Drag is ART and art is NOT a crime
Bruce Wang Citizen Wang Studio
Article By Dixon Normus @ Dixon Normus
My name is Jaxon and I'm a 28 year old drag artist in Knoxville, TN. I present both masculine and femme drag. I'm known as both Dixon Normus and Belle Bottoms, but my friends always just call me Dixon.
For the longest time, I never even heard of drag kings. Drag queens were so abundant in social media as well as television, so I didn't think about the other side of drag like that. One day I decided to search the internet and see what a drag king looked like and I was immediately floored by what I found. Drag kings were EVERYWHERE! I then took it upon myself to try out king makeup and I really liked what I saw in the mirror. And so, Dixon was born!
I first started my drag career in Sevierville around the beginning of May in 2019 at a local bar called GlowSky. I started out doing talent nights and as I got more and more confident on stage, I tried venturing out to different venues. My first ever performance at CORE(formerly known as Edge) was the Monday following pride weekend and the amount of love and support from fellow entertainers made me feel like I was right at home.
The type of drag that I present is kind of like a wild card in the game Uno. You never know what you're gonna get. I like performing camp, alternative, and anything else I can think of. I'm not much of a dancer, but you don't have to dance to be talented at drag.
I've made several friends along the way and I don't know where I would be without them. As the years went on, I couldn't help but feel like I was not truly being myself when I introduced myself to people. I always knew I was different when I was growing up, but I was raised in a southern Baptist household so I could express myself without judgement. It wasn't until I met my friend Hagen that I finally began to understand my feelings about my body and who I really was. I would always say I had a dude's personality, but it was so much more than that. It wasn't until November of 2020 when I came to terms with the fact that I was transgender. It felt like a world of weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Drag has helped me become the man that I was always destined to be.
As of late, the queer community (particularly the drag community) has been under attack by radical Christians trying to make us out to be satanic cultists, child groomers, and pedophiles. I'm all for people having beliefs and values, but if your religion is the reason behind hateful and bigoted acts of violence, then you might need to find a new religion. Christianity is supposed to be about love and all we seem to get is hate. Drag is our way of self expression and demonstrating performance art. Art should not be a crime, especially if it's not hurting anyone. There have been protests against all age drag shows and I believe children should have a right to see a drag show. They would have to be accompanied by their parent or legal guardian of course. We shouldn't be telling people how to raise their child(ren). If the parents are consenting to taking their kids to a drag show, then the child should have that right to see it.
I understand that not all drag shows are child friendly, but that's when they are held at venues that are adult oriented such as a bar. If a show venue is child friendly, we take extra precautions to make sure our music isn't vulgar or anything of that nature. For whatever reason, these protesters think we don't have the capacity to do child friendly numbers.
