Caleb Coker is just one of the tens of thousands of students that attend the University of South Carolina. In that regard, he is very common. However, he is also something not many students here can say they are: a drag queen. Drag is a performance art in which a man impersonates a woman or a woman impersonates a man. But Caleb’s drag persona, Ebony Would, is not just an impersonation or a character. “Ebony is a part of me. I simply exaggerate Caleb’s personality and put on a giant wig and prance around,” says the fourth year music education student and violist.
Drag has been around for a long time, but has enjoyed mainstream success recently via “RuPaul’s Drag Race”, a show on LOGO TV which has been hailed as the “America’s Next Top Model” for drag queens. Caleb’s style of drag is a more classic style known as “campy”, which focuses less on being a real bona fide woman, and more on being a man dressed up as a woman. “I sat down every night for a few weeks and studied drag history and culture. I watched movies, studied who our great divas are (Liza, Joan Crawford, Madonna, etc.) and really learned about why drag is important and where we’ve been.” He cites the queen, Divine, as being a big source of inspiration. “Divine became famous in the 1970’s when many drag queens were trying to look like the supermodels and movie stars of the time. Divine drew her eyebrows on much higher than most other queens and really made us question what drag is and what standards we have in regards to beauty.”
When I spoke to Caleb about how Ebony Would came to be, he said “When I was a teenager, I would watch RuPaul’s Drag Race and I was mesmerized by the lip synching. I had been lip synching like a “campy” queen for years and not even known. I snuck out of the house three times in drag in my teen years, and when I moved away for college I was set free.” For Caleb, from that point forward, there was no looking back.
As he likes to say, “If anyone would, Ebony Would.” If anyone would win RuPaul’s Drag Race, Ebony Would.
