I’m a woman, dominatrix and a drag queen: Meet Holestar, the queen tearing up the rulebook
Holestar (PinkNews)
Drag queen and dominatrix Holestar has heard it a million times: “You can’t be a drag queen, you’re a woman, you have to be a drag king.”
Holestar believes drag is about “the art form” rather than your gender. But being a woman dragging up as a queen, you have to go the extra mile—it’s not enough to put “extra glitter on” or wear a sparkly dress, it’s about creating an illusion, just like the male counterparts.
“I’m a big girl. I’ve got to paint that stuff on. I’ve got to paint my chin on. I’ve got to go over the top with it. Otherwise I am just a girl in a dress,” she told PinkNesws.
Drag is about bending gender norms
After a career in the army, Holestar got into drag and now also works as a dominatrix. She describes herself as “very butch” in everyday life and loves changing up her gender expression, on stage and in the bedroom.
The drag world, however, has not always been accepting of women performing as drag queens.
“I’ve been given jobs and they’ve been taken away once someone realises I am a woman,” Holestar told PinkNews.
But she didn’t let that stop her. She had a point to prove and she was determined to prove it.
“I’m quite butch in real life so I didn’t want to just switch the binaries from male to female,” Holestar explained. “I wanted to play with it a little bit.”
And that, for Holestar, is the purpose of drag. It’s about questioning gender norms and playing with them.
When she first steps on stage, most people mistake her for a man in drag.
“They see a big wig. They see the lashes. They see me being fabulous. They think, ‘oh it’s a man in a dress.’ And it’s like, look beyond that because gender isn’t black and white,” she explained.
In her efforts to be accepted as more than “a girl in a dress,” Holestar has had to come to terms with a “misogynistic” world, where language towards women can be offensive, and sometimes “vile.”
Holestar is tired of misogyny in drag (PinkNews)
Don’t be afraid of vaginas
“As an adult, I kept seeing lots of drag queens in the LGBT scene who were very misogynistic towards women, who were very vile, who were very…bandying around words like ‘fishy’ and ‘lesbian’ and blah blah blah,” she said.
Holestar takes particular issue with the term ‘fishy,’ which is used to describe a male drag queen who is very feminine looking.
“That’s like saying a woman has a smelly vagina. No we don’t. We’re very clean. Most of us anyway,” she laughed.
“I always say in my shows, you all came from a vagina. Don’t be frightened of it.”
But Holestar has also been guilty of using less politically correct language, she admitted. She was once known as “Tranny With A Fanny,” a term which she says was acceptable amongst her trans friends when she started off her career in drag. But she has since abandoned the name as “terminology has changed.”
“I decided to stop using it because I don’t want to upset my trans siblings. I don’t want to offend anybody,” she explained.
Being a dominatrix and a drag queen is all about playing with gender (PinkNews)
Call me a b*tch
As a queer woman, Holestar is unapologetic about her identity as a female drag queen.
“As queer woman I can do what the hell I want for one,” she argued. “And I’m on your side. I’m not trying to take your job. I can just do it a little bit better than some of you.”
She is not afraid to brush people up the wrong way. She has been called a “cow” and a “b*tch,” and a lot “worse.” All she asks is that you judge her on her talent, “not what it is between my legs.”
