HOW YOU GET FAMOUS

An award-winning journalist takes a deep dive into New York City’s underground drag scene.

Pasulka, who writes about gender and activism for a variety of national publications, became a hardcore fan of the scene after a show in 2006. By early 2020, she had seen “at least 500 shows” and conducted more than 100 interviews with participants. In her first book, the author highlights the “freewheeling” and “avant garde” Brooklyn drag scene, which she argues is both “amateurish and world-class.” Pasulka follows the exploits of a group of young queer performers who have traveled the road from obscurity to various levels of fame. A Latinx local named Aja and an African American transplant to New York from Berkeley named Merrie Cherrie come from working-class backgrounds, characteristic of many aspiring Brooklyn drag artists. Each has experience being a social “pariah”: Aja, for her facial scars, “asthmatic wheezing [and] swishy walk,” and Merrie for being tall and overweight. As Pasulka shows, it was this very “outsider” and “rebel” status, in addition to considerable “guts and hunger,” that allowed them to take their brilliantly outrageous performances to the next level. It also helped that they came up during a time of increasing mainstream acceptance for LGBTQ+ lifestyles and stood poised to take advantage of the great drag “explosion” that happened between 2012 and 2016. Both became well-known and well-respected performers, with Aja eventually going on to become a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, which she lost to fellow Brooklyn drag queen Sasha Velour. The author also reveals how these young stars subverted the more “polished” made-for-TV aesthetic of “hourglass shapes, heels, long nails, big wigs, [and] femininity”—e.g., Velour’s bald head, fierceness, and playfully intellectual approach to performance. The skilled reporting and storytelling that characterize the narrative make for an engaging book that will appeal to scholars of gender as well as anyone with an interest in queer culture.

An adventurously intelligent sociological study.