from the campus of san jose state university. welcome to this edition of equal time. i'm your host, journalism school director, bob rucker. san jose is considered to be not only the well heeled capital of silicon valley; it's also home to some men who wear heels. it's a popular place for drag queens. people like seeing things categorized and put into boxes instead of getting put into seven layers of tights and then getting in high heels we'll explore the life of men who perform in wigs and makeup, on this edition of equal time. [music] drag performing, an art form that was once not accepted.

has risen to become more popular than ever. correspondent justin san diego explores drag pageantry and safety. if i have an incredible ballot and can come out with my jewels and my gown and have everyone's breath taken away just because i stepped out, i love that. anthony micheli, also known as alina maletti galore started performing in drag in 1992. alina is my wonderwoman, as a young person i didn't always feel handsome or beautiful so that's the positive she make's me feel beautiful. drag queens or performers, we get up on the stage and we perform for you and we take off the makeup at the end of the show, it's an artistic job, it's an artistic way of expressing yourself. in between shows at local clubs, micheli competes in drag pageants. you have interview, talent, gown and onstage questions for most of them. but miss continental is about beauty, poise, womanly. miss gay america is just like miss america

you have the different facets: interview, talent, presentation miss gay usofa is about outstanding performance, gown, and interview. he is also competing for entertainer of the year. and e.o.y is about how inventive you are. you travel for a year so this financial reward as far as that is concerned, you get lots of gifts and prizes and things. but then there is the accomplishment micheli has utilized his platform to raise awareness and money for charities. my mom died four years ago and i did awareness about dementia and alzheimer's. one year we didn't have enough money for gay pride. so they called all of the drag queens together and asked us to perform on the street of stockton. and we raised so much money for gay pride. the bay area has become more accepting of drags since micheli started to perform in 1992 back then, you still didn't want to see drag queens walking on the street at night time. so why would you wanna see them in the day time?

and we did our own little parade and walked the streets and did a show for them and it was dangerous for us at that time. it's changed to the point that you had to be beautiful and that's all that was accepted. then it went to us when you had to be talented and that was all that was accepted. now you can be a comedy queen. we're living in a lifetime now were everything is accepted as long as you don't harm anybody. micheli says he's helped many young adults get into drag and adding them into his drag house or drag family. i have almost 50 children. the drag family is all about making sure everyone is protected and taken care of. you have to be in school or on the way to graduating and have a job because you can not help anyone else if you cannot help yourself. so being a part of my family meant you have to be able to someday help others. when we come back, we'll take a look at how drag has evolved over time. [music]

[music] welcome back. we've seen how some men have experienced san jose drag. now we'll take a look at the future of drag performing and how it is expanding to include different styles. george downes, he goes by the drag name woowoo monroe has an aesthetic opposite of micheli rather than appear womanly, downes tries for a comedic, artistic style. this is all the foundation work that i do so foundation, highlighting, contouring. other drag queens have their own makeup tips i wear four pairs of lashes on each eye i love just big, thick lashes. i love a dark lip. i love lots of blush. in my first year i probably spent well over $1500 to $2000 on makeup and wigs

many drag queens say that the bay area is safe and has more opportunities for them. it's so easy living in the bay area five minutes down the road there's a drag show. where as in college i had to travel an hour. i'm actually a deputy sheriff in san fransisco. i'm very aware of my surroundings. i notice when people are following me nick nelson, or madison mcqueen started his drag career at his college in south dakota six years ago. it was like my first night out, i looked like like a complete trainwreck. and i went into one of the bars and one of the like, like the very very straight bars in my college town, got turned down. which is totally cool, walked out and have drinks thrown at me. i think that i was wearing three wigs at the time. so it didn't hurt too bad. some drag queens struggle getting acceptance from their friends and family. i can't do drag at home. is a thing so i have to bring all my stuff. i have to go out and either get ready at someone's house or get ready at the venue.

