Dragtastica
By Shelby Hearn, Director of LGBTQIA+ Student Services
This Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Reid Campus Center Young Ballroom, our brilliant and creative students of the Cosmic Drag Collective are once again hosting Whitman College’s biggest, campiest, gender-bending-est event of the academic year: Dragtastica. You won’t want to miss it; not only because our students are stellar performers, but because supporting queer culture is increasingly imperative.
The first time I attended a drag show was at my own college’s annual performance, which has now run for 15 consecutive years. An impressive run, given its location in a rural town in the Deep South. In fact, there was a strong, homegrown drag community in Carrollton, Georgia. The best shows I’ve seen to this day were there in a cramped dive bar that you’d never look at in the daylight and assume provided a platform for queer joy. I felt safer and among the queerest community sitting in a Waffle House late at night among queens in various states of drag than I ever would in the “more progressive” cities I’d later live in. In an environment that, on its surface, didn’t nurture nonconformity, the queers and the outcasts forged strong communal bonds. We kept each other safe.
Drag scenes have been at the center of this kind of communal care and solidarity for decades because those who’ve been a part of it know that such unabashed, joyful self-expression needs to be protected. As an art, drag breaks all the rules of what is expected from certain genders and bodies and confronts its audience with all the absurdity to be found in societal rules of behavior. The ways I have seen students grow through their explorations of drag are incredible; it grants performers permission to be versions of themselves that oppressive systems would erase, and it gives the audience a glimpse into the endless possibilities of self-expression.
With all that in mind, it makes sense that some would see drag as dangerous. Drag is but one example of how queer culture refuses stagnation, it is all about growth and transformation and finding joy in those uncomfortable processes. Which is also why it makes sense that drag shows have such a strong tradition on college campuses. They epitomize much of what we try to instill in our students: self-confidence, personal growth, and the courage to step out of one’s comfort zone. Nothing brings a campus together like these shows, either. They are often the most highly anticipated and well-attended events, and Dragtastica is no exception.
If you are looking for hope, or inspiration for what our future could be, I can bet you’ll find at least a little of that at Dragtastica this weekend. Come excited, be loud, and be your most joyful and expressive self. The students of the Cosmic Drag Collective have created the perfect space for you.
