Drag king, queens strut down catwalk for charity

Virginia Snapplestein wore a tight dress revealing a pink thong when his artificial breast… Virginia Snapplestein wore a tight dress revealing a pink thong when his artificial breast exploded on stage at the Rainbow Alliance’s 11th annual Pitt Drag Show.

“I hit the floor and splat,” said Snapplestein, a former Pitt employee at the University’s Mailing Services. “And apparently, I flashed the dean of students.”

Though there was a scarcity of fabric covering his nether regions, there was an abundance of students in attendance, cheering as they threw singles onstage and tucked bills into the bras and garter belts of performers in the WPU Assembly room Friday night.

On a catwalk jutting from the stage into the audience, drag kings and queens cartwheeled, baton twirled and writhed to music for two hours to raise money for charity.

With nearly 450 people present at the free event, the night raised approximately $780 from audience donations for the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force.

“We’ve been working with the organization for a really long time,” said Tricia Dougherty, president of Rainbow Alliance. “It’s a great organization.”

She said that in addition to supplying free and confidential tests for AIDS, the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force supplies the Rainbow Alliance with free condoms to distribute to students and offers safer sex workshops for the benefit of Pittsburgh.

In thanks to the organization, many drag kings and queens strutted their stuff. Lai Kitruff, a member of Rainbow Alliance, danced in tights and running shorts with a purple wig reminiscent of Nicki Minaj.

After orally accepting money from the teeth of an enthusiastic tipper, Kitruff gave a lap dance to a man wearing only briefs and a cap.

As Kitruff strutted off stage, a new act opened, and students experienced the masochistic choreography of Pitt graduate Dani Lamorte dancing to Diamanda Galas’ “I Put a Spell on You.”

Part of Lamorte’s dance included beating herself with a whisk tied to her dress. As the music grew in intensity, twigs from her hair flew offstage, along with fragments of the aluminum whisk she had shattered against her forearm.

Drag king Reign coupled macho cowboy attire with a stuffed giraffe, which he pulled out of his pants’ zipper to the delight of a cheering audience.

In an intermission between acts, Rainbow Alliance members went onstage to speak about the University’s bathroom policy for transgender students.

They said that facilities should be open so that people can go into the bathrooms of the gender they identify with. Rainbow Alliance provided petitions for people to sign stating opposition to Pitt’s new policy, which requires students to use the bathrooms matching the gender on their birth certificates.

“It’s a fairness issue,” Dougherty said. “It’s a bathroom, so you’re not going to notice if the person in the next stall matches up to you.”

For the duration of the drag show, the Rainbow Alliance arranged for the first floor restrooms in the WPU to be made gender-neutral as a statement on the transgender plight.

Snapplestein sympathized with the group’s views.

“I think everybody should be able to express their genders as they see themselves. If to get that, they need a policy, I’d support it wholeheartedly,” he said after the show. “Be who you are.”

Editor’s Note: Check out footage from Pitt’s Drag Show here: https://pittnews.com/video/auto-80/