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Thursday, May 9, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Equal parts carefree and captivat-
ing, drag mother-daughter duo Ariana
Grindr and Daya Bee-Dee have become
something of a fixture in the Ann Arbor
queer community. Ariana, given name
Will Beischel, and Daya Bee-Dee, given
name Ariel Friedlander, sat down with
me to talk about themselves, their rela-
tionship, the local drag scene and the
all-encompassing presence of Lady
Gaga.
The Michigan Daily: Thank
you both so much for being here,
you’re both amazing queens and
I’m very excited to speak with you
today. How long have each of you
been performing, and what made
you decide to participate in the art
of drag?
Ariana Grindr: I started perform-
ing about two-and-a-half to three
years ago in Chicago, before I moved
here, but even before that — I was
going to gay bars in Cincinnati, where
I’m from, since I was 18 and (that
was) before I came out. I was going
to see these performances with my
best friends and becoming enthralled
with the queens. I think that being
there and seeing people celebrate
their femininity and their queerness
in such a loud, sort of in-your-face
way was really refreshing and inspir-
ing, so I’ve always had a special place
in my heart for drag.
I toyed with the idea of doing it
for a while, but I never was able to
go through with it until one of my
friends in Chicago, Alex Kay, started
doing drag and I saw him become
really good at it. There was a new
space in Chicago at the time called
Crash Landing, which was a compe-
tition show that allowed new queens
a space to try it out for the first time
and get their name out there in a
supportive environment. After I saw
Alex perform for a while, I was like
“Alright, I’m signed up for it so I bet-
ter do this … ” Alex helped me get into
drag for my first time and, yeah, the
rest is herstory.
TMD: That’s beautiful, what
about you (Daya)?
Daya Bee-Dee: So I’m what the
kids call a baby queen, because I only
started about 10 months ago. The first
time I ever did drag, in public, was for
a protest/guerilla fashion show with
a radical leftist group called RadFun.
TMD: I’ve heard of RadFun.
DB: I invited a couple local queens
to join, which was where I first met
Ariana Grindr in person, so it’s very
near and dear to my heart. From
there … I was posting stories on Ins-
tagram when another queen found
me and said I had to start perform-
ing, so I did a couple shows, and then
I went to New York for the summer.
When I came back, I started taking
my drag really seriously, and for the
past few months I’ve been trying to
do shows more consistently to try and
step up my game in terms of makeup,
performance, etc. But I’ve just really
loved (drag) from a really young age, I
got pretty into “RuPaul’s Drag Race”
soon after because my mom was pret-
ty into it.
I always loved “Drag Race,” but
I never really thought that drag
was necessarily for me because the
presentation that I saw of drag was
something that was for cis men. It just
wasn’t something I felt like I could
do until I found out that my absolute
favorite drag queen, Creme Fatale,
is actually a woman! And that really
opened up a world of possibilities,
and I’m honored to be a part of such
an incredible community. I love that
I can express my gender, my sexual-
ity, my everything, and I truly believe
that drag is for everyone.
TMD: You were talking about
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” and the
modern conception of what drag
is. While what the show has done
and what it means in the larger
framework of popular culture is
undoubtedly a net positive, it has
also created a model for what drag
should be and commodified it in
the process. Do you want to talk a
little bit about what your experi-
ences have been as a woman par-
ticipating in drag and existing in a
space that might be outside of that
conception?
DB: I’m really lucky because, here
in Ann Arbor, the scene is really sup-
portive. Online, you do see a lot of
hatred, a lot of misunderstandings
that can be hard to look at. Even here,
I’ve heard people say things that are
just complete misconceptions about
what drag is, who it’s for and what
it represents. I’m not laughing at
women by being a drag queen. I am
a fucking woman, and I love being a
woman. I almost see drag as an exten-
sion of my gender identity, expressing
something that’s as hyper-feminine
as you can get, and it’s a way for me to
celebrate being a high-femme, bisex-
ual woman.
People love to say that I’m appro-
priating drag, which is funny to me
because the modern drag movement
in the U.S. was pioneered by trans
women of color. Trans women are
women, so for someone to say that
women can’t do drag invalidates the
work that those people have done. If it
weren’t for those women, we literally
would not have drag in this country,
so I’m not appropriating anything.
I know the space I
occupy and I know
my place as a woman.
I also see a lot of
misogyny within the
queer
community
and I experience it
firsthand, which is
something I don’t
think a lot of other
drag queens neces-
sarily see, so I like
to use my platform
to call in the queer
community and say,
“Hey, we have some
things to work on in
terms of respecting
women, in terms of
respecting
gender
diversity, in terms of
respecting people of
different religions, in
terms of respecting
everyone.”
TMD: Thank you so much for
sharing that. There are a lot of
issues within the community that
need to be addressed and that can
get glossed over due to a sort of
male-centric unitarianism, so I
really appreciate that you incor-
porate that into your work.
DB: Thank you!
TMD: You touched on this a
little bit already, but could you
elaborate a little bit on the circum-
stances under which you two met?
DB: So I actually first saw Ariana
perform at a feminist magazine’s
Halloween drag show and she had no
idea who I was at that point. At some
point we became Facebook friends …
don’t know exactly when that hap-
pened, but when I was helping put
together this guerrilla fashion show
with RadFun, we were looking for
other people and organizations to
reach out to. I was starting to get a
little bit more into drag at that point
even though I hadn’t performed very
much myself. I knew that Ariana had
the reputation of being a very politi-
cal queen, so I reached out to her on
Facebook and I was so nervous mes-
saging her.
AG: (laughs)
DB: I actually looked back at our
first exchange and I can tell just how
nervous I was and how I was trying
so hard to make her happy. But it was
the day of the fashion show and we
were in Graffiti Alley, I basically had
my whole closet with me dressing
people up in my clothes and prepar-
ing to walk through the Diag a little
bit later, and there was Ariana. She
was wearing all black, in her natural,
short boy hair, face full of gold make-
up and these massive 12-inch heels,
TMD: I’ve seen those heels!
DB: We strutted all the way down
the Diag together,
we even infiltrated
an ROTC ceremony
and screamed about
Syria and Palestine
— it was a very con-
frontational
dem-
onstration. Anyway,
that was where I
met my drag mother.
At the time I didn’t
know what our rela-
tionship would turn
out to be. I had just
spent the summer in
New York and I was
really hard on myself
during that time. I
was surrounded by
this really beautiful
drag and I was flood-
ed on social media
by people who were
so good at makeup
and so good at performing and it was
so overwhelming — the person who
won (RuPaul’s) Drag Race at the time
(Aquaria) was like 22 years old and
stunning and I was like, “Fuck, I am
so behind on my art.”
I remember having a conversation
with Ariana on Instagram, she ended
up inviting me over to her apartment
to get ready and work on our makeup
together and I remember just feel-
ing so honored and my heart was so
full with gratefulness and joy. At the
time I really looked up to her because
she was just this really political, put-
together, well-respected queen in
Ann Arbor. So I went over there, we
shared our woes and I laid all of my
insecurities out on the line, and after
that conversation it pretty much was
mother-daughter.
SAM KREMKE
Daily Arts Writer
COMMUNITY CULTURE INTERVIEW
ARIEL FRIEDLANDER
ARTS
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Drag mother-daughter duo
on choosing our own family
I’m not
laughing at
women by
being a drag
queen. I am
a fucking
woman, and
I love being a
woman.
I love that I can
express my gender,
my sexuality, my
everything