(Credit: Photo courtesy Outlook Media)

(Credit: Photo courtesy Outlook Media)

Since time immemorial, men have donned women’s clothing, shaved off their eyebrows, and caked on layers of foundation before heading to Axis to lip-synch Britney Spears in front of roaring crowds.

Columbus is known as a Midwestern Mecca for all things queer, and especially for its unique drag scene – but it ain’t easy being preened.

“I think there’s a misconception that anyone who is a drag queen wants to be a woman. I think that’s inherently incorrect,” said “Sherri,” a former drag queen who asked we not reveal her true identity.

“There are people who are doing this because it’s theatrical, and to a certain extent, a commercial enterprise,” she explained. “And there are others who are doing drag and it’s the beginning of a path to potential gender reassignment. What’s interesting is that, generally, after a drag queen who is seeking gender reassignment actually becomes a woman, they often stop doing drag.”

Sherri said that, unlike transvestism, drag is generally for theatrics, and not for titillation.

“I don’t think there are very many men in the drag community who are dressing up because it excites them. It’s much more performance based,” she said.

Sherri said that one reason she no longer performs is the terrific amount of time and energy it takes to be successful.

“The rehearsal schedule for a [local drag legend Nina West] production requires a huge time commitment,” she said. “You rehearse for three hours a night, four days a week, for six to eight weeks leading up to a main stage show.”

“Not everyone is like that,” she continued. “Nina is like that because she is a person who seeks perfection, in terms of really copying the exact styles of the people she’s covering, and she wants to make sure that they are extremely polished.”

Depending on the experience of the queen, Sherri says that just getting into character can take hours.

“It really depends on the person, because there are people, like Maria Garrison, who can throw on a face in 15 minutes,” she said. “But for someone new to drag, or if the costume is especially elaborate, it can take an hour and a half or more.”

But merely gussying up isn’t necessarily going to cut it in the hyper-competitive world of drag queens and queer cabaret, noted Sherri.

“It has to be authentic. You are going up on stage and you are playing a woman,” she said. “And so your lip-synch has to be good, your makeup should be good – it’s important that it looks real.”

The drag scene in Columbus has been going on for a long time, since a legendary underground party in the late 1960s called the Berwick Ball, which carried on through the ’90s. Originally hosted by Dolly Divine, it was the drag event in the city, at a time when gay culture was not at all socially acceptable. (Dolly passed on several years ago, but her role in Columbus history was recognized by the Ohio Historical Society, which has added some of her original costumes and props to their GLBT collection, thanks to the work of the Gay Ohio History Initiative.) In many gay communities, drag queens occupy powerful roles, acting as liaisons to the straight community, as emcees and party hosts ... and even as warriors. During New York City’s Stonewall Riots of 1969, many of the protests were led by drag queens, casting them at the epicenter of the gay rights movement.

The world has changed, and the queens have largely laid down their armaments for garments and beaten their swords into vanity mirrors. Now, it’s mostly about having some good queer fun … so how does one go from square to drag queen? The process is actually fairly complicated.

“Here’s how it works: you decide you want to be a drag queen and you meet people that show you how to put on makeup and how to properly make yourself look like a woman, and the person that shows you how to do that is your drag mother,” explained Sherri, adding that drag mothers will often give protégés their drag name. Some queens even take portions of their mother’s name; Nina West is the drag daughter of another local legend, Virginia West.

“If you are new to the scene, it is very difficult and very competitive, although some establishments are very open to new drag queens being in shows,” said Sherri. “The drag here is very different than it is anywhere else. On the south side of Columbus, you still have the kind of ‘old school drag,’ or ‘female illusion’ – men dressing as women. But in the Short North, it’s more production-oriented, and you’ll often see six or seven drag queens on stages performing a very highly choreographed number. Columbus is known nationally for having an emphasis on large-scale, production-oriented drag shows,” she said, noting that it gives local performers a competitive edge when performing out of the state.

“There are four large drag pageant systems, and they are sort of set up to have a talent component,” said Sherri. “Columbus drag queens already do the talent portion all the time.”