CU Boulder’s Drag Prince Embodies Toxic Masculinity

Selena Wellington is a fourth year at CU Boulder studying music composition. They’re also a young drag king looking to bring some new ideas to the medium and the scene.

Wellington first got into drag during a trip to New York, visiting a friend and mentor. They had drag on their radar since seeing the CU Boulder Drag show the previous year, but this was the real turning point. Said mentor’s roommate was a drag queen, and soon, the three were reverse engineering techniques and trying out makeup to get Wellington looking like a king. While it didn’t look great,Wellington used the word “creepy,” it was still significant, as this was the day their drag character, Damian, was born.

Damian’s personality as an edgy, punk, hellboy became apparent pretty immediately. While riding the subway the next day, Wellington saw a Maya Angelou line that encompassed exactly who Damian was: “I in alarm wake as a rumor of war.” That line stuck with them and continues to be a vital part of Damian’s branding. He’s fiery, seductive, furious, fun, and somewhat toxically masculine. In a lot of ways, Damian embodies many of the traits Wellington doesn’t like to admit about themself.

The first time Wellington performed as Damian was their sophomore year at CU Boulder in the annual drag show. They did a number about corrupting their roommate (who was also in drag) to My Chemical Romance’s “Teenagers,” a perfect angsty song for Damian to make his debut to. This performance made Wellington realize something.

“As I was doing it, it felt more like a different part of myself, instead of a costume I was putting on.” Damian, Wellington realized, in a lot of ways was made up of exaggerated pieces of themself that they didn’t like. He became a healthier avenue for them to look at those pieces in a way they normally wouldn’t. As they got deeper into drag, it became more about creating a character, and less about masculinity over all.

Wellington realized they were getting into drag because they didn’t revere masculinity as much as they did femininity. They were confused about what those words even meant, and the more they explored them, the more confused they became. As they put it, “Sometimes they’re a divine mystery to me, and sometimes they mean nothing to me.” But when they started exploring drag, it was with an intent to investigate what a masculine side in them could look like. Before this, femininity, especially traditionally sexy femininity, had felt unachievable to Wellington. Doing drag allowed them to explore how fun it can be to inhabit stereotypical, sexy masculinity.

Wellington wants their drag to be challenging, both for themselves and others. “I want it to be experimental, and I want it to be challenging gender norms, rather than just reinforcing them.” The so-called toxicity Wellington sees in Damian is something they want to explore and challenge, but he’s about more than just that. Damian helps Wellington explore ideas about what it means to be destructive, or to be a rebel, especially in relation to how these things can be gifts or how they can be harmful.

Damian has also helped Wellington with new aspects of their gender expression. At last year’s CU Drag Show, they sang live, something they had not done in drag previously. “That was really…vulnerable,” they told me, “I was like ‘I’m seven months on T; my voice is still dropping; it cracks all the time, and I just committed to singing live at this event.’ I don’t know that this was artistic expression so much as expression for me and expression for my voice.” Wellington feels that drag can provide opportunities for expression like this to other gender non-conforming or non-binary people. “It’s not just cis people putting on the opposite gender, or what have you.”

After their first performance, Wellington knew they wanted to do drag more than once a year, so they began seeking out other opportunities. There weren’t many in Boulder, but they were able to finally find one with the drag king troupe Mile High Kingdom. It all started at Thanksgiving dinner in 2016.

“My mom takes in all kinds of strays,” Wellington said. “I showed them the video from the drag show I had done like a month earlier and my mom’s friend Drew said she knew someone in a drag king troupe and asked if I wanted her to hook me up.” They did want that hook up, and unbelievably soon (the show was a week away), they were attending rehearsals.

The show was a holiday song parody affair, which tasked Wellington with an eclectic shopping list.

“She told me I’d need Christmas boxers, knee-high Christmas socks, battery powered Christmas lights, and a reindeer banana hammock. I had to ask myself, ‘What am I getting into?'”

This performance wasn’t Damian so much as a “cute queer/pan boy,” but Wellington still enjoyed performing.

Due to the demands of school, Wellington is no longer with Mile High Kingdom, but they gained a lot from their experience with the troupe. “Performing with other people where I wasn’t dictating the music or song choice sort of broadened not who Damian could be, but what my drag could be.” For now, they’ll be taking these lessons into more solo numbers, especially around CU’s campus.

Once college is over for them and the frenzy has died down, Wellington intends to seek out more opportunities. They’re interested in creating a forty-minute, two-person drag show with their roommate at some point and may even seek out another troupe wherever they end up. For now, if you’d like to see them perform, keep an eye on CU Boulder campus events like Sexpressions, or check out their social media accounts @itzjustdamian on Twitter, @itsjustdamian on Facebook, and @itsjustdamian69 on Instagram.