Drag Queens Are “Not Gonna Back Down” after Attacks on Story Hours

In the spring of 2020, Nina West — Miss Congeniality of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 11 — did what every drag queen was doing after COVID-19 forced venues to shut down: she was going live on Instagram. But instead of performing Dua Lipa lip syncs from her living room, West wanted to entertain kids who needed comfort during those highly uncomfortable times. On Wednesdays and Saturdays at 4 p.m., West went live and read storybooks like Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late or Princesses Wear Pants. In response, Nina West was doxxed and all of her — or rather Nina West’s alter ego Andrew Levitt — personal information, like her address, was made readily available.

“People started showing up at my house, and this was during the pandemic,” West said in an interview with Decider. “I had nowhere else to go and everyone knew where I was. I was doing lives from my home. As a result I had to move out of my house. We were working with Columbus Police Department trying to figure out what was going on with my safety.”

That was two years before hate groups disrupted libraries holding drag queen story events in California, Nevada, and Texas, and two years before Republican legislators in Florida, Texas, and Arizona proposed to ban minors from attending drag brunches and story hours. These events caught the attention of mainstream news outlets in June 2022, but these attacks were not news to the queens.

“Conservatives have used [drag] for several years as a boogeyman to distract from other conversations that need to be happening,” said West, who pointed out that the sudden panic to outlaw drag occurred a week after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. “What’s more scary: kids dying in the classroom or a drag queen reading a book to a kid?”

Welcome to Generation Drag

It was in the the midst of this ramped up crusade against drag that Discovery+ launched Generation Drag, a docuseries from executive producer Tyra Banks that follows queer tweens and teens as they and their families prepare for Dragutante, an under-18 drag ball held in Colorado. “Dragutante was created because we knew that there were other kids out there like me,” said Jameson Johnson, who first performed in drag during his 13th birthday party and co-founded Dragutante with his mother, Robin Fulton.

Generation Drag premiered on June 1 — five days after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas and five days before Texas state Rep. Brian Slaton announced he would introduce legislation against drag queens and not guns. The @libsoftiktok Twitter account shared the trailer, ensuring that the exact misinformed people who would be mad about Generation Drag were, in fact, mad about Generation Drag. And in a likely example of review bombing, the IMDb user rating for Generation Drag is 2.8.

As far as West and fellow Drag Race alum Jackie Cox are concerned, these politicians — as well as the people who review bomb and follow @libsoftiktok — are willfully ignorant about drag, especially events held in libraries. Both West and Cox have participated in actual story hours in actual libraries for actual children. “They were between the ages of four and six,” Cox told Decider. “For them, it’s like if a princess came in, or a clown. We talked about just like how they like to wear different outfits or costumes on Halloween, drag is another way to express yourself.”

“Kids are not dumb and they know that I’m a drag queen,” said West of her library experience. “Their questions are, ‘Why did you decide to wear that color wig?’ Or ‘What is your favorite color?’ They’re approaching me on such a human level.”

Like with all performing arts, drag contains multitudes. Cox and West are examples of the duality of drag that conservatives seemingly refuse to acknowledge. They both appeared on Emmy-winning seasons of Drag Race, and they’ve both appeared in Disney Pride Month specials. “It’s such a fallacy to assume that all drag is somehow sexual in nature,” said Cox. “Most of my drag is actually very not sexual in nature. Very little of my drag is especially for adults.”

Nothing underscores that point more than Dragutante. Since its launch in 2018, the ball has grown into an event that attracts young performers from across the globe. “It’s kind of snowballed over the last couple of years,” said Fulton. “The first year was definitely all Colorado and New Mexico kids, and then the next year we had a kid from England. We’ve had a kid from Canada and then this year we’ve had kids from all over the country.” Families now have a place to go to celebrate drag as a performance art, the same way they’d attend any other recitals, concerts, or performances.

A Different Kind of Messenger

Cox, who is currently appearing in a revival production of Grease, is fully aware of the heteronormative hypocrisy that pervades American culture. “Grease is something that people show to their kids at a relatively young age,” said Cox. “I think I was 10 the first time I saw it. It’s a pretty adult storyline. It is a fun musical and all of the words are bathed in this ’50s nostalgia, so it doesn’t seem quite the same as if it was a CW drama about teenagers.”

But just like with any of Netflix’s sexy teenage murder shows or a regional production of a vintage musical with vintage themes, parents have to make informed decisions about which drag events are and aren’t right for their children. This means that parents have to do the work of listening and learning. “As a parent, I keep learning constantly,” said Fulton, whose son Jameson performs in drag as Ophelia Peaches. “For heteronormative, cisgender parents, it’s terrifying. It’s so much new information. Not only are you learning how to raise a child, you’re learning how to raise a child that’s not mainstream and there’s not the resources that we need to do it.”

That’s why West works so hard to create drag content that entertains kids and educates parents, like her upcoming storybook The You Kind of Kind. “[There is] family friendly drag that is innocuous content that is both progressive and thought-provoking,” said West, who strives to use her drag to send “a message of kindness from a different kind of messenger.”

Even RuPaul’s Drag Race is more than just a fierce competition show. As Cox has witnessed firsthand, Drag Race provides a resource for parents to better understand their kids. “As tough as it was to have my season of Drag Race airing at the height of the pandemic,” said Cox, “a lot of people were at home and Season 12 was the first time they showed their parents drag. The coolest thing was having kids with their parents come to meet me at DragCon saying, ‘This was really cool we got to share this.'” Drag is meant to be shared. It’s meant to be entertainment for some, representation for others, and a community for the vulnerable.

“I’m Not Gonna Back Down”

Lawmakers can keep sending tweets and making proposals, but West and Cox are not fooled by these performative attacks on drag. “We’re really talking about misogyny within the American culture,” said West.

“Drag is saying, ‘We’re going to embrace the feminine sides of ourselves and express that as loudly and strongly and confidently as possible,” said Cox. “[Elected officials are] using [drag queens] because we are the loudest, most vocal parts of the community by design, because [drag is] a performance, and they’re using us as a cudgel against the rest of the community.”

The queens, however, see these actions for what they are: an act every bit as elaborate as drag itself. “Stop playing the part of a concerned politician and just go to Washington or go to your state house in whatever state you’re in and do your job,” said West. “Represent your people. Stop representing your self-interest.”

And instead of making ill-informed decrees, Cox believes that these haters need to question why their beliefs are causing intense emotional harm to so many people.  “If you see someone who was not assigned female at birth wearing a dress, what actual horrible things will happen to a child? The answer is nothing if you really think it through. If they’re inspired to themselves wear a dress, is that such a horrible thing? If they’re inspired to maybe realize their own gender identity might be different than what they were assigned at birth, is that a horrible thing? What are you so afraid of?”

It would probably be a lot easier for anti-drag officials to get results by examining their own prejudices than trying to do anything to stop drag queen brunches or story hours. The entire queer rights movement owes its existence to the trans women, trans women of color, and drag queens who started riots at Compton’s Cafeteria in 1966 and Stonewall in 1969. This isn’t a fair fight.

“I’m not gonna back down. I’m not gonna stop what I’m doing,” said West. “I do want to shout out these queens who are doing it on the daily in smaller communities in Wyoming and in Montana, and in North Carolina, and states that are red. They’re not giving up on their beliefs. They are being there for families and children who really desperately need them. I do believe that the most punk thing anyone can do right now is get in drag and read a book to kids.”