some people at the place i live at just don't understand it or it scares them physically. there's just something about breaking gender norms that people don't get or makes people uncomfortable. people like seeing things categorized and put into boxes instead of being put into seven layers of tights and then getting into high heels. my mother's biggest issue is that she thought that i was gonna become a woman [laughs to himself] i'm like, "no mom i'm fine being a man." my mother is a staunch republican. funny enough, she said "you know i might even have some clothes i can give you." i was like, "no mom you don't have anything i'd wear." not all drag queens are biologically male. a faux queen is a person who lives as a woman and performs as a man dressed as a woman. and some drag involves dressing up like men. a drag king is a woman who dresses as a man and performs lipsyncs. out of drag goldstein and young are in a relationship together

they have used it for charity as well as to celebrate goldstein's sobriety. when i turned five years sober and 40 years old. i asked if i could be in the sober show. probably 95% of what i do is about charity work. we specifically, mad dog and i, raise money for the queer lifespace, which is a lgbt counselling organization. we also raise money for aids lifecycle of course. i rode in that. twice a month, downes hosts a show called circus at renegades bar. i wanted to bring a show to san jose that featured performers that were out of the norm. that could think out of the box and be creative. and not do just cookie cutter drag. being able to take a song and not take it for it's

face value but use the words that are in it and come up with a different meaning for them. i was actually in a pageant last year and won the title of miss california gold i think it was the first time they ever had a bald queen win a pagent like that. downes says the increase in campy drag has helped expand the drag community. in the bay area particularly. i think some of these other drag queens that are better, more avante-garde have really pushed the envelope of what's acceptable in the drag community. i think that is the biggest growth that i've seen since i started doing drag. if i could make somebody smile or make somebody laugh or make somebody think. you know that's worth it to me. now when we come back, we will sit down with

three drag queens who have very different styles and a young fan of drag. stay with us. [music] welcome back to this edition of equal time. where our focus today is on the drag queen culture. let's meet our guests hi, my name is george downes, my stage name is woowoo monroe and i've been performing drag for the last three and a half years here in san jose. and i host a show twice a month. hi my name is rockem sakura, my real name is brian bradford. i'm a local anime, jpop sort of nerdy queen in this area. and i've been performing drag for almost one and a half years. hi my name is sophie scrivins. i live in san jose and i was born and raised here. and i attend a lot of drag shows in the bay area.

hi my name is tony micheli i go by the name alina miletti galore. and i've been performing for 18 years. i'm an old queen. and i'm justin sandiego and i'll be the correspondent on this episode. very good, thank you all for being here and sharing your thoughts. what i'm curious about is that a lot of the public is looking at this now going, "how did they get into this, what drove you or what drew you to the drag queen culture?" let's start with you george. >>amazingly enough it was an accident. i went to a party kind of with crazy costumes. i wore some pink eyelashes and painted my goatee pink. i wore a pink tutu and had a blast and kept blossoming from there. and friends kept inviting my drag persona to parties and i wound up at a part one time and the club promoter came up to me and he said "you have to come perform at my club." and i was like, "okay i guess i will."

>>very cool and tony, your situation, probably the same thing? >>no, mine was i wanted to compete in pageants. >>really? >>the one thing that i had in common with my mom was that we loved watching miss usa, miss universe and miss america. and i always wanted to be miss usofa or miss universe or miss america but you have to be a girl. so i found out there was miss gay america, miss gay usofa and miss gay universe. and i went on to compete in pageants. so i loved competing in pageants and that's how it started for me. >>very cool, self confidence seems to be the key of the energy i'm sensing from all of you. talk a little bit about that brian. well, i mean, you have to be really confident in the drag community. in order to confidently come out in a pair of heels and like 70 pounds of make up. and to look like you're doing something....that's like difficult. >>mhmm. for a lot of us that kind of confidence comes naturally. and it's something that draws us to the stage.

