Rainbow show ends Pride Week in drag

Sometimes you have to suffer to be beautiful, as participants in Rainbow Alliance’s drag… Sometimes you have to suffer to be beautiful, as participants in Rainbow Alliance’s drag show learned Thursday.

Miss Eda Bagel, a professional drag queen who frequently performs in drag at church fund-raisers, emceed the show. After each performance, she emerged on stage in a new dress and new wig

Each of her ensembles, though, included 7-inch high heels.

“If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right,” Bagel said to the novice performers.

“I’ve always said that drag is a very careful game of balance,” she said in reference to her shoes and tight clothes. “I am held together with super glue and duct tape right now … I have earrings the size of dinner plates and fake eyelashes that require scaffolding.”

The show was the final event of Rainbow Alliance’s annual Pride Week, which also included the National Day of Silence. All of the drag kings and queens in the show were performing in drag for the first time.

“It takes a lot of balls to do this, even if they can’t find their own right now,” Bagel said.

The audience, which filled Benedum Auditorium, consisted of both gay and straight students in addition to several veteran drag queens.

“It’s OK, we know you were born that way,” Bagel said to straight audience members. “Just go get drunk in your dorms and make beautiful gay babies.”

When Bagel asked the audience if anyone had never seen a drag queen before, no one responded.

“It’s a lot easier for a girl to become a boy than it is for a boy to become a girl,” Bagel said. “If you notice, I’m looking out of the corner of my left eye at all times to make sure I still have two breasts.”

According to Bagel, “Silicone is a girl’s best friend.”

But it was Corinna Broadway’s performance of “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” that drew a standing ovation from the audience.

Other performers included Rainbow Alliance members who posed as “Stan D. Rect,” who treated several front row audience members to lap dances during her performance, and “Tequila Mockingbird.” Two female students performed together, dressed as a biker and a businessman.

Bagel performed the final number of the night, “This is My Life.” She ate a bowl of Life cereal while lip-synching the words. By the time the song was over, her elaborate costume and makeup were covered with milk and bits of cereal.

“At first it was funny,” sophomore Sam Nhek said. “But then it was just nasty.”

However, according to Nhek, the night was a success.

“My parents are really strict, so I told them I was just at a ‘talent show,'” he said. “But I am glad that I went and I think the people who went up and danced on stage have a lot of confidence.”