Broadly has an interesting article about how drag queens dressed as Melania Trump, Kellyanne Conway, and even Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have been popping up lately at protests and across Instagram and YouTube. And it’s not because they want to BE them, necessarily, or even have cocktails with them at Hamburger Mary’s. It’s just that their kitschy optics and over-the-top cartoon villainy make them hard to resist.
Although drag queens are protesting the women in Trump’s administration, they can’t help admiring their camp factor. Conway has been delivering better one-liners than any Real Housewife as of late, and at gay brunches, it has become common to hear someone say, “I can’t help but watch Kellyanne!” Gay men finding camp in conservative women is not a new trend. Both Ann Coulter and Camille Paglia have alienated liberals while attracting strong gay male fan bases for years. When it comes to drag queens, mockery is often somewhat of a compliment.
The one Trumpette not getting any attention from the drag community, though? Poor little Ivanka, who is too vapid, too bland, too put-together, and too wearisome to inspire any sort of drag persona.
Although she has reportedly defended LGBTQ rights in the White House, she is the antithesis of gay culture. In her television interviews, she has spoken in a well-polished, PR-trained manner and advocated a tame corporate worldview. Her social mead bio reads, “Wife, mother, sister and daughter. Entrepreneur + passionate advocate for the education and empowerment of women and girls. NYC native, living in DC,” and her Instagram revolves around pictures of her children and lanky husband.
San Francisco-based drag queen Mama Celeste believes the lack of Ivanka drag queens is due to a lack of originality. They are, at their essence, imitators. “SNL hasn’t figured out a regular cast person to impersonate her yet for them to copy,” he says. “They don’t know how to lampoon someone who’s mostly maintained her composure even when her dad says he would fuck her on TV.”
Where Kellyanne and Melania drive themselves into infamy whenever they appear on the news, Ivanka remains composed, and complicit, in even the most ridiculous situations. The more transitive reason, Mama Celeste believes, stems from Ivanka’s lack of aesthetics that have boosted other Trump-associated women but not her: “Ivanka’s only memorable ‘look’ was being wrapped in that $5,000 foil dress, which not even the tackiest drag queen would wear.”
Read the who article here.
