GoDiva Holliday
"If you were to take a picture, like a timeline of my life, especially from being very young, you would see that I was very into makeup, and I would wear t-shirts on my head for hair…. And I would wear a tablecloth around my waist because I always wanted to skirt on. And for a long time, I felt like a lady. And for a long time, I felt like I was a lady-- why am I in this body? Why are they making me play with balls and stuff like that when I really just want a Barbie and to be left alone kind of deal? Go play with my Barbie dream house, things like that.
But as I've gotten older, especially for drag, I've embraced the masculine side of things. And I feel like I dilly-dallied in drag, like, real drag, like comedy, and raunchiness and breaking it down--breaking down the barriers where you're not just impersonating a female, you're really there for comedic relief. Old school drag…. So, I definitely see where people would get involved in this because they want to reach that feminine side of themselves. I do feel like it's a lot of gender-bending. A lot of people start off [doing drag] thinking, "Maybe I am trans, maybe I'm a woman trapped in a man's body, can this be my outlet to explore that?" I feel like most drag queens go through that. It was a good experience for me to go through that because I know now, without a shadow of a doubt, that I'm just a dude in a dress."
"I started drag in 1999. I was hanging out with Baby Holliday (Jack McCrory).... and he was like, I work at this bar in Shannon called rumors, you should come see it. And at that time a drag show, especially one that was just 45 minutes up the road--it's a hot commodity. So I was like, okay, sure, I'll go check it out. And I had just come out, so I was a little weirded out by the idea that there were performers and there was this gay bar and who would see me... like I remember all the anxiety of going in there, but at the same time feeling like I was going home.
I was finally in a place where I was welcomed. I still get that feeling when I go into a bar that's focused on the gay culture. I feel like I can be myself here. I'm safe."
"I'm going to tell you the one thing that to me, Mississippi drag is different from any other drag in the nation. And it's something that I'm teaching my drag daughter and anybody else that I work with, is that it's about hospitality. You don’t go up--if somebody is kind enough to come up to you and give you a dollar, you don't snatch that dollar and walk away. You give them a hug or a nod or you bow or you acknowledge the fact that they're giving you their hard-earned money. It's a dollar, but they mustered up the courage to come up and tip you and you give them a little something extra, even if it means that you don't get to just work your whole song. There is nothing better to me, being a Southern drag queen, than spending my entire song just hugging people and taking money and just loving on them. That happened at Tupelo Pride this year. I could not leave--I was squatted down at the edge of the stage and could not leave the stage because I was meeting and greeting every single person as they came up there was a line all the way to the back of the room. And it's a beautiful thing when that happens, and so rare these days."
"When I started doing drag, I never ever hid it. I never lied about it. It was not something that my parents wouldn't know about. My dad and mom saw me the whole time growing up wearing makeup. I would steal make up from my mom. It would never have been a surprise. But the time that I knew for sure that my dad knew that I was a big old drag queen, he had come to visit. And I was asleep in the back bedroom and I had pictures of me in drag all along the hallways. Me and my roommate at the time, Marilyn Monet, who was my drag sister; we only wore heels. We didn't wear boys' shoes in the house at all. When we'd walk around the house, we only wear slipper heels. We mowed the yard in heels... We were committed... So I was asleep in the bed, and I had went to bed in full like eye makeup from the show the night before... And my dad came in and grabbed my toe and woke me up and I sat up in the bed and he was like "rough night?"
And I was like, "Oh, it was just a long night at the bar. We had a huge turnout..." And before I knew it, I was just speaking freely about it... and he was like, "I saw your pictures in the hall. You look like your mom." But he's never made me feel bad about it ever, which is crazy. I can't recall one time in my life where he said," stop doing that or you're embarrassing me." That's a big deal. And my mom's always been supportive. She's come to shows before."
Queering the South: Through Drag
Queering the South: Through Drag (2019) is the second installment in my documentary series for this project. This short film highlights the relationship between Mississippi drag queens GoDiva Holliday and DeePression Holliday and their family ties. This film also emphasizes why GoDiva and DeePression were drawn to drag, and the Southern inflection of drag as well.
After I produced Put On Your Face, I spent some time traveling to places like Starkville, Mississippi and Tupelo, Mississippi to capture more footage of the Holliday duo. After I had several hours worth of footage, I thought it would benefit the project to get a few interviews of the two talking about their lives and their stories as drag queens. In early November of 2019, I was able to book a few hours to sit down and talk to them, which aided in this next project.
The fourth piece in this series, Dude in a Dress (2020), examines GoDiva Holliday's experience as both a drag queen and a show director. GoDiva emphasizes the importance of diversity in her shows, and how she finds it problematic that many show directors discriminate against certain types of drag performers. She also touches on what makes Southern drag different compared to the rest of the country, such as places in New York or San Fransisco. Lastly, she explains how drag has been a long journey for her and how over time her drag has evolved and she has found a brand new passion for the art.
This short film was created due to the Covid-19 pandemic. During the spring semester of my first year as a graduate student, I was taking a documentary class that required two short films, one mid semester and one at the end of the semester. By the time the end of the semester rolled around, we had already been almost two months deep in lock down, and doing in person fieldwork was out of the question. Instead of choosing to do a remote interview, I decided to rework my film Queering the South: Through Drag to create a solo story about GoDiva Holliday and her experience as a drag queen. I had already collected a large amount of footage and interviews of GoDiva Holliday, and as a performer that has been performing and directing shows for over twenty years, I felt like I had enough material to create a new film revolving around her story.