Talking Heads is an interview column devoted to contemporary arts and culture in Vancouver. Once a month, Sad Mag‘s Helen Wong sits down with a couple of interesting, unique individuals to discuss a topic of her choosing. This month’s topic? The sassy, fabulous and controversial world of drag.
Earlier this month I sat down with two queens, Jane Smoker and Tiffany Ann Co, to discuss their experiences and thoughts on drag. Jane Smoker is a professional drag queen. Having recently won Vancouver’s Next Drag Superstar, she’s slowly taking over the Vancouver scene and it has been a delight to watch. She is everything from edgy to glamourous as she continually pushes the boundaries of drag.
Tiffany Ann Co is an up and coming drag queen in Vancouver. Hailing from Richmond, she brings her Asian heritage into the mean girl world of Vancouver. Her performances are original and captivating, to the point where I’ve found myself watching them on repeat!
Helen Wong: How did you first get involved with drag?
Jane Smoker: I first got involved with drag when I moved out for the first time to live with my boyfriend and his roommate. We all lived in a one bedroom and found ourselves attending a lot of drag shows like Apocalypstick. Through this, I met the Cobalt queens and did my first show at Apocalypstick as Lindsay Lohan. From then on, it was just something I kept doing and it eventually evolved into Jane.
Tiffany Ann Co: I first got involved with drag during Halloween. My friends and I were brainstorming ideas for a group costume and we had settled on TLC. During our night out, we ended up winning a best group costume contest, which resulted in a promoter noticing us and booking us for future shows. The name Tiffany Ann Co emerged by playing with the letter T from my real name and incorporating the world of fashion, which is something that is very important in my life.
HW: How did you create the persona of Jane Smoker and Tiffany Ann Co? Does it feel like a construction?
JS: Jane’s persona is like a mix of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Courtney Love and Tara Reid. I’ve always been fascinated with these crazy, messy blonde celebrities. They appear to lead such chic lives with the way they dress but they are always getting arrested due to their partying and antics. Jane channels this contrast of beautiful people looking bad. Jane acts in a way that I wish I could act on a regular basis. She’s basically a hot mess. But with anyone, Jane has different sides to her and I like to play on her image, sometimes she’ll look more androgynous, and sometimes she’ll be very classy.
TAC: Tiffany kind of just takes over when I perform, but the idea of Tiffany was based off of the first performance I did on Vancouver’s Next Drag Superstar. She is the lovechild of an Asian Regina George and Blair Waldorf. I feel like Tiffany is an exaggerated form of my personality. She is like the rich Asian girl of Vancouver: a party girl at heart.
HW: Does Jane Smoker or Tiffany Ann Co feel like an extension of yourself or like a completely separate entity?
JS: Initially, she definitely felt like a separate entity. When I first started out as Jane, I would always refer to her in third person. But the more I’ve been performing, the more I’ve become used to her. I’m at the point where I sometimes even refer to myself as Jane.
TAC: Tiffany feels like a character that is related to me, like a twin sister. I like to think of her as a characterized form of Tony that does things that I normally wouldn’t do. She is who I become on stage, but when I finish performing she just turns off and I go back to being myself. Tony isn’t a part of Tiffany; Tiffany is a part of me.
HW: What reactions have you received from friends and family when you first started performing?
JS: My parents were not okay with the fact that I was performing drag. They saw a picture of me dressed in drag at a Sharon Needles performance and confronted me about it. My parents are religious and believed that drag was a sign that I wanted to transition into a woman. I remember having to frantically scrub off my make up when I would meet up with them because I told them that it was a one-time thing. However, when it became impossible to hide, we had a big talk about it. Now, they see it as more of an artistic thing. I’ve always loved performing and view this as performance art.
TAC: I mainly received a lot of positive feedback and support from friends and family. I think Tiffany is a lot cooler than me, I find people want to know about Tiffany’s life more than mine! Sometimes it’s overwhelming when I have people coming up to me and recognizing me from Vancouver’s Next Drag Superstar because I feel so much like myself (Tony) even when I look like Tiffany.