and kind of makes us what to perform every time. at least for me personally. >>very cool though, that's alright. sophia. sophia i started to go out and see drag queens when i was in high school or college. and i enjoyed it, a lot of my friends, a lot of the community came out. tell us about your experience. i think i first got into drag with jeffree star when i was in like middle school on myspace. just kind of went from there, i found out about tranny shack in san fransisco and so my big plan was when i turned 21 i wanted to go to every show. then it's kind of changed since then, but -- >> and you enjoy it? >>no, yeah i love it. and i was going to all of peaches christ shows in san fransico before i was 21 because there aren't a whole lot of shows that you can go to when you are underage. but at least i was attend all of those ones. >>justin? i just think it's one of the most under appreciated art forms. i just hope one day there can be a museum of drag queens. just because i think they should be honored at a higher level.

>>tell me why. it's very multi-layered i think, there's makeup, there's the actual stage performance there's costumes, hair, makeup. some people go into singing. or acting or pageantry and there's all different types of avenues for this art form. >>artistic expression, major part of it. but let's talk about the social impact. we've gone through periods of time, i know in my lifetime, when this couldn't be on television. we would not be talking about this and now, we seem to be kicking the door down talking about this. why do you think that is? what made that change happen? >>i think that society is ready for something different. we've always been in the background and we come in, we go out, we come in, we go out. so if you're fortunate to be around when we are riding an upwave. then you take it for all you have. rupaul's drag race, i remember when she first came out. i wasn't so happy about it but then i'm looking at all the different avenues she's made for us. because i was under the assumption that it was going to be like reality television where you got on there and you made

i don't know if i can say this but you made a fool of yourself. and, because that's what sells. a lot of us, i know for sure >>they've done a lot of that too. they've done some creative editing with their show. >>but we're serious about what we do. i'm like we get out there, we're entertainers just like everyone else. and for the academy of arts and designs, we would like a sag card. because we work just as hard as everyone else who's out here doing movies and things like that and we're not getting paid for it but we would like a sag card because there's a lot of us that are female impersonators that could use the insurance and different things like that. so the mainstream that we have is that everyone is accepting of us but i just wish that the community would treat us as an art form and pay the people. >>you know the insurance comment kind of begs the question. can it sometimes be dangerous? can it be unsafe? do you have people that come after you, give you a hard time? go ahead brian. i mean, in the year and a half that i've been doing drag, i haven't been in any personal interactions with anyone

who would be like a predator or someone who is like a general, like, threat to my well being. but there are people who constantly kind of badger you for like sex and things like that. because people just like, don't understand the difference between drag and like, fetishes. drag is fetishized a lot. people just don't understand or make the connection. >>social networks or social medias a really bad place. i got, someone had actually followed me on facebook and called me. they were from albania and he, i'm driving down my car. he says, "may i speak with alena?" and i'm like, "this is alina." and then he goes, "this is such and uch and i'm from here and i'm coming to where you live to have sex with you." >>they actually said that? >>they actually called me and i had to take my phone number off of facebook. >>wow. these are things that happen.

and i'm like, i'm married and i've been with my husband for 18 years. a lot of us out here aren't looking for sex. we're looking to perform and entertain. but there are a lot of people that do this as a sexual gratification. i'm just not one of them. >> going back to what you were saying earlier about the whole sag cards. a lot of queens do it as a pay check or as a job >>yes but is the pay really that good, because i hear a lot of you guys have other jobs on top of it. it can be, but it doesn't no. i can travel, i compete in pageants like i said before, and we have a thing once you make the tape then you get paid more. so i made sure i made the tape whenever i'm competing. by either winning or being in that top 10. then you get booked to go across the country to perform and then you have a set price that you use. then they pay you to come out, then if you do that constantly, you can make your living. however it's hard to do that when you have a family. it's hard to do that when you have another job. another job is not gonna let you go away to do this. so with drag, if you wanna make living with it you have to be all in or not.

