As any backward-walking tour guide will tell you, Georgetown’s hosted its fair share of royalty. But for the first time in 235 years, six drag queens and kings will grace the ICC Auditorium with their presence Friday night, competing for the inaugural Mx. Georgetown crown.
A collaboration between Georgetown’s Queer People of Color (QPOC) and GU Pride, the event is a play on the campus mainstay Mr. Georgetown, featuring a runway walk, an interview segment, an individual talent portion, a group performance, and a lip-sync bracket to conclude the night. But the similarities largely stop at the name, the competition itself taking cues from RuPaul’s Drag Race, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and Cornyation. Students behind the event are hoping to make it a pillar of Georgetown’s queer performance spaces.
“Not to make this grandiose or overly pompous, but I think Mx. Georgetown can hopefully become a sort of historical monument to the queer community on campus,” said Jack Dougherty (CAS ’26), a GU Pride member. Dougherty and Kevin Moreno (CAS ’24), president of QPOC, hope to make the competition a yearly event, creating a lasting space for queer students on campus.
“I think it’ll help unite the queer community at Georgetown, because I feel like we’re kind of distant at some points,” Moreno said. “It feels not as community-oriented as some other groups on campus might feel.”
In preparation for the ICC’s spectacular, raucous transformation, we interviewed all six kings and queens. The students interviewed are referred to only by their drag alter egos.
These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Miss Ivy League
Can you walk us through your planned look and performance?
Miss Ivy League is the coquette elf girl of your dreams. She’s giving hip pads. She’s giving royalty, but on a budget. She’s blue, she’s floral. She’s mysterious, she’s taller than I am. She’s my fantasy dream girl. She’s got that blonde mullet wig. I like to think of it more as a wolf cut, but I haven’t gotten the wig yet, so we’ll see. She’s giving kind of a renaissance, but not like ‘I’m going to ren faire’ renaissance. It’s giving floral corset. It’s giving body.
Who do you draw inspiration from?
Sasha Velour is a big inspiration of mine, as well as Yvie Oddly. Both of them do very untraditional drag looks, not just, ‘I’m in a corset and I’m really sexy,’ but also like, ‘I’m a character. I’m embodying something.’ I tried to take that and was like, okay, I want to be a creature. I want to give elf. I want to give horns. I don’t want to be a person. I want to be something you wouldn’t see every day.
What does Mx. Georgetown mean to you?
Sometimes the queer community at Georgetown can feel very isolating. Especially in my freshman year, I struggled to find queer community and people that I resonated with. Doing stuff like this and making queer stories, and my queer story, visible to a lot of people, I think is really cool.
The Prince of Cats
Can you walk us through your planned look and performance?
The Prince of Cats, he’s very much inspired by John Leguizamo’s Tybalt in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. It’s just immensely camp. It’s over-the-top, glam. He’s very macho, he’s very sexy. Slicked-back, satin shirt, big gold chain. Greasy glam with semi-Catholic-core influences might be the most concise way to say what’s going on in my head.
Who do you draw inspiration from?
People don’t really know the names of drag kings off the top of their head like they do with drag queens. So I think one of my first introductions to what drag king makeup and fashion looks like was Dorian Electra. They are a trans woman, also big in the hyperpop sphere. They’re gender fluid and a lot of their looks pull from these ideas of parody of different forms of machismo and masculinity.
What are you most excited about in the show?
I’m pretty sure a lot of us are first time doing drag. I’m curious to see what other people are putting forward as their first foray into it.
We have an established cultural notion that so much of femininity is already this very done-up, very performative, very visual kind of thing, where a lot of ideas of masculinity are downplayed. It’s not fancy. It’s not frilly, it doesn’t try to be out there and flashy. So what happens when you try to take our ideas of what a man looks like and put it into that realm of, like, it’s flashy, it’s over the top, it’s performative, it’s sexy, it’s all of these things. I’m very curious to see where that goes.
Lex Luth Whore
Can you walk us through your planned look and performance?
For the runway, it was Cowboy Carter-inspired. I thrifted this denim jacket—I’m gonna crop that and then I got these jeans that have these little slits on the side and they are chained together. I have cowboy boots. And I’m gonna have this cowboy hat. The vibe is gonna be heartbroken cowboy.
Do you have previous experience with drag?
