Drag Queens usually have day jobs, right?

She was a mainstay with Atlantis Events for decades during the fall/winter and got paid for that. She's very popular in her home town of Minneapolis where her Christmas show is legendary. She makes money from her image and from doing commercials etc. in character.

Rollerina worked on Wall Street Monday through Friday.

Here in The UK they are usually Whores for guys into tranny fucking.

I knew a drag queen who taught young children during the day. If we were drinking late into the night she'd say tomorrow would be " a coloring day".

Most of the ones I know don't, and they all live in squalor. But, frankly, I ain't exactly hanging out with superstars.

I can always tell if a guy does drag because they pluck their eyebrows down to nothing.

Here’s an interesting video.

Dixie Longate sells Tupperware.

[quote]Most of the ones I know don't, and they all live in squalor.

I’ve notice that too.

Heidi N. Closet said on RPDR season 12 that she made $9,000 the year before working at a gas station.

R10 Sad. I don’t understand why so many of them don’t understand that being a drag queen at your local gay bar a few times a week isn’t going to pay the bills and that they need to get educated in something so that they have a stable day job.

R11 He lived in a very small town in North Carolina with a population under 2,000 and was 23 when it was filmed. Apparently he just moved to LA, and I’m sure he’s making good money now since he was one of the most popular people on the show. Looks like it worked out for him.

bump

The ones I knew in Indy all lived in one house and did a lot of drugs and shoplifting.

Before she got on Drag Race and secured the gig doing RuPaul's wigs, Delta Work was a manager at a McDonald's.

Aiden Zhane from the past RPDR season worked at IHOP before she was cast.

There are many drag queens who haven't been on Drag Race who make good livings doing drag. Combining gigs in your home town with long residencies in resort towns with cruises and tours around the country to gay bars and resorts can easily net them a six figure income.

Really the breakdown is like this:

The Big Name Drag Race Stars who either won or were charismatic enough to establish themselves as stars: Bianca Del Rio, Alaska, Katya, Shangela, etc

The Big Indie Stars who have either been around since before Drag Race or established themselves as names without it: Lady Bunny,Coco Peru, Jackie Beat, Peaches Christ, Sherry Vine, etc

Resort Show Stars like Miss Richfield and Dina Martina and Varla Jean Merman and the Vegas Queens like Coco Montrese and Derrick Berry

2nd Tier Drag Race Stars: One who didn't win or finish very high in their seasons but they manage to get enough work to have a career

2nd Tier Resort/Cruise Ship Queens who establish strong enough followings to make good livings

The Head Queen in your Metro Area: if you live in a big enough city, there's maybe at least one queen who runs everything at the big drag venue...they might have a title like entertainment director and frequently they work with/as liquor reps for the big labels, so maybe not technically making their living solely as queens but being a queen is really all about pushing drinks so...

The bigger drag names in your town: probably not making a f/t living solely by doing drag but can certainly supplement their incomes. A lot of queens are make up artists. Some do hair; some make clothes/costumes.

The Rest: a very expensive hobby that requires a Sugar Daddy/A Patient drag loving spouse/living in mom's basement/some sort of day job to support themselves

They are driven by a yearning that you or I will not understand.

A lot of them are trying to be social media influencers and youtubers now too. They have podcasts and youtube shows and make-up lines and fashion posts. Same as most reality tv alum. It seems you can make a living from your appearance on the show - although for most it isn't the big bucks.

This is the downside of drag that no one talks about. The relative poverty - giving up your youth and potential careers to work a few nights a week, including some Tue night Bingos that attract 15 people at most.

I know this sounds controversial - but going into drag is a ticket to nowhere for most people. You're typically very young - get addicted to the attention, get addicted to drugs (it's inevitable if you're in bars and clubs 4-5x a week), and then don't develop your education or career because you're working nights and can't get up at 6am.

No health insurance, no 401k and you age out by the time you're 40.

There are a handful of winners and RuPaul has opened up a whole new world of opportunities for drag. Say what you will - but he's allowed some people to make a very good living through a lot of different channels.

That would never have been a possibility before his show. But I still think it's a very precarious road to travel down. More so than acting.

R16 covers it.

Most local levels queens are not doing this for fortune. Some may hope for a bit of local fame, and RPDR has changed the game, obviously, but it's about the same odds as become a fine ballerina or figure skater.

One of my good friends is a title winner on local and regional levels, but she maybe made a few thousand after factoring in hair and outfits, travel expenses, fees for pageants, etc. She's now looking into investing some of that money with partners into starting their own pageant or some kind of event that would earn more and or sustain itself.

R19 Do you really think such an obvious observation will be controversial?

