Midweek Midwest Spotlight • Melee McQueen • Milwaukee, WI • 1. Describe your drag in a sentence. Model of the scene, chameleon of your dreams! • 2. What inspired you to start doing drag in the first place? I’m a Rupaul’s Drag Race baby! I also used to watch America’s Next Top Model and be very jealous that I wasn’t what modeling agencies looked for. I wanted a way in, so I took to photography and I made images with my high school friends modeling and imitating fashion I saw in magazines and on tv. My friends cooperated until it got tiring, because this is all self-motivated work. Now with drag, it reopened the door for me to plant myself firmly in the modeling position and I could be the main character of my ideas again. • 3. What is it like performing in the Milwaukee drag scene? Super competitive! I work amongst a ton of talent and the hugest struggle we have here in Milwaukee is lack of venues and opportunities. I would say there are about a handful of LGBTQ+ bars and clubs, not all of which have the space or set up for drag performances and personalities. Many things can make the Milwaukee scene better. The biggest and quickest way to improve it is to invest in the local drag queens you know. Most would say the changes must come from the queens themselves. I believe it is those above the queens...the audience. Their responses motivate us. The viewers and patrons need to tell their local bars and clubs that they like queens or a specific queen and staple that in the minds of business owners who have the say how much queens are worth. Queens do what we do because we need a form of acceptance from our community. • 4. What has drag done for you? In the last few years I’ve discovered a voice I didn’t have or think about before. Drag has made me think of myself as important because now I get to tell people who show up for me what I feel and think in a safe space. I meet people of different backgrounds all the time and we have this connection through drag as an art. • 5. What advice do you have for others wanting to start drag? MARKET YOURSELF! People in Milwaukee don’t believe that marketing is the end all be all that it truly is.