Sasha Velour

When it comes to drag, my favorite thing we can do is kind of push against the beauty standards of magazines. We don't need to look like supermodels. That what really makes drag special and makes it unique and makes it queer.

Drag has always inspired people to come together to be joyous and fight for what matters. If we can do it through beauty and positivity and lip-syncing our favorite pop songs, then let's do it.

I'd say my fashion or beauty tip is to take the thing about you that makes you most distinctive and then exaggerate it. So if you have a little bushy unibrow, make it a dramatic unibrow. If you're balding, go completely bald.

Drag performance is really emotional.

I discovered that my drag really does speak to people on an emotional level. I also discovered that people are sometimes put off by an intellectual approach to drag.

Drag resists conservatism in the most basic way possible, and also in the most effective way possible, because it's improper when it comes to looks, which is everything in conservative systems.

Identity for Jews like us was shaped by cultural practices and family traditions rather than allegiances of place or language or class, because those things continued to be redefined for us. Drag operates along similar lines.

I try to write an essay every time I speak.

We need to talk about representation for queer people in the media and also in law. And there's a long history of drag queens leading those discussions in marches on the street and even in bars going back to the time of Stonewall and before.

I find inspiration in the movies I've loved, especially all films ever made about Dracula.

Siouxsie Sioux was such an inspiration when I was a teenager because I connected with these goth college students who listened to this genre of music. She showed me that femininity didn't necessarily have to look the way that I was familiar with. It could be more exciting and much more identifiable.

People are really seeing that drag is an art form, that it's so much more than self-expression.