I guess maybe a 16 year old who grew up with Drag Race might think that being a drag queen is akin to being a celebrity. I’m 42, and I think of drag culture in terms of Paris is Burning, which certainly is not a glamorous or luxurious lifestyle, and which doesn’t end well for many. Even on Drag Race, many of the contestants talk about being impoverished, even homeless. On AJ and the Queen, RuPaul showed it as a hard life of constant financial struggle. Anyone who watches all this stuff and somehow thinks that drag is a high-earning job for most people is pretty damned naive.

And I wouldn’t consider it giving up one’s youth at all. When I was young, I went to clubs a lot while I was in college, and I kept going when I was a young working adult. Drag queens were at some of them. We were both there, is my point, and I was having fun and I assumed they were, as well. That’s not sacrificing youth; that’s making the best of it.

Most of the early outs from the early seasons of Drag Race (up to around S5) generally fall into the last couple of categories at R16. Before social media exploded and people figured out how to market themselves online, the first boots and filler queens sank back into obscurity pretty quickly—the unwritten rule was that if you couldn't make an impression on the show, you weren't going to get any career boost from it.

Akashia from S1 went back to working at Starbucks and only came out of retirement a couple years ago to do some local gigs. Rebecca Glasscock quit drag and worked as a makeup artist in a local department store. OTOH, Porkchop Parker managed to spin being the first-ever first out into its own sort of fame, and she does pretty well living and working in LA and taking the occasional international booking.

Venus D-Lite from S3 is kind of a sad case who has tried and failed repeatedly to be relevant after going home first, most notably with some cringey reality appearances like [italic]Botched[/italic] and [italic]My Strange Addiction.[/italic] In an interview on Jonny McGovern's [italic]Hey Qween,[/italic] she said it actually became harder for her to find work after going on the show—before then she had been a cast member with a well-known LA drag revue (Dreamgirls at Micky's in West Hollywood), but she said her bookings mostly dried up because she was regarded as a joke.

Alisa Summers, the first boot from S4, is considered by most fans to be the least memorable RPDR queen. She went back to her regular weekend gig at a bar in Tampa and works a day job at a call center.

Penny Tration, the first boot from S5, had some buzz starting out after getting voted onto the show on Facebook, but she fizzled out quickly. She does the occasional hosting gig in Cincinnati and waits tables as her regular job.

[quote] On AJ and the Queen, RuPaul showed it as a hard life of constant financial struggle. Anyone who watches all this stuff and somehow thinks that drag is a high-earning job for most people is pretty damned naive.

I could see parallels to sex work - trying to take something that is an intrinsic part of who someone is (their femme presentation) and figuring a way to monetize it.

For years, most of the drag queens in my area (flyoverstan) were just normal working stiffs with a hobby, gay bar employees who couldn't define their life outside of the bar scene, or semi-homeless grifters.

Those years have not ended. It's still those years.

We do have one drag queen from here who does pretty good for herself as a nationwide DJ, but besides that they are all 2nd rate insult clowns.

Life and business and entertainment are so peculiar. Drag used to be part of a subculture, sort of gay nightlife clowns, something most people wouldn’t be able to differentiate from transgenderism. Then along came Project Runway, a serious TV competition, and America’s Next Top Model, which was fool of silliness, and RuPaul patched them together into an intentionally over-the-top, ridiculously excessive parody show. It was very obviously inspired by both of those shows, pushing contestants to do the impossible, doing improvised sewing, acting, singing, dancing, runway walking their own clothes, makeup and hair, standup comedy...it was just stupidly impossible and all with a “fuck it! This is so dumb!” attitude.

Now the contestants, the fans and the production all take it as seriously as Tim Gunn ever took Project Runway. It seemed like it was intended to be a farcical version of that show, with the foolishness of Tyra Banks’s impossible-to-embarrass sensibility, and now it’s so meta, with such a serious attitude and approach to doing the lamest shit. It’s just kind of head spinning when you think about it. It has converted intentionally bad satire into serious business.

RuPaul is a Brain Surgeon

The same thing could be asked of comedians who aren’t famous. They have lousy regular jobs to pay the bills. A bitch needs to eat.

R27 And musicians. For every musician whose name we know, there are 5,000 whose name we don’t and yet who spend a huge share of their lives playing locally or regionally.

Only the cream rises to the top, be if pro sports, pop stars, drag queens or Insta-hos.

Today's Tik Tok/Chaturbate/Only Fans superstar is tomorrow's has-been and never was. A lot of these people are going to be in for a very rude awakening when the tokens start drying up a year from now and the next hot body and beautiful face has taken over.

R25, I agree with you 100%. I lost interest in RPDR after the first few seasons, when it began crossing over into the mainstream, winning Emmys, and taking itself more seriously. (The seriousness, btw, is why I never enjoyed Project Runway and thought Tim Gunn was a sanctimonious prune).

