Cover Girls Un-tucked

Not every cover girl has to shave his 5 o’clock shadow before his close-up. Drag queens make for a hairy exception.

American Apparel has made a name for itself in the game of attention-grabbing advertising campaigns. The brand’s latest ad campaign is no different. In order to sell three new, limited edition t-shirts, the brand relied on three drag queen veterans of the Logo TV show, Ru Paul’s Drag Race, as the fully padded brand ambassadors.

Willam Belli, Courtney Act and Alaska 5000 are three gay men turned blonde, drag bombshells. Donning their shirts on billboards and in an accompanying music video, the self-titled American Apparel Ad Girls are causing eyebrows of all stencils and shapes to rise in captivation.

“We didn’t court controversy but neither does the American Apparel brand specifically,” Willam said. “[The campaign] just shows real people and in this day and age of digital fakery and over glossing, even showing unretouched images is radical.”

For American Apparel, ethical manufacturing is a brand staple. Alongside one of their recurring mantras, “Support Artists, Support Ethical Manufacturing”, the brand fused graphic tees and drag queens for successful sales. Originally, 500 of each queen’s t-shirt were produced. With help from a very viral music video and in-store signings, American Apparel announced that the t-shirts would return to production to meet the market’s high demand.

Decorated with each queen’s distinct stamp of creativity reminiscent of 1980 album covers, these t-shirts pay homage to the rock-n-roll lust of yesteryear. The t-shirt designs weren't quite enough to steer attention away from the models, however.  

Laden in the latex and flashy garb that is customary for American Apparel, the three drag queens nudged their twiggy, female counterparts behind the scenes. According to Willam, the make-up artistry of Scott Barnes helped the queens to make a seamless transition from man to femme. Although, the tall stilettos and taller hair help a little, too.

In thinking of the idealized homogeneous society, it is doubtful that any mainstream American thinks of homosexual subcultures. Instead, Americans undergo a likeness, perhaps even an expectation, of standard silhouettes belonging to a man and to a woman in mainstream media. A more holistic view of America and its underground subcultures—quite literally for the community of drag—recognizes a more fluid silhouette for gender.

According to Aaric Guerriero, director of the Colorado State University GLBTQQA Resource Center, there is a disputed gray area between drag queens and transgendered women.

“There’s a misconception that being transgender is drag - that trans is for show and that it’s as easy as putting on a costume," Guerriero said. “Being trans not a performance of gender, it’s who you are and what you feel.”

The new American Apparel Ad Girls, though their voyages to womanhood do not occur in a similar process or mindset as a transgendered woman, serve as the antithesis to the symphony that the token American advertisement abides by. Willam, CourtneyAct and Alaska 5000 put a kink in the standards accepted for gender, filling the female silhouette and mini skirts just as well as a biological female would.

Certainly, gender plays a part in a performance when it involves a man in a dress and a lace-front wig. But who said foul-mouthed jokes can not be lady-like? For Willam, working as a drag queen within the club scene or in mainstream, is about humor.

“I find that people with curiosities can be swayed easily so I try to present the fact that I’m a queen with humor and then they come over to my dark, sparkly side,” Willam said.

Of all subcultures, the drag queen culture has remained subdued in the American underground despite the loud outfit choices and not-so-coy word choice that each queen rattles off. American Apparel charged ahead in this campaign, allowing their ad space to be filled with jaw lines and cultural perspectives of a different angle.

Equipped with the armor of butt pads and a tight tuck, these queens fight the idea that product success and the use of dominant identities in advertising are positively correlated. Instead, these girls give heed to the revelations that loom for specialized marketing opportunities.

Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Communications at Colorado State University, Catherine Steele, suggests that participation in mainstream media by historically marginalized groups could provide positive momentum in their foray into acceptance.

“If this leads to more spaces where a marginalized community can see themselves and can experience becoming part of a normalized part of society rather than a group that’s ostracized, then that’s useful for that community,” Steele said.