>>no in betweens there? there can't be an in-between because you will not make a living at it. there's a lot of jobs you can do that you go to your job for 8 hours a day and that's your job. then you go home, and you have a life after that. you can't do that as a full time drag queen if you're gonna be a full time drag queen, it's full time 24/7. >>exactly >>really? because you may have to do a job at 2 o'clock in the afternoon or you may have to do a job at 2 o'clock in the morning. you have to go where the check is. the sad part about being in drag, if you do not know how to make it work if you don't know how to franchise like, alina miletti is franchised as an llc. so if you don't know how to franchise yourself then you don't have insurance. you don't have medical insurance, you don't have -- there are a lot of drag queens that die, and they can't afford to bury themselves. so there's things that you need for health, you know, and welfare. that's why most of us work and have jobs where we have benefits.

and i've always been fascinated, sophie i'll be bringing you in on this conversation. when i was in college, i could get a bunch of friends of mine, women and men to come from the dorm or come from the community and want to check it out and they would enjoy it. they didn't go back though and invite people to come with them. did you have that problem? people want to join you? come see them perform? i mean it depends, i have brought a lot of different people to shows i've convinced people to get into it whether they liked it or not so i mean it kind of depends. with a lot of like straight men, i've really tried to get them into it. like boyfriends i've had and it's been like half and half. it really depends. >>it all depends on your individual creative tastes. >>it's not for everybody, you know, some people, it's kind of like going to see a movie. you go see the movie the movie was nice it's not like i'm gonna go see that movie again. so, if we get you out there one time, our advertisement is word of mouth honestly. so if we get you in there one time and you enjoy it, you let somebody else know about it and i promise you that

if you tell 10 people about it, atleast 2 or 3 of those people will come back and they'll tell someone. that's how we bring it in. our places are not always packed out the door. but the people who do come in and see us, they do enjoy us. >>how much of your personal life experience you infuse in your program, in your effort? do you tell them a little bit about your family or do you not talk about it, is that off limits or? >>oh i do, i do. >>so do i. i mean a lot of us, it's funny because i work in law enforcement for my day job. which is completely the opposite direction but yeah i joke about my regular job at my show, to my audience. and you know, a lot of people- i think that's probably what a lot of people find it interesting it's like, "that person's a cop during the day?" [laughter] >>do your buddies ever come and watch the show? actually they do, i have a few coworkers that come pretty regularly to my shows. i've had a lot of coworkers that have come once or twice.

and then i have coworkers that don't want anything to do with it. >>the biggest thing about drag and our coworkers i work with a lot of females and everytime they see my pictures they're like, "who does your makeup? you need to show me how to do your makeup." and i'll tell you straight up, i know how to paint this face. >>not anybody else's. [laughter] and i'm like, i can try but i know what looks good on this one and i do pretty good by that, i tried painting other people, oh my gosh, no. >>what are some of the steps you do in transforming? shave. >>constantly i'd imagine. >>hello [laughter] half of my face when i do drag is just glue. glue down the eyebrows, glue down the sideburns and then glue the mouth shut. >>you do this how many times a day or a week? i'm relatively new, i'm fairly new. i do it maybe at most 3 times a week. but mostly twice a week.

elmer's glue, if you ever want to just. don't tell anyone. don't, don't. the school board will be after us. they're wondering who's taking their glue. >>purple glue. [laughter] >>when all the school supplies go out, all the drag queens go and stock up on elmer's glue. back to school's like our christmas. >>you're keeping them in business. >>yeah, there we go. we want an endorsement. >>and how about your families? do you talk to them about this side of your life? oh my gosh yeah, my family knows about it. most definitely. >>what was their reaction at the beginning? you tell them, i really enjoy being a drag queen. well i didn't tell them that. [laughter] my husband is the first person i ever told the complete truth. you know, when you're dating you don't tell someone you're a drag queen. i told my husband, i actually went and sat on his lap. i said, "this is, this is it." "you know, either you like it or you don't." i'm a flight attendant and i'm a drag queen. if you can't deal with either one of those i can't be in your life.

