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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