Michelle Visage Quotes

The average person assumes that you're a drag queen so you're a nelly and you want to be a girl, which is not the case, and I think Drag Race has changed that for us.

Most American adults know what a drag queen is, but as they're portrayed in films like 'Dressed to Kill' and 'Silence of the Lambs.'

Shave off your beard and wear a dress. You would be a great female impersonator.

I watched the classics as a kid, and I could tell that Bugs Bunny in drag was a cartoon and a joke. It didn't make me start dressing in drag.

Theatre comes alive when someone cross-dresses onstage.

Drag has been featured in popular culture for decades. Movies like 'Kinky Boots,' 'Tootsie,' 'The Birdcage' - even 'Mrs. Doubtfire' - have showcased men, some gay, some not, who dress and perform as women.

My own experience of gender has been about a lot of fluidity. In drag, I like to combine aspects of masculinity and femininity and rewrite the rules for those.

I didn't invent the bearded lady. It's been around for ages, and there are so many bearded drag queens out there - but they're not in the mainstream as I am.

I've still never gotten used to myself in drag.

When I started 'Rent,' I already had an idea of how I was going to portray Angel, simply because of who I was at that moment. Everyone always perceived her as a drag queen, but the reality of the matter is that I truly believe she was a trans woman.

Drag is literally so ancient that it predates modern understanding of gender, of transness, of queerness. Drag predates modern ideas of gender, of theater at all. Drag predates the word 'drag' itself.

There have always been drag queens everywhere.

I think it [Trouble In Mind] was the only time Divine didn't appear in drag, or certainly one of the few times, anyway. Alan created a time and place that was no time and no place, so it was not identifiable with any particular period or any particular city or any particular country, for that matter. I mean, everybody spoke English, but that was about it. So you couldn't pigeonhole that film.

We all have a cross-gender character: Every woman has a man that they can play, and every man has a woman that they can play.

Being perceived as a guy is nothing new or complicated to me. It is what it is.

I always said if I played a drag queen, I'd want to create a template with the realness they talk about in 'Paris Is Burning.'

To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.

I've seen some very beautiful drag queens.

A transvestite spends her entire life trying to look as feminine as possible and I have clearly spent mine celebrating my masculinity.

I always felt like the male from the time I was a child. There wasn't much feminine about me.

If I hadn't been born a woman, I would have certainly been gay.

I think once I was in high school - I had boyfriends and stuff like that, but I think when I was younger, I went through a period where I looked like a boy, and people thought I was a boy.

My secret world had been invaded, and the attractive figure of Tiptree - he did strike several people as attractive - was revealed as nothing but an old lady in Virginia.

Yes, I am transgendered but I also am a cross-dresser - I dress as a woman. It's not that I just want to be seen as a female in our society, I'm also a drag queen and a performer - there are many levels there.

We sort of expect to see men in women's clothes. It's part of our culture. The key thing is, it has to be done quite badly.