>>how did he react? we've been together 18 years. >>18 years, very good. the funniest part was my son. we had a small house and i used to keep my drag in his closet. and my husband had come out and i was practicing. my son went out and he's goes, "dad! tony's got a dress on" and my husbands running in and i'm stuck there with the dress on like, "oh my gosh, now i guess i have to tell him i do drag." and then he realized it didn't make me any less of a man. it was just something i enjoy doing. it contributed to the household so. >>and your families? how did they react? funny enough, i kind of kept it from my mother for a while. when i finally did tell her i got a completely opposite reaction than i thought i would. she actually said, "oh, you know i probably have some clothes you could have." i said, "no mom you don't have any clothes that i could use." >>i love it >>very cool. brian? when i started doing drag and my parents found out

they actually didn't like it at all. my mother would always joke about me dressing as a woman and things like that, she would always equate things that were feminine to being like super gay and bad. when she found i was doing drag she was like, "you need to stop doing this because you look terrible." the funny thing was, when i started doing drag i looked just like my mother. joke's on her. but i also started doing -- [laughter] i've been in a relationship with my partner for about 8 years. and i started doing drag while in the relationship. so i transitioned into doing drag. and my partner, was kind of skeptical at first, about it. but it was just a new side of me that just gets to come out. when you start doing drag, its more of your artistic presence comes out. and you're able to express yourself more. and sometimes it's kind of daunting.

and people see that there's a lot more of you. and that's kind of intimidating. >> i can imagine. and everyone out there in the audience knows about rupaul and those competitions and all that. do they ever raise some questions, sophia i had a question about, some people in the audience may not appreciate the show at all. and i say hey, why are you talking about this? a lot of us don't agree with this lifestyle. do you ever encounter people like that in the community? just talking about drag race? or? or just gay experienced publicly or drag. >>here and there, yeah. for the most part, i tend to bring it up with everyone that i talk to. just like meeting new people. just because it is a big part of my life. and so, either the conversation dwindles or i'll make a new friend out of it. so, i mean, i don't get really really negative feedback usually talking about it. but some people just don't understand. >> i think we're lucky to live where we live too.

i mean, living in the san francisco bay area we are really really lucky to be surrounded by such an open mind-set. of people, i mean, we couldn't do the same things we do probably in other parts of the country without hiding a lot of it. >>actually, it's not bad. because fortunately even to travel throughout the country. one of the things that i can say about this generation of children and people is that we're more accepting, period. so to be able to, this would not have happened 20 years ago. now we can walk around and we can say i'm a drag queen. we can walk around and say i'm an entertainer. we can walk around and just enjoy. it's not a problem for men to wear a pancho or to have on lipgloss, or have their eyebrows done. even in social settings period. so for actually us to put on some foam here, posturepedic there, and to put on lipgloss and makeup is actually accepting because it's just our way of showing our artistic side.

and people are very accepting of it now. it's just not something that we could have done 20 years ago. >>we have about a minute left, i just want to drop in. not every gay person is into drag. but a lot of gay people like drag. they're into it, they just don't admit it. >>oh, really? i'll tell my husband that. [laughter] this has to be one of the most entertaining equal time's we've ever done. so i really want to thank each and everyone of you. and justin for coming up with this story. we'll try to entertain you again. so come on back for the next edition of equal time. [music]

thank you, thank you. domo arigato. we just heard one day on the street, "we won the war! we won the war!" all the cheers everywhere, americans cheering in--in chongqing. philip: they were living it up in post-war shanghai, and it's like in the movies, you know, they go ballroom dancing, dining in fine restaurants. you have the french-- you know, french. the russians were there. the span--everybody, all the europeans were there. so it was a lot of partying. narrator: toro sashimi from keiko a nob hill... and the mandarin's whole steamed bass. she was born almost 100 years ago in a china that no longer exists.