As you may know if you’ve been reading my incredibly exciting blog, my end goal in this free inquiry project is to create a drag character- one specifically made for drag story time- and start a digital drag portfolio. In this week’s post, I’ll explain the process of creating my drag character and setting up their Instagram account (aka digital drag portfolio, because this is technology class and if I can’t convert to a PDF I can hopefully make up for it by saying things like “digital drag portfolio”). Because I am not ready to deal with all the horrors of the internet, my drag profile is private for now. Here is a link and QR code for anyone interested, I will approve you if we know each other and I can trust you with drag matters.
https://www.instagram.com/mxellaminnowpea?igsh=MW93NXV0MzgwY3pydw%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
Now that I’ve got all that out of the way, I can introduce you to my alter ego, Mx. Ella Minnow Pea! Ella is a drag performer here to serve looks and read books, specifically to read high-quality books to children in an engaging and fun way. Ella’s look is cute, sparkly, and will probably incorporate more princess dresses in the future- and maybe some sparkly suits, if I can get my hands on them. I love traditional drag, but for Ella I decided to go with very soft and subtle drag makeup. Oh, and I just remembered that the honorific “Mx.” is new to some people, so if you haven’t seen it before, it’s just a way to refer to someone if they don’t want to disclose their gender or marital status. You say it like “mix”, and anybody can use it. I included this title in Ella’s instagram account because it represents that this character is not defined by gender, she’s just here to sparkle.
I love wordplay and language arts, so I had to incorporate that in my drag name. “Ella Minnow Pea” (Mark L. Dunn) is the title of one of my favourite novels, and the message behind the book fits perfectly with my drag mission. Here’s the description from the back of the book:
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue, they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression and a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
In addition to the parallels between Ella’s character and my drag character, the name “Ella Minnow Pea” is an alphabet joke, because it sounds just like “L M N O P”, hence why it was chosen for a story about letters. As a drag artist with the goal of promoting literacy and a love for reading, I think this funny name is perfect. I also think it’s perfect because some people like to make fun of LGBTQ+ people by calling us “the alphabet people”, and sometimes we reclaim this label with love. In fact, I once had an angry woman follow me out of a swimming pool to tell me some hurtful and factually incorrect things about myself as a Queer person. As her final jab, she shouted at me across the parking lot, “At least I’m not alphabetical!”, which gave me a good laugh, because it probably isn’t the most effective thing to say if you want to hurt someone’s feelings. So by being Ella Minnow Pea, I am having a laugh about and proudly owning my title as an “alphabetical” person.
I usually struggle with technology, but I found it fairly easy to set up Ella’s instagram account. When I started typing out this post I expected to have lots to say about the process, but it only took me about five minutes which I’m quite happy about. I uploaded a simple background for the profile pic, added some pronouns, and included this bio:
☆A drag performer promoting literacy and inclusivity☆
★Busy serving looks and reading books in Ktunaxa ɁamakɁis★
I chose to note that I am in Ktunaxa ɁamakɁis, because I need to remember that this land is full of Ktunaxa history going back thousands of years before I showed up and put on some eyeshadow, and it’s still Ktunaxa land today. This is my responsibility as a person, but I think it’s even more important for me to acknowledge as a performer who wants to bring people together and make sure every child and family feels seen, respected, and celebrated. Saying the land’s name is a small step in a lifelong journey of promoting truth about Indigenous Peoples’ experiences and reconciliation of the trauma white teachers like myself caused through the Indian Residential School system.
Stay tuned for next week’s free inquiry post, by that time I will have my first story time video uploaded and will share a reflection of my whole free inquiry project.
Links: