this how many times a day or a week . Im relatively new, im fairly new. I do it maybe at most 3 times a week. But mostly twice a week. Elmers glue, if you ever want to just. Dont tell anyone. Dont, dont. The school board will be after us. Theyre wondering whos taking their glue. Purple glue. [laughter] when all the School Supplies go out, all the drag queens go and stock up on elmers glue. Back to schools like our christmas. Youre keeping t