I know it probably sounds churlish and hipster-y, but I loved drag as a subversive act, and when it becomes so mainstream that you can win over the middlebrows who vote on the Emmys, it becomes less interesting to me.

The queens that became popular from Drag Race are now fairly wealthy, but they don't represent your average drag queen. The non-famous drag queens would have to have day jobs.

R27/R28 - I don't agree. Comedians work one, maybe two 15 minute sets, if that. You just show up. Bands have a set time and are usually weekends, but they have to finish before 11 or 12.

Drag queens have to do a lot of prep work, work weekday nights, hang around and mill about with patrons.

I honestly think drag queens work requires a lot more prep and face-time.

Being a comedian doesn't have the start up cost. Drag is expensive.

R30 I’m not so condemning of it. I still watch the show. It has become my go-to background mindless TV since I gave up Bravo cold turkey. I just find the progression from a knowingly tongue-in-cheek satire of self-serious reality competition shows to a self-serious competition show based on what has now become self-parody as much as anything else is a really curious evolution.

You don’t think musicians spend time preparing? They have to spend their lives learning to play or sing, and a lot of time with bandmates practicing. Often, they also spend time thinking through and coordinating their visual aesthetics, writing music, etc.

Two things don’t have to be exactly the same to warrant a comparison.

R35 - yes, I think there's a lot of work and input to being a good musician. But it just seems it would be more practical to keep a full-time job while doing it. You can practice singing and coming up with new songs on your way to work or during breaks or whatever.

R36 I’m not trying to be argumentative, but...no, not really. Maybe if you’re a solo player and singer, but how could band members with full time jobs possibly write, arrange and practice during work breaks? It’s another job. They don’t just agree to do X, Y and Z songs and then meet at the venue, never having practiced. If they’re musicians, they also have to practice both alone and together and spend time maintaining their instruments, depending what the instrument is. Musicians spend a hell of a lot of time practicing. They don’t just show up and play well.

Do you think comedians are just naturally fun people who hop on stage and be themselves? Lmfao. Joan Rivers would smack you for you for saying that if she were still alive.

Oh yes, R38. Whomever thinks that probably hasn’t seen her documentary, Piece of Work. It really brought her career back. People were so impressed with her work ethic and the effort she put into her job, given that people just assumed she’s automatically hilarious. She had a card catalog full of jokes organized by topic. As a multimillionaire and a household name, she intentionally played a tiny dive bar once a week to keep her wit razor sharp and for a reality check. Of all comedians, she comes across as one of the most naturally quick witted, but that’s because she was a hardworking professional who spent many decades thinking up and integrating one-liner responses to every possible topic. She’s proof that genius comes from hard work.

Likewise, my favorite musician Tori Amos: she began playing piano as a toddler. She studied it formally at the Peabody Conservatory, every day of her young life from age five to 12. Then she played in bars and hotels every day from 12 until she had a six-album record deal. In her recent book “Resistance,” she describes her work habits, which involve writing and playing every day. Until a few years ago, she averaged about 230 stage shows every single year of her career, playing and singing 2.5 hours on average each show, plus several hours of sound checks beforehand. When she wasn’t on tour, she was composing and recording.

As a pretty reliable rule, when any kind of creative art looks easy, someone is working their ass off continually to make it second nature.

Drag queens sell drugs. Or did that stop once Drag Race became popular?

If you want drugs, find a drag queen. I thought everyone knew that.

Or pimp out "straight" boys for gay sex and pron.

[quote] Do you think comedians are just naturally fun people who hop on stage and be themselves?

I visit several soap threads - and based on some of the truly stupid responses we see there, people honestly believe that if a show is an hour long it only takes an hour or two to film it.

Social media has given many people the confidence of thinking they know all there is to know about the entertainment industry, but many of them don't have even the tiniest percentage of a clue - they only see the end result.

Some very strange ideas about the world of drag.

For every "lifer" in drag there are 100 who do it for shits and giggles for a few years then announce a "drag going out of business sale" to their friends and they move on...much like any other person in the performing arts.

Drag used to be rather working class but I know drag queens who are vice presidents at large corporations.

Good drag queens DO rehearse and prepare their numbers in advance. If you don't, then you quickly get a terrible reputation.

Not all drag queens are selling drugs. In fact, in big cities, I doubt very many do at all...there are plenty of professional drug dealers in all the bars.

A smart drag queen with a good work ethic and the ability to network, can get a lot of corporate work for meetings, parties, conferences, etc. And, many professional drag queens do weddings and private parties as well.

I liked the video at R7. They all sound like drag is a fun form of expression for them.

