Sasha Velour Quotes

Doing drag in a male-dominant culture is an act of treason. It's the most punk-rock thing you can do.

Drag will always find a way to be weird.

From childhood, we're trained to be a certain way, to behave a certain way - so that the power base can control us, really. And punk and drag are completely outside of that.

I represent a kind of underground, punk side of drag.

Drag wasn't always counterculture.

I thought to be feminine was to give in to straight culture, or the beauty standard, but in my heart I had a flair for fashion and style. They were passions I kept secret because I didn't understand I could love clothes and hair and makeup and still like girls.

I don't like overt traditionalism.

Where I come from, if you weren't a drag queen or a radical thinker or a performance artist of some kind, you were the weirdo.

When I said that I make out with dudes, there was a slight sense of sexual rebellion in that. And I probably even made it a bigger deal than it was.

I carry with me from my male upbringing a sense that femininity is forbidden. So when I appear on YouTube with forty butterflies glued to my body and glitter all over my face, I have a sense that I'm getting away with something I'm not supposed to. I'm being decadent. I'm enjoying a forbidden pleasure. And that's fun, and it's funny.

Drag is pastiche and parody and satire. Drag queens are never meant to be stars. We make fun of stars. Drag queens are the people that 'point' at the star.

Drag should push the limits of what is considered fashionable or beautiful.

Sometimes if you're dealing with straight interviewers they're a little more excited if you're in drag: 'Oooh! Aaaah! Eeeee!' But if you're just sitting there out of drag, they think you're just a bitter queen.

Drag culture has always been about excess.

Not all drag queens but certainly the ones who empowered me, are people who pushed buttons, and poked fun at society from Leigh Bowery, to Lady Bunny and Divine.

Conservatism is all about surfaces and labels and presentation, and drag says no, we refuse to follow any rules about that.

My philosophy through all my work, be it on canvas or on the street, is about pushing boundaries and not going with the flow because everyone else is doing something a certain way.

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.

As gay people, we always think outside of the box. The irreverent is always important to a drag queen and anyone else who lives outside the box. And this is why drag's important: remember to not take life seriously. It's always important to see the laughter in the illusion that we pretend is real.

The inspiration of my drag is the history of drag, the long tradition of drag queens being at the forefront of queer activism. That informs my drag style, and in a sense, that is the direction we need to go in the future.

I guess historically, drag queens were imitating movie stars and luminaries. It's kind of nice to have a movie star imitating a drag queen.

The audience of 'Drag Race' and the fans of drag queens are often very surprising.

I look like what we have taught society a lesbian looks like. I just do. I have the short hair. I got the muscles.

I mean, I'm a drag queen, any excuse to wear a costume means it's going to be a good time.

Because I'm experimenting so much with gender-bending and listening to everything that happens to me in terms of genderless energies, I have a hard time finding partners that can match me.