By Guan Tan & Patrick Chew



By Guan Tan & Patrick Chew



Layers of foundation, check. Heavy contouring, check. Striking lipstick, check. Eyelash extensions, check. Eight-inch heels, check. Mists of perfume, check. The transformation — a process that takes drag queens like Jeffrey Ng, Sammi Zhen, and Lucas Goh up to two hours to do — is arduous, painstaking, and, when complete, jarring. For some, dragging is a creative outlet. For others; a job. But no matter the motivation or circumstance, all drag queens agree that dragging goes beyond its enchanting appearance. Forget the glitz and glamour. Forget the theatrics. There is a sense of poignancy that lies beneath each drag persona — a direct result of years of coming to terms with one’s identity and sexuality. Individual roads to self discovery and actualisation that are made more difficult by a judgemental society, hellbent on rejecting them. It’s a sliding scale when it comes to the need or want for acceptance. Some still crave it. Others have stopped bothering. Most are in between. We invited three Singaporean drag queens to share their narratives. To have internal conversations of sorts that give us a glimpse into their lives from a vantage point that few have access to.

Dominic Phua

Jeffrey Ng Early into puberty Jeffrey Ng realised he was drawn to men. Unable to get to grips with his inclination, he dated a girl for two years in a bid to prove to himself that he might still be heterosexual. “I couldn’t believe that I’m gay – why is there a gay thing, why do I like guys…why am I gay?” the 25-year-old recounts his emotional anguish. “After the two-year relationship, I told my family that I didn’t even kiss her lips.” He eventually welcomed his sexuality, and came out to his parents at 14. The next four years, Ng lived in limbo. He was, like many others, a forsaken infant learning to embrace his identity amidst a society hostile to his kind. Being gay was not enough. As a matter of fact, it made him vulnerable, and susceptible to judgement. Stigmatised by society, Jeffrey retreated into himself, and was averse to conversations. His escape came at 18 when he attended a drag show, and witnessed how carefree the queens were. “It gave me a better understanding [of drag culture]. How could they perform so well – becoming another person?” He soon gave dragging a shot, and devised a femme fatale persona that was fiercely independent, and vocal — Jessiah Jessiah, brought out the genuine personality that has been suppressed within Ng. “As a guy back then, I was very introverted. Talking and opening up to people was very difficult. Jessiah is someone I’ve always wanted to be.”

The biggest obstacles on Ng’s road to self-discovery were his parents. He explained that while his parents had come to terms with him being gay, drag took things a notch higher. “I’m born as a boy, and now I want to be a woman. They’re probably thinking, ‘What have we done to deserve this?’ I feel sad, but I need them to accept me for who I am.” Ng’s mother first found out that he was dragging when she found his costumes and makeup. “She asked me what it was. So I told her I was performing, and earning a bit of extra money.” She continued to probe, and Ng showed her photographs of drag shows. “She was quite shocked, ‘Why are you doing this? Are you a prostitute or something?’ She was very upset.” Today, Ng’s mother continues to evade the topic. “I think it’s partly due to shame. My family probably doesn’t want neighbours to see that they have a queer son.”

Dominic Phua

Sammi Zhen “My parents are in denial. My mum still asks me to go get married,” Sammi Zhen echoes. He has been in the drag industry for the past 18 years, but time doesn’t negate the disapproval he receives. When posed such a question, Zhen would reply, “Huh? To who? Why not a maid?” “Asian parents are very [closed]. They won’t even talk about it…But my mum’s got dementia, maybe she forgets – I like to put it this way,” the 37-year-old adds. Back in the 90s, Zhen studied in the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, and was the first cohort of performing arts and theatrical studies graduates. Aspiring to be a comedian, he went door to door, asking if clubs and bars needed a performer. “If you get a show once a week, that was good – higher than NS pay!” he laughs. He was part of the second batch of drag queens in Singapore, following the trailblazer Boom Boom Room at New Bugis Street, where local entertainer Kumar held comedy gigs in 1992. “Bugis Street’s drag culture, it became like a night safari – you don’t see, you don’t ask.” Zhen was careful to note that prior to Kumar’s break in Boom Boom Room, there was no drag culture in Singapore, and neither was there the term ‘drag’ as we now know it. “Drag means transvestites, which means standing on streets to sell your body. In my time, drag queen – there was no such term. Drag queen meant you were becoming a woman…you wear a bra to sleep.” One of the venues that signed Zhen on, was a club along Pagoda Street in Chinatown. Back then in the early 90’s, he reminisced, “I could go out in full makeup, feather in my hair.” Where shows were usually slated for midnight, showtime would drag till 12:45AM as party-goers streamed in slowly. “And I’d be so hungry, I'd go down [to a coffeeshop], ‘Aunty! Hor Fun one plate!’ No one would say a thing.” That was back in the early 1990s, which coincided with the advent of drag culture in Bugis.

