Photo of Amanda Tori Meating by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Human Rights Campaign
Tomorrow, RuPaul’s Drag Race season 16 contestant Amanda Tori Meating is hosting an all trans woman drag show called Dollapalooza at 3 Dollar Bill in Brooklyn. Featuring Aja, Amethyst, Jasmine Kennedie, Dev Doe, and many more, the event aims to showcase the wide variety of drag from trans woman queens.
In anticipation of the event, I talked to Amanda about its origin, how her drag has changed since coming out, and the tricky nature of dysphoria.
Drew: Can you start by telling me how Dollapalooza came to be?
Amanda: A couple things happened within a short amount of time. I launched a GoFundMe for my FFS and I was expecting it to take way more time to meet the goal, but it only took like 13 hours. That was very, very unexpected, and it just got me thinking. Before launching it, I was already formulating a plan to produce an event that would just be a fundraiser show for me. Some of my drag sisters in Brooklyn have done similar things. But then it met the goal. And I was like, well, I could still produce something and it could benefit other bitches, you know? Because I was also very conscious of the fact that the only reason it happened so fast was because I was on RuPaul’s Drag Race. So I was like how can we spread the love to some of the girls who haven’t? And some of the boys who haven’t! It’s Dollapalooza and the cast is all trans women but for the fundraiser itself one of our DJs, DJ Tokyo, is halfway to her FFS GoFundMe and then Max Love, who is a transmasc drag king, is halfway to his GoFundMe for top surgery so we’re going to try and get them both some extra cash.
Drew: That’s great!
Amanda: I was also inspired by Standup NYC produced by Julie J which has raised so much money for so many different causes and has a similar show structure of a bunch of people doing one number with multiple sets. And then I was at Trish, Charlene Incarnate and Rify Royalty’s party at 3 Dollar Bill, a couple months ago when their guests were Maddelynn Hatter, Sasha Velour, Lexi Love, and Ivy Fischer who is hot and new on the Brooklyn scene, she just moved here from Atlanta. It felt like a Dollapalooza to me! I was just like wow dolls do it best. So I was like okay what if we did this little fundraiser moment and it was a massive cast at 3 Dollar Bill of all trans women? How sickening and cunt would that be?
Drew: I started writing about drag and Drag Race for Autostraddle at the end of 2020 and it was a bit of a fight. At the time, I wasn’t an editor, and the thought was that Drag Race was more gay male culture and I had to really sell this idea that it was queer women culture too and actually a lot of the queens had since transitioned. The cultural understanding — in part because of Drag Race — was still very much that drag queens were gay men dressed like women. But over the last five years, so many of the most famous queens are now trans women.
How do you feel like that shift has changed drag and people’s understanding of drag?
Amanda: I actually don’t know if it’s really changed a whole lot in terms of most people’s understanding of drag.
Drew: Oh interesting!
Amanda: I think a lot of people still have very narrow understandings of what drag is and who can do drag. It is quite interesting to me. I definitely think with the coronation of Mother Sasha Colby there certainly has been some shift. You always notice the trends in drag and I feel like there was a very solid move toward oh baby we’re giving human hair, we’re giving body, we’re giving trans womana gorgeousness and I certainly think that has a lot to do with her. But at the same time that’s not the only kind of drag that you could see from a trans woman.
Drew: Totally.
Amanda: I wanted this lineup to give a really broad scope of drag. Like this entire cast is dolls but on stage you might see Creature from the Black Lagoon. You never know.
Drew: How has your personal relationship to drag changed since coming out as a trans woman?
Amanda: Oh my God like so much. Before I came to the realization that I was full-time woman, when I was more serving nonbinary fierceness, I think drag was a vehicle to experience gender euphoria without knowing that’s what I was doing. Whereas now I’m very conscious of the fact that that’s what I’m doing.
For me, since coming out, drag has felt less about artistic expression and more just dolling myself up, if you will, to feel my outsides represent the woman on the inside. Whereas before, when I hadn’t accepted the fact that I’m a woman, drag was more of a canvas to be kooky crazy clown spookiness. Which is something I still have so much love for and artistically gravitate toward. But it’s interesting to me since coming out how I’ve used drag as a way to show myself what we’re all going for — me and the girl in the mirror.
Drew: I love that perspective. Because I feel like the narrative that is commonly shared is that before transitioning drag was the space to be a woman and post-coming out drag can be the kooky crazy. But something I know I experienced is once I’d accepted my womanhood, once I’d named that not just to the world but to myself, my dysphoria got so much worse.
Amanda: Exactly! Oh my God. I keep telling people that post-FFS the makeup is going to get crazy again. I’m going to want to— or at least I hope I’m going to want to be more clown-y with it, because I feel like now the makeup I do in drag is very much like I’m trying to affirm for myself what it’s going to look like after surge.
Drew: I also got FFS this year and the months leading up to it were so dysphoric. But now that it’s done and mostly healed the changes look so subtle to me? I’m like have I ever known what my face looks like?
Amanda: I think dysphoria is so interesting in that way because it almost makes you ignore the things that you don’t want to see sometimes? It either makes you ignore them or it makes you hyperaware of them.
Drew: Yes!
Amanda: You know? Which I think, if I’m talking specifically about my journey with makeup and my face and dysphoria and specifically with the brow bone, because I wasn’t on the same page as the woman within I wasn’t necessarily looking at the actual layout of my bones. Because I didn’t want to! Instead I was like oh I’m just going to paint a silly clown face over all of it.
Drew: Yeah, post-surgery I said to my partner that I didn’t think anything changed about my brow bone and they were like umm it has. And then I looked at old pictures and was like oh wow yeah! (laughs)
Amanda: (laughs)
Drew: Okay, the last thing I wanted to talk about is… I know you’re a theatre girl. Do you see your drag as a continuation of more traditional theatre or do they feel like separate artistic practices? And do you want to return to that other kind of performance?
Amanda: Yes and. I kind of feel like… well, when you say traditional theatre…
Drew: Right, like, what does that even mean? I guess I know that you were in Kinky Boots, I know you were in Angels in America. Basically, you have a BFA.
Amanda: The girls love to forget it!
Drew: (laughs) It’s tricky because so much of traditional theatre has drag in it and bar drag is still theatre, so I don’t think the line is clear. But I’m wondering for you if there is no line or if it does feel like there’s some divide.
Amanda: I mean, I definitely feel like post-Kinky Boots I was realizing things and I kind of came to the conclusion that the theatre world didn’t really have a space for me to exist authentically which is why I sort of walked away from theatre and into drag. But I do have a BFA and I definitely miss that kind of theatre, so I could see myself getting back in the saddle.
Having come out, and especially once I’ve had FFS this summer, I see a future in which I would be able to walk into a room full of people and introduce myself to them without feeling like I’m lying. Gag on it.
Dollapalooza is tomorrow at 3 Dollar Bill in Brooklyn. Get tickets now.
