The History of Drag in New York City

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock.I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode. And please, tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. "RuPaul's Drag Race" first aired on TV on February 2, 2009, but the New York City drag scene that launched RuPaul started over a century earlier. Drag itself is an ancient practice, dating back to at least the sixth century BCE, when male performers in Greek theater portrayed women's roles, although it almost certainly started long before that. In 1869, Hamilton Lodge #710 of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, a Black fraternal organization in Harlem, celebrated its 25th anniversary with a masquerade and civic ball, believed to be the first drag ball in the United States. It became an annual event that drew female impersonators. Female impersonators and male impersonators could be found in New York outside of the balls as well. One of the most famous drag performers of the early 20th century was Julian Eltinge, who made his Broadway debut in 1904, in "Mr. Wixs of Wickham," where his character disguised himself as a woman. Eltinge himself was careful to highlight his own masculinity, even while finding success in a career where he so successfully impersonated women that audiences were sometimes surprised when he pulled off his wig in a reveal. As we discussed in the episode on Gladys Bentley, the New York City nightlife of the Jazz Age changed with the start of the Great Depression and the end of Prohibition, forcing drag underground into venues owned by the mafia, especially by the Genovese family. In 1939, New Yorkers, Danny Brown, and Doc Benner launched a tour to revive drag, what would become "The Jewel Box Review," an elegant, sophisticated show of female impersonators, which was carefully sold to a straight crowd. That was important because of the era's laws outlawing gatherings of homosexual people. The Jewel Box Review toured until 1975 and featured such talented drag artists as TC Jones, Lynne Carter, and Jackie Maye. Beginning in 1959, the highlight of The Jewel Box season was often an extended run at Harlem's Apollo Theater. In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided a Greenwich Village bar, the Stonewall Inn, which was known as a hangout for gay and lesbian patrons, and which was welcoming to drag queens. That wasn't always true of gay bars, even in New York City. Like most other New York gay bars at the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the mafia, who bribed corrupt cops to alert them in advance of raids, so they had time to hide illegal activity. That night, though, there was no tip off, and the police started arresting drag queens, who were violating state law by cross dressing. At some point, the police assaulted a lesbian dressed in men's clothing, possibly Storme DeLarverie, setting off an all out fight between the bar's patrons and the police. Stonewall wasn't the first time the LGBTQ community fought back, but it served as a turning point in the movement. On the one year anniversary of the uprising, activists marched from Stonewall towards Central Park, in what would become the first annual Pride March. Even in this show of pride, however, march organizers asked drag queens, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, both of whom had been involved in the uprising, to march in the back. They refused, leaving the parade instead. On August 18, 1984, the 15th anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival, drag queen Lady Bunny hosted a drag festival called "Wigstock" at Tompkins Square Park in New York. The event, which launched with a small $1,000 budget, was co sponsored by the famed East Village nightclub, Pyramid, a hangout at the time for Lady Bunny and her friend, an up and coming drag star named RuPaul Charles. Wigstock became an annual event, drawing diverse audiences that included the kind of people who probably never set foot in Pyramid. Annual Wigstock festivals ended in the early 21st century, but were revived in 2018, when Lady Bunny partnered with actor Neil Patrick Harris, and his husband, David Burtka. RuPaul had given up on New York and moved to LA, but he returned in 1989, and adopted a more realistic drag style, which resulted in his being crowned the "Queen of Manhattan" by the end of that year. He catapulted to fame a few years later, when his hit, "Supermodel (You Better Work)" was released on November 17, 1992,  his 32nd birthday, with a video shot in Manhattan. In 1996, "The RuPaul Show," which recorded in New York, premiered on VH1, one of the first TV shows in the United States with an openly gay host, which led to the New York Times calling Ru, "a Renaissance man of sorts, a drag queen of all media," Although the show was on the air for only two years, and helped to bring drag to the mainstream, as did the 1995 Hollywood film, "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," which starred Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo as New York City drag queens, it was another RuPaul TV show that really brought drag into the mainstream, however, "RuPaul's Drag Race," which launched on Logo TV in 2009. Drag Race is a reality show competition, where contestants compete to be "America's Next Drag Superstar." Season 15 of the show aired on MTV in early 2023, with episodes averaging over half a million viewers. In 2019, 50 years after the Stonewall uprising, the New York City Police Commissioner finally issued a formal apology, saying, "The actions taken by the NYPD were wrong, plain and simple. The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that, I apologize." Joining me now to discuss drag and New York City is writer Elyssa Maxx Goodman, author of, "Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City."

