Rising pop singer Chappell Roan and RuPaul's Drag Race alumni Trixie Mattel recently sat down to chat about queerness, pride and their shared Midwestern roots.
Roan hails from Missouri, while Mattel is from Wisconsin. Both expressed their love for their homelands, emphasizing the importance of queer celebrities and community figures appearing at pride events in cities and towns that are less accepting of the LGBT community.
"The gays and the queer people in the flyover states, those are the people I can sit down with...those are the people who fight to exist," said Mattel.
"We didn't go to an art school, bitch. You are not allowed to come out, like, even in college," replied Roan, who identifies as a lesbian.
"In L.A., we can put on a rainbow flag....and nobody cares... the people we're performing for, in some of these states, the money they used to buy tickets to see us was made at a job where they're afraid of acting gay," said Mattel.
Roan said that she's "very, very grateful" for being from the Midwest despite the outside perspective that the Midwest and the South are a "monolith" of anti-LGBT political opinions.
"I'm just like, 'No, bitch, there are queens everywhere, regardless if you think there are or not.' There are queer people everywhere in these teeny tiny towns who are the same as the bitches on the coasts," she said. "I love going to hick-ass states."
She added that she used to perform "rainbow-themed [shows], for small-ass towns in Nowhere, Florida, where they can't say gay. That is their Pride. They will not be able to wear a rainbow again because they're only allowed to wear a rainbow for one day of the year."
However, Roan also joked that she "hates the rainbow" and will no longer be using this theme at her shows.
She intends to perform in drag at Louisville's Kentuckiana Pride Parade and Festival.
"I'm doing Divine, because she's my hero," she told Mattel, who has been doing drag for more than 15 years.
Of Kentucky, Mattel informed Roan that there are "so many gay people, and they are so gay. I was just there this weekend, and they are so gay."
"I feel like the more oppressive the temperature of the state is, when someone like you shows up, those whores are going to show up with bells on losing their minds," Mattel joked.
Roan made her Pride debut, both as an attendee and a performer, at Pittsburgh Pride on June 2. She will take the stage of New York City's Governor's Ball this weekend before moving onto the Kentuckiana Parade and Festival.
Mattel is in the midst of her Pink Pride tour, which will take her across North America through the end of the month, where she will wrap up at The Fillmore in Philadelphia.
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