Untucking The Past Dr. Lady J

Crystal LaBeija and the ballroom scene have both come back into the spotlight recently. On Drag Race Aja paid tribute to Crystal in Snatch Game but it felt a lot like people didn’t really understand the depth of who she was and what her role in herstory would come to be after many of those famous lines were uttered in the 1968 documentary The Queen. POSE has also done an outstanding job of telling the story of the late 80s/ early 90s ballroom scene, highlighting the AIDS crisis, the issues faced by trans women of color, and the shifts in ball culture that occurred as voguing became a mainstream inspiration, as well as generally getting everything so much more right than Paris is Burning ever did. In today’s episodes we go back to the founding of this scene to talk about how Crystal’s outrage helped bring about the ballroom scene and what this all had to do with racism inside the drag community at the time.

With the success of Dragula, a lot of new followers have developed for the world of alternative drag. But alternative drag already pierced the mainstream decades before. In today’s episode we take a look at the 1960s and 70s at how the counterculture changed drag forever and introduced some of its wildest monsters and most outrageous and successful artists who used drag. Music, theater, film, photography, and even mime influenced and were influenced by drag at this time and these uses aaltered the way drag functioned forever. So come along as we look at everything from The Cockettes’ commune life and bearded drag queens, Sylvester’s takeover of the music world, and so much more!

Have you ever wondered how lip syncing became the default mode of performance for drag queens? It’s one of those things that’s so central to drag that it’s existence rarely gets called into question. On the first episode of Untucking the Past, I delve into the late 1960s nightclub drag scene and how changes in culture and the business of nightclubs contributed to the rise of lipsyncing. Join me as I untuck the past to reveal where lip syncing arose from and why it’s both an asset and a problem for drag queens.

A short introduction to me, Dr. Lady J, and my work as a scholar and drag performer. I also dive into how we'll be approaching these topics and what I hope you'll take away from this show.