Hi, Elyssa, thanks so much for joining me today.

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  10:52  
Oh, it's absolutely my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Kelly Therese Pollock  10:55  
Yes, this was a great book. I really enjoyed reading it, and I'm excited to talk to you about it. I want to ask first a little bit about what got you started on thinking about drag, writing about drag, and writing this book?

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  11:08  
So my introduction to drag actually comes when I'm about seven years old. And I write about this in the book, but I, I saw the movie, "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," when I was about seven, and that was that was it. You know, like today we have, there's a lot to consider about the film and and the way the story is told. But for me, and for a generation of people like myself, that was the first exposure we had to drag. And to that point, my mother had raised me on 1950s movie musicals with lots of like big bold colors, and swirling costumes, and glamour, glamour glamour, and so this was an extension of that. I mean, it's it's glittery, and sparkly and fabulous, and I latched on to it in a huge way. Obviously, if that wasn't the case, we wouldn't be here, having this conversation. So drag has been a part of my life then for almost 30 years. And it has been a driving force in the way that I look at the world and a way that I understand gender and costume and performativity, and the way we make space for ourselves. And it's easily one of the defining art forms of my life. And so it's always been an interest. And I was able to start writing about drag 11 or 12 years ago, which is not something that I had ever really thought was possible. I just, I didn't see a lot of people doing that when I was growing up, and through college. But as the culture changed, it became more and more possible, which was really beautiful. And I think it was around the time of Flawless Sabrina's passing, so Flawless Sabrina was a very famous New York drag queen. And she passed away in November, 2017. And shortly after she passed, I, and maybe even around the time that she passed, I remember hoping that there weren't other stories that we were losing. And I wondered if there was a book that was a history of drag in New York, and it turned out that there wasn't. There were other books that you know, sort of gave a global look at gender performance on the stage, or were native to a particular country, not the US specifically, I don't think, or they were like, very overarching. They were very beautiful coffee table books, but there wasn't a written through history start to finish. And I wanted to write it about New York specifically. I always wanted to work on a project that was bigger than me, and a place where I could learn along with the book's growth, if that makes sense. And I made myself a student of drag, or I should say, continued my studies, got a PhD of sorts, shall we say? And worked on this book for five and a half years, actually, almost, almost to the day, I think, by the time the book comes out.

Kelly Therese Pollock  14:36  
Yet, so let's, this is a big question, but let's talk about what drag is. And you know, you're writing about 150 years of history. So drag isn't just one thing during that time, but you know, what, what do we mean by drag? What don't we mean by drag, maybe?