I remember an interview with Varla Jean Merman, who I think was a creative director at a major NYC ad agency--a job he/she kept long into the successful career as VJM. I thought that was interesting, if challenging.

I hear in real life Sigourney Beaver is a highly respected neurosurgeon.

I knew one in New York who was straight, married and a cop. In drag, she resembled Patrick Swayze's character in To Woo Fong - very sweet and polite. I wonder what happened to her when New York clubland went up in a puff of smoke. She was nice to hang out with.

Probably on three dozen hangers in the darkest closet in New York.

TIL I'm a fan of a lot of the Big Indie Stars.

I went to college with someone who moonlit as a professional drag performer. Nice guy, very femme and very funny. He worked as a movie theater manager by day, seemed very together, and paid his bills just fine. He did party hard a few times a week, but we were in our early 20s so what did it matter. Last I heard he was thinking of opening up his own venue.

Pretty much ALL of them now are struggling because of COVID shutting down regular venues and tours. Not everyone has the money Bianca or Trixie has (they worked for it, no shade there).

Coco Peru has been doing online shows for "tip what you can" money. She is also doing Cameos (most of them are) and personal phone calls for $50 a pop. Her husband is a tenured professor so at least there is that money coming in. But I imagine similar tier queens like Jackie Beat and Sherry Vine who are probably getting worried by now.

The most recent winner of Drag Race really got screwed as Covid came right on the heels of her win. She's spent nearly the entire time of her win when she would have been making some good money at home. What a fucking depressing outcome. No idea what she, or any of the far less established girls are doing to get by.

It always seems like they're having more fun than their audience.

Historically yes, drag queens were like everyone else, they had jobs/careers.

Everything from shop bottoms working in retail like department or whatever stores (Pat Fields employed a good number of drag queens and trannies). Some worked in offices, had careers like nursing, or even law, accounting, hair dressers, beauty salon owners, other sort of business owners.....

But old school drag was more about camp and maybe performing. It wasn't seen as a means to any sort of career in of itself. Well not unless you were going the "female impersonator" route like Danny La Rue, Craig Russell, Charles Pierce, etc...

Lady Bunny, RuPaul, Lahoma, Chicklet, Shannon, etc... tons of old school club kids/drag queens all had day jobs in boys clothing. Only time you saw them in drag is when they were out and about, clubbing, or working (in a club,bar, or whatever).

It is far easier for a man (gay or straight) or even a femmy gay to find work than a trans. Since most drag queens weren't out to changing their sex artifice would get you but so far in broad daylight. You can beat down a beard line pretty convincingly for lights in a club, bar or even being on street at night. Daytime and office lights are another matter.

We would sit at Tiffany's diner back in the day early in morning as everyone tumbled in after clubbing. Queens you thought were gorgeous just hours before when seen at Monster or Boy Bar looked very hard in bright lights.

Of course this is all changed now with RuPaul and "Drag Race"

I love these bullshit posts about drag queens having high-powered executive jobs. No, no fucking way. I don't believe it.

Um well Mr. Smarty Pants it wasn't known they were doing drag. This and the places they went while in drag weren't exactly where they'd meet anyone they knew professionally or from their (straight) social circle.

What R1 said. Miss Richfield is a pretty dumb example to prove OP’s point. She’s the epitome of a career drag queen with rotating seasonal gigs, endorsement deals and a “small pond” fanbase to fall back on in Minnesota.

Also, typical of today’s elderly, OP can’t quite wrap his head around a livelihood that doesn’t chain you to a full-time job until death. The gig economy ain’t just for Uber drivers.

R51, there was a famous resort in the Catskills that catered to transvestites in the 1950s, many of whom were very well-to-do professionals.

Of course, the evenings those ladies shared were not open to the general public.

EXCUSE ME! Some of us DO have high-powered jobs!

R54

That would be Casa Susanna on 150 acres in Catskills.

More:

Became a play by Harvey Fierstein...

For those who didn't know Catskills and other areas of upstate NY had all sorts of bungalow colonies catering to various ethnic or other groups.

Besides transvestites there were Irish, various Jewish (including one made up of mostly Polish holocaust survivors and their famiies), various "artsy" folks, etc... Germans had similar colonies out in Long Island and elsewhere as well.

Land was relatively inexpensive, and these bungalow or whatever groups allowed people to vacation together among their own kind. However with advent of jet travel making it possible to travel across country or oceans in several hours, and decreasing cost of air travel the appeal of such places began to wane. Younger generations would rather go to Florida or someplace else than be stuck up in the Catskills all summer.

For middle class and below married women ideas of a vacation changed as well. They didn't want to be stuck doing same things they did at home (cooking, cleaning, etc..). Camping is all very well now and then, but sometimes you want to go to a resort or hotel and let someone else worry about cooking, laundry, etc...