Time for a little Dangerfield Herstory

Hey, 

      It's funny how we met like this, you clicking on my page, me eagerly awaiting you to read my little blog, it's interesting how these things occur. I am what the universe calls a female drag queen or a lady queen. You may be asking yourself what is a female drag queen? What does a female drag queen entail? What makes a female drag queen different than a male drag queen? Let me just stop you there, all these questions and more will be answered and I promise you, it's very interesting.

  Let's start with my name, my name is Dottie Dangerfield, my name is derived from famous comedian and childhood favorite, Rodney Dangerfield, my first name is Dottie, I have always loved the name Dottie, it's very childlike, innocent and mischievous. My story like a lot of performers wasn't painted in rainbows and sunshine, like most weird kids or strange kids, I was bullied, beat up and tormented. I have always loved being the center of attention , being loud and obnoxious and having all eyes on me.

The most obvious choice for me was performing, plain and simple. I decided to attend school for Musical Theater where I could explore all my theatrical fantasies. I had an amazing time, dancing , singing and acting and meeting all sorts of people. I had attended for three years and I was out and about auditioning, being in shows and feeling bored of the theater scene. There was not a lot for me, I was either playing comedic roles, the fat best friend or a mother. I was not allowed to be myself in any way, you are constantly told what box to fit into and what roles you are allowed to play based on your "type"

           I started exploring other avenues to perform in and came across burlesque. What a wonderful and sparkling world where everyone was accepted, you had full control of your acts , full control of your costumes and full control of whatever you wanted to create. The burlesque world for me has been warm and inviting and I am forever grateful for my Toronto Burlesque Family. I had been doing burlesque for a bit ,volunteering, performing and slowly establishing who I was but still I felt there was more to me that needed to be discovered.

             

It had been about a year and a bit since I started Burlesque and I had heavily started watching RuPaul Drag Race and started attending some Drag events in my city. I was mesmerized by the queens on stage, strutting themselves, lip syncing and fully transforming into a different character and gender other than themselves. I was amazed, I was in love and I needed to embody that and become that , I needed to learn more. I asked my friend Laura Desiree if she wanted to do an act for the Toronto Burlesque Festival which was RuPaul's Drag Race inspired and she agreed , it was accepted.

At that time, I had started becoming friends with a drag house here called the House of Filth and me and Laura had decided we wanted to ask them to be part of our act. The more I rehearsed with them, the more I started involving myself in the Drag community and feeling the love and acceptance that is when I really was discovering who Dottie was, 

I realized I was a Drag Queen, Dottie Dangerfield is a Drag Queen, that was the missing piece to my puzzle. 

The performance had gone amazing, everything about it felt right, makeup , hair , lip sync, everything . Drag gave me the opportunity to explore my gender in a way I had never experienced before, I could be this hyper-feminized version of myself that society told me was wrong.  I could be sexy, I could be weird and most of all I could be dirty. I could be disgusting, I could be over the top and campy and I could fully transform into this cartoon woman of my most twisted and dark dreams. After the Toronto Burlesque Festival, the House of Filth invited me to join their House and adopted me as their baby. They really helped me explore who I was, what I was becoming and nurtured me.

(House of Filth My Two fabulous moms!)

After this performance everything really started snowballing , I had my first solo Drag performance in a show called She was a Hurricane which was a show where we used real experiences that happened to all of us. That show was not just my official drag debut but it was a show that hit close to home in many ways emotionally and physically. I did a very personal act, relating to my father's death and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I did a voice over mixed with a lip-synced performance to The Show must go by Queen. It was the single most powerful and scary thing I had ever done and I was beyond proud of myself.

First Drag Performance (Click for video)

After that I started to develop Dottie more and more and she was slowly becoming a character on her own, my makeup skills dramatically improved, my acts changed and I started incorporating lip syncing in all my performances and I started to mix different songs together. My costumes changed, my goals changed and most of all I changed . I started becoming more politically aware,  I started owning my femininity and I started realizing my own female power and I stopped hiding.

 I was a gender bending , art making machine that lip synced, danced and live sang and no one was going to stand in my way.

Now I end this post with a few photos of yours truly

Pink Dream

Blue babe in the middle