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  14:54  
Sure. So drag as I define it in the book, is gender performance. And that could be on or off stage. Gender performance doesn't have to mean there's a falseness involved. It means that there's a costume of some kind. And I think that's one of the things that's interesting to me is like, the way that I think about costume now, especially after having worked on this book is so different. Because, you know, we could argue that when we are making presentations to, to maybe like a historical society or something like that, that is also a form of drag, you know, when you know, we put on our eyeglasses to sit in front of our podcast guests, you know, like, we are in a drag of a certain kind. But for the purposes of the book, it is gender performance on or off stage. And it is interesting, the way that the term drag and drag queens specifically have changed over time. So when we think about drag performance, there were for a long time many different phases of what that meant. So if you were a person who performed in drag professionally, in the probably until maybe the 1980s, you may have been a person who called yourself a female impersonator. And you called yourself and almost went out of your way to call yourself that, because the phrase drag queen for a very long time was an epithet. It was, it was used to designate amateurishness. And it could be, it could be something that you adopted yourself, as you know, "I'm just, I just do drag on Halloween, like, I'm just a drag queen," you know, or it was, you know, something that someone might say to you to designate your drag as amateurish, which is an insult. And then it was also a phrase used to describe transgender sex workers, or transgender women in particular. And there was also a time where drag was the phrase used to describe what people we now call cross dressers would wear. So the term has changed in many different ways over time. And now, drag queen is a badge of honor. And we also have the term drag king started to be used around the 1970s. And before that, it was male impersonator, similarly, and there are there are performers who were very famous into the 80s, who were performing in drag and also went out of their way to make sure that they were not called drag queens. The performer, Lynne Carter preferred the phrase, female impressionist. In the 1950s, there was a performer named TC Jones, who called himself a male actress. And the performer Charles Pierce also refused to be called a drag queen. And then he talks about this in in an autobiography/biography, where he says, you know, there is a  line there, and I will always draw it, even if it's, even if it seems, you know, I don't wanna say silly, but even if it seems unnecessary. So the term itself has changed quite a bit over time. But now it means a person who performs gender on stage, mostly, but no, no, you couldn't refer to anything as getting into drag? You know, like, sometimes you might, like, do, I wouldn't  refer to anything as getting into drag, but you know, like, you might go to a club in drag, or you might, I don't know, go to performance, a drag performance in drag, like there's, there's ways to do drag that are not necessarily on the stage now. And then that also includes it. You know, one of the ways of looking at it, like I discussed is, you know, when are we not performing for other people, you know, and is everything drag, like RuPaul says?

Kelly Therese Pollock  19:05  
So, people may already be getting this impression, but there's a lot of different ways that drag performers think about themselves, think about how they regard themselves, but also a lot of different ways that they identify in terms of gender onstage and offstage. And you write about this, but some drag performers are trans, many are not. So could you talk a little bit about that? Because it's a very complex interplay that's going on here.

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  19:32  
Sure, a person who is transgender is not a drag performer unless they perform in drag on stage. You know, a person going about their lives is is going about their lives and a person who is performing on stage is performing on stage. And, yeah, there are some people who are transgender who are performing on stage in drag and a multitude of different kinds of drag. You know, there are transgender women who do drag as men. There are transgender women who do drag as women. There are transgender men who do drag as men, there are transgender men who do drag as women like it's, it's it's very fluid, and it's just about telling the story and deciding what story you want to tell, and how you want that story to look.

Kelly Therese Pollock  20:29  
So it seems like there's a bit of an ebb and flow over time about how the larger, there's not necessarily always a larger queer community that identifies as such, but how the sort of more mainstream gay community, let's say, whether they're embracing people who are doing drag, whether they're sort of pushing them away and saying, "No, no, we're trying to be respectable." Could you talk a little bit about that? Because it sort of goes in waves.