No. It’s gonna be my first time. I’m not even, like, a performer at all. Some moments I’m like, ‘Oh my God, is this going to go horribly?’ But then I’m like, ‘You know what? All my friends want to be there,’ so I feel no matter what, it’s going to be fine.
What does Mx. Georgetown mean to you?
From my freshman year to now, I have been seeing a lot more queer expression in the performing arts here. I think that’s so important. And something that’s so needed within the broader society as well. We see drag being demonized, being criminalized in certain areas of the U.S., and I feel it’s so important to show that drag is an extremely valid form of expression. It’s a performing art, just like anything else.
Lexi Con
Can you walk us through your planned look and performance? Who or what do you draw inspiration from?
My persona is named Lexi Con because I’m a linguistics major. Her look is [what] I think a lot of Georgetown students come to Georgetown with, which is, at first, straight-A student. That is all your life has ever been. That’s all your life may ever be. Who knows, maybe that’s what you want. Who eventually realizes that is not mutually exclusive with being a whore. That is who she is. So she dresses more conservatively, because, again, these aren’t mutually exclusive. She is still the academic weapon, but she also wants everybody to know that she is a sex symbol.
What are you most excited about in the show?
In drag, there’s so much audience interaction. There is so much give and take, there’s so much having to just be a jack of all trades—be funny, be hot, talented with an asterisk, doing all of that. So I’m really excited to see how not only the people on the stage bring something to that, but also what people in the audience want to get out of it. I feel like, if we do it right, Mx. Georgetown will be something that everybody in the auditorium creates together.
What is your previous experience with drag? Why did you decide to enter Mx. Georgetown?
Previous experience has basically just been performing in Rocky Horror, whether that is in silver underwear or just wearing big sexy boots and directing. So I’ve never done any, like, drag drag, with that name before.
Justin Beaver
Can you walk us through your planned look and performance? Who or what do you draw inspiration from?
My drag king persona, as of right now, is Justin Beaver. He’s your average boy band heartthrob. Think in peak 2010s—like “One Less Lonely Girl,” where he brings up a girl to the stage and makes you feel special, blah blah blah. So, you know, super gentleman but also teen pop star.
Can you talk about the meaning of performing drag at Georgetown, either personally or broadly?
I think that because of Georgetown’s history with queer people, which a lot of people don’t know about—how there was just general unacceptance at Georgetown, but also a string of hate crimes. And a lot of protests that had a lot of pushback from the administration against queer students; queer students had to rally real hard to get an LGBT center and get real actions passed that would make them feel safer at Georgetown. Because of that history, and because of the current history we’re living in right now, of drag being a banned act and being seen as overtly sexual and not appropriate, I think that drag is completely a political act.
Who is your favorite drag artist?
My favorite drag king, for sure, I believe his name is King Molasses. He’s a D.C. local drag king, and the first time I saw him, I just thought he was so sexy. I could not stop talking about it for, like, the next month. And he puts on a big beard, and he has abs and is a little country, and that is just pure sex and I love it.
Jack the Bulldyke
Can you walk us through your planned look and performance? Who or what do you draw inspiration from?
I just kind of wanted to have a really sleazy masc look as a drag king. So my name is Jack the Bulldyke, which, I don’t know if you know what a bulldyke is, but it’s, like, really masc lesbian. So I’m going to try to wear some leather if I can.
What is your previous experience with drag? Why did you decide to enter Mx. Georgetown?
I have no experience other than Rocky Horror, which I did in the fall. I hadn’t seen any drag kings anywhere. I’d seen a few drag queens on campus but nothing really like that. So I was like, would have been nice to just try something new and so other people can see that. And it’s the first year we’re doing it, so it doesn’t have to be a whole lot of pressure. But hopefully people who do it in the future, we’re kind of helping set it up for them, is my hope.
Can you talk about the meaning of performing drag at Georgetown, either personally or broadly?
It’s wonderful to go out into the city and support people, but it’s also really good to see people your own age doing drag. And for me, when I had seen people, like when I went to watch Rocky Horror, that was really just cool and exciting to see people performing that. Just performing in general, but also in such a queer way.
Mx. Georgetown will take place on April 12 at 8 p.m. in the ICC Auditorium. Tickets can be reserved on CampusGroups for free.
