LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – West Hollywood is set to anoint Los Angeles singer and performer Pickle as its brand new ‘Drag Laureate’ – the city’s first official ambassador for the drag community and the second to hold that title in the U.S..
She will serve a two-year term raising awareness and expanding appreciation for drag culture, at a time when lawmakers in several states have tried to restrict drag performances.
“At this particular political moment, when there is such a climate of opposition to queer rights, to art forms like drag, to trans rights, it’s so important to have positions like these,” Pickle told Reuters.
“This is the death rattle of a movement that just cannot adapt to a changing world and to a community that is saying, ‘We’re not hiding in the shadows anymore.'”
Pickle’s resume over the past eight years includes performing, singing, hosting, and activism. She helped establish and run the Los Angeles Drag Story Hour to spark interest in reading and inclusion among children.
“Honestly, I would hope that people coming to drag story take away a sense of play, of imagination, a love for reading,” she said, donned with three roses in her long blonde wig, pink ruffled shorts and top, dangling blue earrings and a big green satin bow.
Libraries staging drag story hours have faced angry protesters calling for children to be protected from adult entertainment.
But a mother who took her son to Pickle’s reading hour said it offered a way to expand children’s awareness of others.
“As long as we continue to expose them and normalize these types of events and all of the different people that we share this city with, then it will become part of their life and normal for them,” said Christina Cady.
Pickle, who will be inaugurated as West Hollywood’s drag laureate on July 16, will work with D’Arcy Drollinger, recently named San Francisco’s Drag Laureate.
“I really want to empower drag artists to explore their talents, push themselves and challenge themselves, to really show the world that drag is a powerful, dynamic and intellectual art form,” said Pickle.
(Reporting by Jorge Garcia; Editing by Sonali Paul)