In popular culture, publicity necessitates relevance. According to Steele, this sense of agency that groups receive when invited to appear in media is important. Looking to the American Apparel Ad Girls, agency is not only useful for drag queens and for gay men, but it is useful for the broader American demographic that has largely used hearsay to make decisions about entire groups of people.

Contributing their intersecting identities as biologically sexed men and gender-normative women, the American Apparel Ad Girls provide a platform for marginalized subcultures in a campaign that incorporated advocacy for LGBT communities as a fringe benefit.

Despite the gray area between LGBT communities, there is importance in the authenticity of these spokespersons. They were not cast as fictitious representations of drag queens. Willam, Courtney Act and Alaska 5000 emancipate drag from its stereotyped shadow that has encompassed the community thus far in media.

“Whether you support drag or you don’t support drag, it really sends a message that our lives can be mainstream and we don’t have to be so other-ed,” Guerriero said. “This campaign suggests that we can be commonplace and it is that reflection of self that is so important for any minority.”

Whether it is because they are men or because they turn heads as women, the American Apparel Ad Girls exemplify a rare instance of leveraging members of both straight and gay consumers as a result of their ad campaign.

As bursts of color and life against pure white backgrounds, this campaign epitomizes simplicity.

“It’s disingenuous, at best, for people who are not a part of the marginalized community to tell marginalized folks that they shouldn’t want the thing that we already have,” Steele said. Allowing the queens to breathe life into the campaign allowed attention to settle on the pioneering event that is cover girls as men covered in drag.

“They have the right to reclaim the reduction of femininity in this space, in this context. And they should have the space to do it,” Steele said.

Appearing fully clothed in the ads and on the shirts, the cover girls were able to turn the stigmatized idea of androgyny on its head. According to Willam, being seen and being acknowledged is something that every person wishes for—no matter the identities they carry.

“I’m not trying to be the Sojourner Truth for queens. I’m an entertainer when you reduce it down to the lowest common denominator,” Willam said. “My visibility is a good conversation starter, though, because no one has ever said ‘no thank you, I hate laughter’ in response to me being me.”

Q&Q
[queens&questions] with Willam Belli

America doesn’t usually see blonde cover girls with “meaty tucks”. What has been your experience in this process with those outside of the drag community?

Well America is seeing more and more of us actually. If you walk into a Sephora store, chances are you will see my face on the displays and some packaging it’s personally made me stop mopping from Sephoras nation wide. At customs, if an officer asks why I’m in his country, I tell him I lost a game show with drag queens (“like X Factor for fags”) and they usually laugh and just stamp my passport. Everyone always asks to see pics. The ladies at TSA love me.

One of your favorite causes is you, but this campaign brought awareness to ethical manufacturing and the talents of drag queens. What do you think the world is missing out on if they have yet to become of aware of either drag queens or ethical manufacturing?

I honestly think putting your money where your mouth is a valuable trait that has really gone by the wayside with the last few generations. I’ve always worn American Apparel throughout my career as solid base pieces to build a look off of and am thrilled that I get to represent them. 

American Apparel is known for going public with clothing campaigns that catch the public’s eye—typically in a controversial way. Why do you think this campaign was able to avoid controversy in order to sell out t-shirts and become a viral success?

I respect the hell out of American Apparel and am glad that Scott Barnes put enough makeup on my face that I didn’t need Photoshop.

The American Apparel Ad Girls campaign included in-store singings to a viral music video. What went on behind the scenes in order to make this campaign both comical and commercial with a minority group at the forefront of it all?

 I had an idea to spoof a song, I asked the girls, they agreed and we did it. Boom. I work swiftly. The in-stores were planned after they saw what a crazy success the shirts were. Courtney said she felt like a Spice Girl. I’m going to Tokyo for one later this month in fact.

What's next for you?

Season 2 of Eastsiders, more work with OCC, in-store Sephora appearances, working on a book and I have an album coming in 2015 that I plan to tour around the world with stops already scheduled in Asia, Australia, South America and probably some shitty places like Idaho.