Whips and corsets. Bold makeup and padded hips. Living illusions. The art of drag.
Such is the life of Joshua Crawford, also known as Cherie Blossom, a second-year Carleton student and self-styled “female impersonator.”
“What a cherry blossom represents is female dominance, beauty, sexuality and love, and that is everything and more that I want my drag persona to be,” Blossom says. “Sassy, sexy, dominant and beautiful.”
But “Cherry Blossom” sounded too manufactured, so he swapped “Cherry” for “Cherie” and Cherie Blossom was born.
She has only been alive for a few months and has already started performing with the Ginette Bobo Drag Show, which is held every Wednesday night at the Mercury Lounge.
Blossom performed at Carleton’s Campus Pride Week drag show Jan. 25, treating the audience to a tightly-choreographed, high-performance routine to a remixed version of Rihanna’s “S&M,” she says.
“I had a sexy little corset and a whip with me,” she says. “It’s very sexual, sassy, va-va-voom.”
But it just couldn’t compare to Blossom’s first show at the Mercury Lounge — the place that inspired her to get into drag after a friend introduced her to the scene. Coming from “a small-ass town with no culture,” she says the scene was something she instantly knew she wanted to be involved with.
It was the illusion that drew her to drag, Blossom says. To her, it’s so much more than a man dressing in women’s clothing. That’s what lots of people reduce it to, she says, and that completely misses the point because drag is an art.
“It’s the illusion of transformation, of being able to put on my face,” she says. “Putting my makeup on, covering my own eyebrows and drawing eyebrows on. Contouring my body. Padding my hips.”
Because the illusion is a misinterpreted art, she says it often gets stigmatized or turned into a fetish. One major misconception is that all drag queens are transsexuals, or want to become women, Blossom says. This is why she calls herself a “female impersonator.”
For her, it’s important for people to remember that drag is the creation of a character. Not all people see it this way, though. Some turn it into a sexual fetish.
“Me and my friends call them ‘tranny chasers,’ ” Blossom says. “They’re looking for a quick fix from a man dressed as a woman.”
But none of this applies to her, Blossom says, and the stigma hasn’t diminished her passion for the art of illusion.
Before she could get up on stage, she had to make herself known. Getting work as a drag queen or female impersonator isn’t a matter of looking in the paper’s daily classifieds and searching for an ad saying, “Drag queen wanted.”
That defeats the purpose, Blossom says. You have to want to do it and be passionate about it. Working up to a spot in the show, Blossom says she built connections and made herself known on the scene.
To perform at the Mercury Lounge, she says she started out by talking to the House Queen, Eva Darling. Darling’s idea of a clean and classy show attracted Blossom. This was a woman who took drag seriously, Blossom says.
Darling wants her performers to know the lyrics to the songs in their routines, Blossom says, not just be up on stage for the sake of the spotlight.
Blossom isn’t nervous about performing anymore, she says, but so far nothing has matched the thrill of stepping onto the Mercury Lounge stage for the first time.
“It was an ‘a-ha’ moment, like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I actually made it here, I’m performing at a club,’ ” Blossom says.
These performances aren’t kept secret from her friends and family, who have been completely supportive.
Most of those close to her know she does drag performances, and she says she’s had positive reactions from everyone whose opinions matter to her. Her mother was amazed the first time Joshua Crawford became Cherie Blossom.
“The first time she saw me she was like, ‘Oh, my God, I need an aspirin,’ ” Blossom says. “Not ‘Oh, my God’ bad, but ‘Oh, my God, you look beautiful’ kind of thing.”
While she has yet to recapture the thrill of performing at the Mercury Lounge for the first time, Blossom hopes someday she’ll feel the same way graduating from law school.
She’s studying criminology and criminal justice, with a concentration in sociology. But law won’t be replacing drag any time soon. She says she plans to keep performing until she loses her passion for it — something she can’t see happening in the near future.
“Me and my friends are always like, ‘Oh yeah, lawyer by day, drag queen by night,’ ” she says.