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  20:56  
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I would say the relationship to drag of looking down on it from within the queer community lasted probably until partway into the 90s. And that's not universal by any means. But we're talking about waves and like, and there are a multitude of things that impact that. And one of the biggest is the desire for civil rights, the desire to be treated equally, and the fear that if one was not perceived as quote, unquote, respectable, which drag queens were not considered respectable, if one was not perceived as respectable one would not be able to get these rights. Before the Great Depression, during Prohibition, there developed a taste for the taboo. And drag became a part of that, in what became known as the pansy craze. So the pansy craze became was this this vogue in mainstream culture to interact with presentations and representations of queerness in nightclubs, there were floor shows. There was a very one of the most famous performers of his day was a performer named Gene Malin, and had started as a drag performer and became, kind of set the standard for what the pansy craze was, which was being this sort of very sassy and sophisticated and slice you in half with with with a phrase, and we do it to everyone in the audience. And they all loved it, and some of them didn't even know what he was talking about. But it was seen as sophisticated to, to be perceived as knowing, to to be perceived as being in on the joke. And so these performances in these clubs, really thrived during Prohibition, like I said, because this tastes for the taboo. And then as soon as the Great Depression hit, every everything kind of took a turn. And I think one of the articles I found from the time said, you know, the something along the lines of like, the state of the economy is just as bleak as a female impersonator's future, which I mean, we we laugh now but like it set off like a very long a decades long, negative relationship with drag. And part of that is because during the pansy craze was when drag became associated with queerness by mainstream culture. And anything that deviated from rebuilding, and from the conservative values that drove part of America after that was considered, it was was not something that you wanted to be a part of, in any way. And drag began to live underground a little at that time. And in the 1940s, what's interesting is that this was the war in World War II, where they started to screen or tried to, I should say, screen out for homosexuality. They tried to make sure that that there there were there were no queers among them, you know, thing and they didn't succeed, of course, because their, their methods were based on like vicious, cruel stereotyping, and were deeply troubling. But just the same, so it was it was now this duality of, you know, queerness is so bad, we don't want it among our troops and support for the war was so high, that it became a pervasive thought. And what's interesting is that drag was also central to morale boosting during World War II, because the soldiers needed to entertain themselves and entertain each other. And so when they were, you know, when nightly, if there would be a nightly performance, like there would be men in drag, because women weren't allowed for a very long time. And so you have, I think one of my favorite things I found for the book was the the actor Sterling Holloway, who is who later became the voice of Winnie the Pooh, served in a review called The Yardbird Review on an army base, I think in Algeria, if I'm not mistaken, or Algiers, and they got a letter of, and this was a review that had drag in it. And they got a letter of commendation from Eisenhower, saying, you know, your work is central to to uplifting our boys and all that kind of thing. And the other part of that that also becomes interesting is that there was a musical that was developed by Irving Berlin, called, "This Is the Army," which was kind of the, the brother show to another show called, "Yip Yip Yaphank," which was in World War I, and in "This Is the Army," there was also drag, and it was an entirely male show. And there were several drag numbers. And in the program for the show, they're saying, you know, this is morale boosting as a long standing tradition, you know, and it dates back to the Romans and all this kind of thing. And there's pictures of the President and the Secretary of this and the Secretary of that in the program. And there were obviously queer men among them, because there were queer men all over the army. Because again, like you couldn't screen out for it like they thought that you could. So it was, it was this duality of being told, like you could lose everything, you could be dishonorably discharged, never be able to, you won't get any of these benefits and finding work will be next to impossible and all these sorts of things. And also, we're going to totally embrace drag. And then, you know, you have the 1950s, where there's a horrible what ended up being called the Lavender Scare, people who were even perceived as queer were being kicked out of the government left and right, because I think one of the one of the men in government at the time said that homosexuality was as much a threat to America as communism. And so it's just it's a, a continuing negative stereotype that also embeds itself in the movement for queer civil rights. It embeds itself in the movement for queer civil rights, but first, what happens is that Manichees Society is founded, and the Manichees originally were a Marxist organization. And they were, their viewpoints were toward revolution. And when there became this overarching panic communist panic in the US, there were members of the Manichees who took over, who were anti communist, you know, and who were extremely conservative, and for them, respectability politics became the order of the day, and you have members of Manichees going on radio shows and television shows and speaking out against quote, unquote, the swish, you know, and the behavior, you know, and so if they're speaking out against the swish and flamboyant behavior, like what must they think of drag? And actually, what's funny is that in the Manichees review, there was a, a positive write up about TC Jones, because the way that he presented himself was so respectable, and but that sort of thought process was was embedded in the culture in a larger way, and within queer culture for a very long time. I mean, you have, I mean, the Stonewall uprising. So we're talking about New York, obviously, specifically, the Stonewall uprising, famously and importantly, was started by drag queens, transgender women of color, and people of color in general, for the most part, and you had these sort of, like, middle to upper middle class white gay men being like, "Why are you doing that? Why are you being so kiki?" you know, and that was that was kind of how drag was perceived at the time.  It was it was frivolous, or it was throw away, it was tacky, it was, it wasn't something you put on television, at the very least, you know. And into the 1970s, what ends up happening is that you have another facet of your culture that develops which is a, I'm gonna say, I don't wanna say backlash, but it is it is the antithesis of sorts of drag in, when you have what develops, which is known as the clone aesthetic, which is like extremely butch, mustache, flannel, work boots, sort of Tom of Finland vibe. And one of the drag queens I spoke to was like, "Those were the boys in the clubs, and they did not want us there," you know, and an alternative drag culture started to develop in the East Village, which was gender expansive in its philosophical and corporeal presentation, and very heavily inspired by punk. And this was a response to that, as well. But the queens that I spoke to, for the book, queens specifically, had talked to me and said, "You know, like, if I had walked into some restaurant in 1993, and said, 'Can I do a drag brunch here?' they would have looked at me, and told me to get the fuck out, not even laughed." But I really do think that one of the biggest influences of why that starts to change is RuPaul, because suddenly RuPaul was everywhere, doing everything, and everyone wanted to be a drag queen. I spoke to Zaldy, who is now the person who designs costumes for RuPaul. Zaldy has a background in drag in the 80s. And when he was doing drag people were like, "Why are you doing that? You know, like, don't you want to, like have a career?" One of the things he said to me that I really remember is that, like, "It wasn't a career choice, and now it's a career choice." You know, like, people absolutely looked down on you for doing it for a very long time. And actually, I think, you know, it started to change after RuPaul certainly, but I had people like, even into the pandemic say, "You know, I don't really like drag." I don't really, I don't really, I don't know if then we were all you know, corralled in our homes. And then those same people were like, "Oh, my God, I just, I just sat binged all of RuPaul's Drag Races. Like, you know, I've been waiting for you." Yeah. And also, there's a lot more to drag than RuPaul's Drag Race. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  32:12  
Yeah. I want to dig in a little bit to the 1980s, and into the 90s, because the the AIDS epidemic is so formative to what's going on then in the way that drag develops. Could you talk a little bit about that, the relationship between what is happening, especially in New York City, with the AIDS epidemic, and the lack of recognition from federal government and everything, and the way that that drag is responding to it?

