Trixie Mattel/via facebook
If you’ve never heard of Trixie Mattel, here’s the scoop. Brian Firkus, a mild-mannered professional makeup artist, as his fierce drag persona, Trixie Mattel, has just been cast on LOGO network’s reality show, “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” He will appear as one of 14 contestants in the show’s upcoming seventh season.
A UW-Milwaukee theater arts graduate, Firkus began his drag career at the Oriental Theatre’s midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Eventually, he created Trixie Mattel as his drag alter ego. Now, after just a few short years on the local drag circuit, he has achieved every drag queen’s dream—a chance to become America’s next Drag Super Star.
That might not seem like much for the casual observer. After all, drag is just a guy in a wig impersonating Cher or Judy Garland and lip-synching some torturous old torch song, right? Wrong!
Whether for attention, affection or just to feel the fleeting magic of celebrity, drag queens have always been part of LGBT culture. After all, they set off the Stonewall uprising. And, if that’s not impressive enough, I once saw a drag queen, a big girl as I recall, doing cartwheels in stiletto heels. It’s really not as easy as it looks. I once heard of a notorious drag gang that, in order to get their sequin fix, pulled off a major heist at a Dallas Neiman Marcus. Disguised as stock boys, they nonchalantly rolled a rack of Bob Mackie beaded dresses through the store and into an awaiting get-away van.
That was all back in the day. But then network TV spawned cable, the Internet begat social media and a drag queen with a keen sense for the art, marketing and ultimate entertainment gave birth to “RuPaul’s Drag Race,
