Drag Before Drag Race

Legends of Drag celebrates “queens of a certain age” across the U.S. spotlighting 16 living legends from the pre-reality TV era.

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Hello—

Welcome to another GAYLETTER. And boy, oh boy is it a good one, if we don’t say so ourselves. (“If you can’t gas yourself up, how the how you gonna gas anyone else up, can I get an amen?”)

In this edition, one of our favorite people, Charlene Incarnate shares her thoughts on a new book Legends of Drag that aims to give flowers to icons of the drag world while they’re still with us.

Charlene, a legend in her own right (I mean, the bitch has her own wikipedia page) attended the launch event and was so gagged that she asked to write about it for GAYLETTER.

The book celebrates queens who became famous before reality TV. Queens who were doing drag when there was nothing “more than utter faggotry to motivate you to put on your heels.”

There’s also a pretty impressive selection of images from the book that we hand selected for the story.

- Tom & Abi

While you’re reading this story we suggest you click on the button below to get you in the right moooooood.

Flotilla DeBarge in New York City

PORTRAITS BY HARRY JAMES HANSON & DEVIN ANTHEUS 

TEXT BY CHARLENE INCARNATE

Let’s face it: drag as we know it is getting tedious. The names from TV are all starting to conglomerate, as each passing year gifts us with a new lot of queens to replace the last.

With each passing coronation ceremony we catapult a new crop of bitches into the drag industrial complex and move silently further from a time when queens weren’t guaranteed a check, and had just their goddess-given compulsion to transform into a glamorous diva to motivate them.