GSA club holds annual Hallowqueens Drag Show

Paper skeletons smiled down from the walls of the Coeur d’ Alene Lake room as high heels strut across the stage, legs in fishnets flash by and fake 100 dollar bills rain from the sky. It’s the night of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance’s Hallowqueens Drag Show and things are getting spooky and sexy in here.

“I absolutely loved it. This is the first drag show I’ve been to. I couldn’t have missed it,” geology student Jesse Anderson says.

Hallowqueen Drag Show Host Ms. Gay Spokane

The show, hosted by Ms. Gay Spokane, drew in more than 50 community members and students.

A group of local drag queens who put on a show at JR’s Bar-N-Grill in Spokane every Friday night was the main performers. They were accompanied by two drag kings.

Each queen or king had their own song they lip-synced and danced to while galavanting around the crowd and collecting cash tips from outstretched hands.

The drag performers wore colored wigs, long nails and bold makeup.

One queen dressed as a nun handed out saltine crackers to the audience as “Take Me to Church” by Hozier played. She ripped off her nun’s habit to reveal a dress beneath and the song changed to “God is a Woman” by Ariana Grande. Another queen hit the splits on stage in the middle of her song.

“My night is going fabulous. I love the spirit of Halloween,” drag queen Arianna D. Spanic said. “Any chance we can perform and just put on a great show for the public, we’re gonna take the opportunity because we love the people and showcasing our talent.” 

The Hallowqueens Drag Show has been in the planning stage since last spring. The GSA puts on two drag events a year, one in the fall and one in the spring that focuses more on drag kings.

The purpose of the event is to educate and connect with the community, to promote a more widespread acceptance of folks of all gender identities and sexualities.

Drag Queen Arianna D. Spanic

“I think it’s really important for our [LGBTQ] community to be represented here on campus,” said Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) club member Kelsey Cordes-Snyder. “It’s really awesome to see people who come and support the community, support us as a club, and just learn more about the LGBTQ community.” 

GSA President Lizzy Welker said the club has made good progress with community relations but that there is still a lot of work to be done due to the generally conservative nature of Coeur d’ Alene. “A lot of LGBT people don’t feel necessarily safe being up here and being out,” Welker explains. “We want people to be open-minded and to be accepting.”

Coeur d’ Alene and North Idaho have a history of active White Supremacist groups like the Aryan Nation and the Ku Klux Klan who openly oppose LGBTQ folks. In 2011, Welker said she saw the KKK three times around the NIC campus.

“They were right here. They didn’t have their hoods or [cloaks] but they did have signs and let us know that’s exactly who they were and that they were not happy that we were here.”

 One mission of the GSA is to create a safe community for those folks and their allies because access to resources and support can be challenging for LGBTQ in the North Idaho area. The drag show is designed to be an event where people are able to feel accepted and comfortable expressing themselves.

Education is another goal of the GSA.

 “After the show is over I want to do a soups and seminars kind of thing where people come in from the community and talk to us about our rights,” Welker says.

Welker hopes that events like this can help people to view LGBTQ people in a different light.

“The more we can do to destroy those [negative] stereotypes, the better,” she said. “That’s one of my main things that I want to do this year. I want to make sure we’re seen as one of those clubs that does a lot of good.”