Black Girl Magic
I remember seeing Black Girl Magic at Metro in Chicago. My partner and I paid for VIP tickets to meet the headlining queens, many of them alums of Rupaul’s Drag Race: Shea Coulee, Monet Exchange, Dida Ritz, Mo Heart, Asia O’Hara, and the host and organizer, The Vixen.
By the end of the show, I was convinced it was the best drag show I had ever seen.
On Drag Race, The Vixen got the “villain edit” as she fought with Eureka O’Hara and her infamous line “don’t poke the bear.” But she also came away with lots of new fans who respected her incredible performance talent and inventive designs.
In Chicago, The Vixen has a much different reputation, a testament to how locally we can see artists in more complex ways. As the creator and organizer behind Black Girl Magic, a platform to highlight Black drag queens in a city a global economy that does not value them as much as other queens (RuPaul being a notable exception).
When the pandemic hit, The Vixen took BGM online and eventually entered a partnership to stream them on OTV.
It’s still remarkable to me that OTV hosts probably the largest archive of Black drag anywhere in the world thanks to the Vixen organizing dozens of performances from Black queens all around the world.
Press play on Black Girl Magic and you enter a fantasy world with organic, homespun, and occasionally professionally produced music videos, a testament to the power and range of talent in the global Black drag community. Not every queen can serve this hard, in this many genres and styles!
Black Girl Magic is perfect for gathering with community. I often invited my neighbor to come over and for many hours we would rate the performances and dish on divas.
It was one of the great joys I experienced in otherwise somber times.