HW: What is it that keeps you performing?
JS: I love to do it; it’s something that I’m passionate about. Other performers always inspire me and I have a huge vault of performance ideas to the point where I’m always trying to push my own limits and try new things.
TAC: I have been performing my whole life. I love the adrenaline and feeling I get on stage. It’s a fun process and something that I like to look back on especially since the way I perform on stage is largely constructed inside my head so it’s fun to watch performances back. I become a different person on stage, I have more confidence and attitude and I like how it’s different from who I am in everyday life.
HW: Drag as a performance often uses stereotypes associated with how woman are portrayed in the media regarding how they’re supposed to look. How do you think drag reaffirms or subverts this notion?
JS: I think this depends on the queen. There are classic queens who do create the look of big hips, big ass, big eyes and lashes. But I feel like drag has evolved. Drag is whatever fantasy you want to feel; it’s all about the fantasy because there are no rules in drag. For instance, I sometimes choose not to wear any padding on my chest or I choose to wear minimal butt padding, in this way I’m still beautiful without using any of the stereotypes portrayed in the media.
TAC: For lack of a better word, Tiffany is a bit of a slut. Like I said before, she does things that I normally wouldn’t do, such as deep-throat a banana. I think that there are different forms of drag and the way that I created Tiffany doesn’t necessarily use the normative stereotypes of what an ideal woman should be. I think the main difference is that I didn’t create Tiffany for men; I created her for girls.
HW: How do you think gender construction surfaces in drag? Do these issues occur to you while performing?
JS: I feel like I’m the classic example of a drag queen. I’m a gay man dressing up as a woman. But there are so many types of drag that it’s not so simple to categorize. Sometimes I will wear a bald cap, or I’ll have short hair; I’m androgynous one day and sometimes I won’t even look human.
TAC: Aesthetically I created Tiffany to be like a normal girl, someone you wouldn’t naturally notice in a crowd. A lot of drag queens like to go all out with their costume and make up, but the character I created doesn’t do that. Tiffany’s onstage persona is largely a comedic and sexualized version of how girls behave, so when I’m on stage I’m just performing.
HW: Drag by its very nature assumes and reaffirms gender roles through the performance of wearing clothing associated with certain genders. Do you think this further reifies traditional gender norms?
JS:There’s a wild cluster of clothing that performers are wearing. You can wear whatever you feel like. I generally like to look sexy but I can’t see why you can’t wear whatever you want. If you want to wear leaves all over your body and all over your hair, then do it. Real cisgender women don’t do that. Drag isn’t about clothing rules; kings can wear bras and underpants or queens can have beards. At the end of the day, it’s all just drag.
TAC: Clothing doesn’t have gender; society puts gender on clothing. I think drag allows us to put new norms on gender roles because clothing is a form of expression that doesn’t define who you are or dictate gender.
HW: How do you like being identified?
JS: I identify as a male, but, really, why put a label on gender these days? There’s such a broad rainbow spectrum of gender and I believe most people are gender neutral. We all have masculine and feminine sides within us.
TAC: I identify as male, but for some reason I like using the pronoun ‘she’ for everyone. Boy, girl, straight, gay—whatever. I don’t do this in a negative or conscious way; I find it’s just how I speak.
HW: What advice would you give to up and coming queens and kings?
JS: Be patient and don’t do it for anybody else but yourself. Do what makes you happy and don’t follow the rules. The beauty of drag is that it’s so punk you can make it anything you want it to be. I think you should find something that makes you unique. But also, have a mix of self-confidence and delusion.
TAC: My main advice would be to do whatever you want. Don’t let other people tell you how to act because a large part of your growth comes from experience. You should determine your own ‘right’ way, because who is to say if your art is right or wrong? Rules are meant to be broken. At the end of the day, you just have to be happy with yourself.
Want to see them in action? Jane Smoker and Tiffany Ann Co host Back It Up Thursdays at Celebrity Night Club. Jane is performing at Edmonton Pride and has weekly and monthly shows coming up, so stay tuned! Tiffany also has an event called Sorority House at Celebrities on July 16th.