My eyes looked bigger and somehow more expressive, my cheeks rosier, my lips rich and full — and I had cheekbones. I’d already named her Irma Girdle, picked a wig, and practiced walking in heels, but nothing prepared me for the moment I saw her — really saw her — staring back at me in the motel room mirror in upstate New York. Despite being just a reflection, I felt transformed. Irma wasn’t just a costume — she was me … but a different me.
By the end of the weekend, I realized I was OK with that. Stepping into Irma’s pumps wasn’t just dress-up — it became a creative outlet, one that brought joy to me and to others. But I wasn’t sure where to begin. For that, I’d need a sherpa.
Luckily, my neighbour, Andy Althoff-Burrows, is a part-time drag queen. But why drag? And why now?
Becoming Irma
Each summer, my wife and I attend an event in Lake George, N.Y. called Ohana: Luau at the Lake, which includes costume parties, cocktail competitions, live music, a drunken “room crawl,” and a pig roast. This year, we decided to hold a diner-style coffee station — men dressed as waitresses and women as angry fry-cooks — the morning after the room crawl to help hungover attendees start their day.
I was the only one willing to put on heels and a wig.
As a big fan of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” I’d already coined a catchy drag name, Irma Girdle, so in the weeks leading to the event we gathered up a cheap party store wig, used size 11 pumps, dollar store nail polish, and a waitress outfit from Amazon. And despite being fairly introverted, the thought of being the main photo-op for our “customers” got me excited: what might Irma say to people? How much sass would she have? I even began practicing walking (fiercely, of course) in heels.
The morning I faced that mirror, I watched in awe as the transformation took shape. “Hey, you’re a really good-looking woman,” said almost every one of our friends. I never got compliments when I was 27, so to get them at 57 is a big deal. When I dressed, something else happened: I felt electrified. Confident. Sexy. Powerful. Those feelings gushed out as I served coffee and flirted with hungover patrons. I told people how beautiful they were, complimenting their eyes, haircuts and smiles. I called shy people to come over and pose with me. I sat on a few laps. There was palpable joy in the room, and I was creating it.
“A friend of mine calls it masking to unmask,” Althoff-Burrows later told me in an email. He is a certified wedding officiant who marries couples as Andy or as Cherri Burstyn. “All the feels drag gives you — the sass, the power, the confidence, et cetera — are in you (and) drag brings them out.” Just like a symbiotic creature, I guess.
So how to harness Irma’s energy? I’m too old for leg splits and lip sync battles, so I’ll employ the old adage to “write what you know.” And since I’ve spent the last 25 years writing about architecture, I’m going to use Irma to teach a new audience about Toronto’s buildings via YouTube Shorts.
A few days after returning from Lake George, I met Althoff-Burrows in the cosmetics section of our local drug store. His first tip was to avoid the front section and “shop the back corner.” He also revealed a secondary aisle with youth-brands in much brighter colours (ever seen a drag queen sporting boring shades of beige?). However, confronted by strange cylinders, disks, and snap-lid cases containing all manner of creams and powders back at home had me feeling dizzy, so Althoff-Burrows put me in touch with his friend, “Canada’s Drag Race” finalist Minhi Wang.
“You will never know how potentially beautiful you can look,” said Wang in her gentle, Australian-accented voice as she began a three-hour tutorial using my face as her canvas. From wig-cap and glued-down eyebrows to contour lines and the technical artistry of eyes, all the way to false eyelashes and setting spray, I absorbed it all like an egg-shaped beauty blender.
The bigger questions
As I practiced at home, a question began to plague me: Was it OK for me to take part in this?
I’m a cisgender, heterosexual white man. I’ve had every advantage and have never experienced discrimination. Drag is a deeply rooted LGBTQ art form — one that has long been a means of expression, defiance and survival.
Modern drag grew out of 19th-century vaudeville and burlesque, and by the mid-20th century, it had become a form of underground empowerment. Drag queens were among the first to resist police during the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City — a pivotal moment that helped ignite the gay liberation movement.
Wanting to better understand my place in this tradition, I asked people who live it.
I turned first to Althoff-Burrows: “The fact that you’re coming into it with curiosity and respect is huge,” he reassured me.
I contacted Canada’s reigning drag queen, Priyanka, winner of “Canada’s Drag Race” season 1 and host of the current “Drag Brunch Saved My Life” on Crave. She told me that after her first drag performance in 2017, she too was “addicted” because it “makes you look at yourself as the superhero you’re meant to be.
“I am stronger than I thought, but I am now so connected to myself that I’m also more sad than I ever have been, and more happy than I ever have been,” she continued. “Everything that you thought life was gets put in a blender the minute that you start drag.”
But will that blender chew me up? Will the drag community reject Irma Girdle?
“No,” Priyanka said. “If we’re fighting for inclusivity, this is what it looks like; if you’re trying to be a musician, if you’re trying to be a drag queen…learn about the culture, go see the shows, do the research, put in the reps, pay your dues.”
But gird(le) oneself for backlash. And hate. After a children’s story hour, Althoff-Burrows as Cherri Burstyn had expletives and insults shouted at him as tiny children gathered around him on the sidewalk. Priyanka told me about the large amount of hate mail she received while on “Drag Race,” and continues to receive.
As a drag queen, “you’ll learn what it is to be ‘other,’” Priyanka warned me with a wry smile.
Which might not be a bad thing. It’s one thing to be an ally, but to take a walk in the (sequined) shoes? Thanks to my sherpas, Irma found the courage and sass to stand in Nathan Phillips Square, look into the camera for her first YouTube short, and begin her journey. And she’s got many more stories to tell.