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  32:39  
Sure. I think the biggest the biggest way I could respond to that is to say that drag performers at that time became an arbiter of hope. And one of the people that I spoke to who was just like a regular attendee of the Pyramid Club, which became one of the biggest venues for drag in New York at that time, was that, you know, we would gather together every night and laugh, but it was survival laughter. You know, and the biggest places, two of the biggest places you could see drag in New York at that time, were the Pyramid Club, and Boy Bar, and they were very close to each other. And it became that at venues like these, you would see fundraisers for people with AIDS, or these are the places you could go out every night and escape what essentially became like, for many people, an ongoing funeral procession, and it was, you know, people's, and their friends were dying. There were multiple funerals a week. And then you had this place you could escape to a new, I think, the writer Michael Musto, I interviewed him for the book, and he was like, "You know, we just needed a place to cling to each other every night." And one of the places in the places where you could go and do that, and there was drag, you know, there was there was something else to do with your brain. And there was another place to go and to be and one of my favorite stories from the book is the performer Glamour Moore told me about going to visit people in the hospital, and nurses were too scared to bring them their food. So Glamour Moore and Connie Fleming, who performed in drag for a long time as Connie Girl, and is now an artist and model and noted door person, they would go and bring in the food that the nurses had left outside of the door for these people who couldn't some of them who couldn't even get up, you know, and they would bring inside the food and they would, you know, perform in the common areas or in the elevator or any place where there was, you know. They had gone to go see, you know, particular friends of theirs, but while they were there, they didn't stop. And one of the early articles I found while I was working on that chapter was an article in The New York Times that was a fundraiser for medical care for the artist, Martin Burgoyne, who designed the single cover for Madonna's "Burning Up." And it was all these drag performers, all these nightlife people, all these cabaret performers who had come out to raise money for him. And this is this is what they did. This is what maybe in some ways they had to do to cope themselves. And so that is also part of the turning point of drag starting to be more respected, because people were able to see its power. The other ways that's really big that is a drag interacted, was in part with the rise of ACT UP. And what's interesting about ACT UP is that they did use drag in some of their activations, but it was also a response to ACT UP. And so one of the reasons that Lady Bunny created Wigstock was because there was a lot of militant AIDS activism, that it wasn't for everyone. And she talks about, you know, wanting to give back, but in a way that felt more like her. And she said, "Well, what can I do? I can be a clown." And so she created this drag festival that went on for many years. And it became an annual just like giant event, celebration of drag wigs, "Wigstock," and it was just another It was another vehicle for lightness in a time that so desperately needed it, and also contributed to the changing opinion of drag.

