The Not So Fierce Economics of Drag

If you’ve been to enough drag shows, you’ll have heard the Dolly Parton saying, “it takes a lot of money to look this cheap.”

Pretty things cost a pretty penny. Wigs, outfits, makeup, even prosthetic bodies. Drag artists typically don’t expect to make a profit. That’s true for most creative industries. For every famous painter or actor, there’s thousands that will remain in obscurity. Yet with drag even our most financially successful local performers aren’t able to earn much. There’s only a handful that can make drag a primary source of income. It’s a problem that’s getting worse the more popular drag becomes.

To understand why drag has become so unprofitable, we have to talk about where money is being spent and where money is being earned.

There’s a uniform that’s started to appear for drag. The default diva, destined for mediocrity. An algorithmic amalgamation with little personality outside of tropes. A pale imitation of more noteworthy performers. She slays, she struts, she’s fierce, her name is a joke that wasn’t funny when you heard it on 30 other queens. I say she, since this is mostly a queen issue, but kings and things have their own versions of this. It’s an issue of perspective, not individuals. Performers are doing drag purely for the sake of doing drag. It’s seen as a genre with conventions to follow rather than a medium with endless potential.

Drag should be an expressive and personal art form. What you need depends on what your specific goals are. If you want to be successful you need to define what success actually means. For a long time, I thought it meant getting booked, winning pageants, and working within the established parameters. Over the years I realized success for me, Flaminia, is working on more original and ambitious projects. There’s tremendous talent and effort that goes into the mainstream scene, but there’s also a creeping sense of conspicuous consumption and a trend towards conformity. It’s resulted in a market that feels oversaturated.

There’s no checklist for doing drag, but there’s one thing we should all have. Realistic budgets. Not just for money, but for time, effort, and space. I’ve seen drag consume people’s lives. Thousands spent on outfits that get worn once. Days spent hunched over sewing machines. Basements crowded with costumes and wigs. Serious injuries sustained doing a stunt or making a prop. Was any of it worth it? Just because RPDR has a new runway every week, doesn’t mean we should. What’s the return on investment?

Compensation for drag varies from venue to venue and even show to show. Base pay in Connecticut for booked local performers ranges from 50 on the cheaper end to 200 on the higher end. Competitions can pay more… if you win. Second place and under usually don’t get anything (a topic for another time, I have many thoughts on this). There’s no base pay for open stages, obviously. Tips from the audience end up accounting for a large portion of the income. Which has led to a majority of shows to be structured around collecting tips, instead of prioritizing the actual performances.

I call these “numbers shows”. Host gives an intro. Performers take turns doing a round of solo (sometimes with backup dancers) numbers. Almost always lip sync mixes that range from 4 to 6 minutes. Sometimes with a connecting theme. There’s a little game in the middle if you’re lucky. Performers do another round of numbers. Rinse and repeat. The shows might advertise that they have a “variety”, but it’s just different flavors of lip syncs. If someone drops it’s usually easy to find a replacement.

I don’t hate lip sync numbers… 100% of the time. It’s an understandable constraint for venues and artists. Not every space has the acoustics or equipment for live vocals. It makes sense for performers to make packageable short acts they can take anywhere. It’s an especially great template for dancers. However, this format being the standard for shows is limiting our potential overall.

The reason entertainers in bigger industries are able to negotiate for higher wages is because they can’t be easily replaced. The shows depend on them, and the audiences want to see those specific stars. If we want to be recognizable, instead of fierce drag queen #148729 for fabulous brunch #1349, we need to work on more than numbers. We need to imagine concepts that go beyond 4 to 6 minutes of grabbing tips. The Ru girls that got famous did it with the words they said, not the sounds they remixed.

I’m not trying to diminish the efforts of the local drag scene. It’s a lot of hard work, time, and money. I’m saying we should spend more of that energy on original projects that will give us more back. This industry needs a wider audience if it wants to get closer to supporting the number of artists we have. That audience will not be created or sustained with numbers shows and overly referential material.

I love the initiative that Kevy is taking documenting our culture on Connecticutdrag.com. It makes us more accessible and our work less ephemeral. There’s high quality photos and interviews that show who we are and say what we’re doing. Recently he put up new pages as directories for artists and vendors. I hope it’s a way for more of us to connect and collaborate.

This past year a bunch of performers have produced some original music (Glass, Moxie, Ambrosia, go check them out). We need more original content. I’m trying to make my new online show to break the mold and to introduce local personalities to broader audiences. You didn’t expect to get through a whole article from my dainty little website without a shameless plug, right? I’ve got other ideas too (always), but I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew, so the rest will be revealed over time.

The scene is saturated, and I encourage us to think outside the box. It doesn’t have to be more expensive; it just has to be more interesting. Creativity that can exist on its own terms. Value that doesn’t come from what we bought. We’re so much more than numbers.