To Zhen, Singaporeans back then were much more tolerant of queer culture. Fast-forward to present circumstances, the situation has regressed drastically. And he attributes the deterioration to increasing censorship. “In a way, censorship does affect people, because people are not so exposed anymore. [With the] 70’s Bugis Street [phenomena], people got used to it. [But now] exposure is down in print and TV. And people ask, ‘Singapore got such things ah?’ People forgot about it.” With that came a steep decrease in Zhen's monthly income, “When times were good, they were good. But these years, it’s [been] bad – really bad, since 2014, 15, 16.” He considers that the climb in cost of living may have caused his salary to seem paltry. But the number of gigs available on the market has decreased nonetheless. “Now, I don’t know, seriously.” There’s still a glimmer of hope. Zhen sees a younger generation of drag queens rising up, for “now there is RuPaul’s drag race, and no matter how much they censor, people can find it on YouTube and online.”

Dominic Phua

Lucas Goh To the incoming generation of drag queens, RuPaul’s Drag Race imparts a great deal of drag history, and code of conduct. 21-year-old Lucas Goh expounds on that, “I think [it] sheds light on what has been here for years. And at the show’s core, I think it’s just entertainment. Goh only looked to RuPaul’s after he chanced upon drag culture through a school project. He was tasked to survey circles, “I was exploring circular things I can paint – strokes. The face is a circle, so I painted on my face.” And as he delved into face paint, he was drawn into heavy makeup, and subsequently drag culture – which resonated with him. “I identified with it.” A final year student at Laselle College of the Arts, Goh’s drag persona is an established woman in her mid-twenties by the moniker Arya Dunn — a pun on the phrase, “Are you done?” But it’s baffling dichotomy – for Goh is gender fluid in person, but once he’s transformed, Arya Dunn is a woman whose sexual orientation remains unknown. “In drag, I identify as a woman…a woman’s persona, hyper-femininity. Every drag queen will find her [individual] style, and I try to be artsy and over the top.”

Goh deems Arya Dunn a cathartic artistic avenue, “It’s more for me, a creative outlet…It feels really satisfying and [free] to be able to create concepts in your head, and bring them to life.” If Goh did not have an artistic release in photography, drawing, digital painting, or Arya Dunn, “[I’ll] just not exist, to be honest.” He was previously experimenting with a myriad of themes – dominatrix, BDSM, Broadway. But he recently zeroed in on a singular theme, sickness. “You look at my colour palette – bruises and blood, inspired by tiredness…My looks in general have been [shades of] red, purple and pink – skin, and bloody colours.” But for this shoot Goh injected green, “Green contrasts with red [according to] colour theory. It fits in because green is like mucus.” Artsy is a fresh trend in the drag culture that has surfaced in the past couple of years. Goh believes the “rise of social media and the Internet” could have contributed to it. A digital sea of art is now readily available for individuals to refer to. At the end of a night out, Arya Dunn sheds her makeup and Lucas Goh is back. He’s been through several stages of exploration. He first considered if he was gay, “I realised there was a period of time..I thought I was gay. But I was not, because I was attracted to women as well. Then I thought I was bisexual but I’m not bi because I’m attracted to [transgenders] as well.” Subsequently, Goh realised his attraction was not about sexuality, but he was drawn by personalities instead – essentially, pansexual. Goh questioned himself further, and concluded that he is gender fluid. There might not be many individuals in the local drag culture who identifies as gender fluid. Goh doesn’t ask, for people commonly presume that drag queens are gay. And will Goh proceed to make drag his livelihood? “Drag is not sustainable to me. I’m putting more into it than I’m getting out of it.” Instead, he wants to find his way into photography, and keep Arya Dunn alive at night.