Kelly Therese Pollock  36:46  
One of the formative things for anyone in New York, but including the drag community, is 911. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how the drag community responds to 911, what that looks like, and sort of continues the evolution of what drag looks like in New York City?

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  37:04  
Sure. So after 911, there was a pervasive feeling of darkness and sadness. And I remember speaking to the writer T. Cooper, who lived in Alphabet City at the time, and he said, you know, it was just, it was funeral procession after funeral procession. It was hearses just all up and down the street, and for many weeks at a time. And the same way that drag rallied against AIDS, it sought to reinvigorate life after 911. When I was speaking to Animatronic, one of the things that she said was, you know, there was this feeling of whatever you wanted to do, you had to do it now. And there was a, maybe a renewed dedication to creation and celebration. And what also happens is that drag becomes another vehicle for fundraising, you know, becomes a vehicle for fundraising, it also becomes a huge vehicle for protest. Because one of the ways that drag responded to 911 was to be a vehicle for anti war demonstrations. One of those is a group called Glamericans, Glam Americans. And there were many like nightlife downtown denizens, performance art, performance artists, drag artists who got together, and had signs like "War is tacky, darling, and it's bad for our travel plans," and things like that, and would get dressed up and in in all this regalia to protest the war. So that's part of it too. Drag started to be a part of the anti conservative backlash in a multitude of forms, whether it be as variety presentations, as one person shows, as, you know, nights of drag or singular performances or what have you. But that was, so it was part of the emotional rebuilding, but it was also a part of addressing the way that the cultural climate had changed.

Kelly Therese Pollock  39:28  
So we're, of course at a moment again of cultural backlash. So we have both the rise of drag, drag is everywhere now, but also this backlash against drag and trying to outlaw drag story hours or something. I guess what, what would you recommend people do to sort of make sure that they understand what's happening, what sort of reaction is going on and what you know how they might want to respond to it if they're listening and are interested?

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  39:55  
I think the best thing to do is educate yourself on the different bills that are being attempted by various state governments, and when you have the opportunity if you have the opportunity to vote against them, but knowledge is power. And I think, I don't know, I think sometimes because drag appears so frothy and frivolous, that it's just like, well drag like, who cares? But actually, you know, it's, it's an art form, it's an art form with 1000s of years of roots, and drag, and its practitioners deserve to be given the respect of any other artists. So I think a great way is to educate yourself is not just to to learn what's happening, but to recognize that bills like these and laws like these are actively suppressing freedom of expression, and freedom of speech. And for people who are citizens of this country, we are entitled to those things, so to speak out when you have the opportunity, to donate to organizations that help drag artists who are in need, to support local drag, absolutely, to go out and see shows and tip all of your performers, and to buy their merch if you like them, and to make sure that drag continues to have an audience and an audience of supporters.

Kelly Therese Pollock  41:28  
So there is a ton in this book that we're not gonna get a time to talk to all sorts of people show up like Mae West, and David Bowie and Lady Gaga. So people should check out the book. How can they get a copy?

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  41:40  
Wherever fine books are sold. Yeah, it's available. It's being published by Hanover Square Press, which is a an imprint of HarperCollins. And it will be available September 12.

Kelly Therese Pollock  41:54  
Is there anything else you want to make sure we talked about?

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  41:58  
When I first started working on the book five and a half years ago, the world was a lot different. And at that time, I wanted to make sure that stories didn't get lost. And I also hope now, as I hoped then that the book is able to find the people who need it, that people are empowered to learn more and to find roots. And that, like I said, drag is an art form that has 1000s of years of history, and its practitioners deserve to be respected as the artists that they are. And I hope that when people are reading the book, that they're able to learn about these amazing people who have continued to build this art form that has affected so much of the culture that we have today. And, you know, I, I also wanted to honor these practitioners of the form who built the drag that we have now, and to help make them as much a household name as as any other performer might be. So I hope you enjoy it. Thank you.

Kelly Therese Pollock  43:11  
Elyssa, thank you so much for speaking with me. I really enjoyed reading your book and learning all about drag.

Elyssa Maxx Goodman  43:17  
Oh, of course. It is absolutely my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Teddy  43:51  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources use for this episode, and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History, or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

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