LoUis deCYfered

Cheeky chappy drag king LoUis CYfer has only been performing in his current form since February of this year, yet he stormed to success winning this year’s Drag Idol representing for West 5, picking up a legion of fans and supporters along the way. This week Jason Reid speaks to Lucy Jane Parkinson – the artist behind the pistol-wielding cowboy – about gender stereotyping and the issues surrounding it, issues that have shaped LoUis as an act…

 


So, how’s everything been since winning Drag Idol? 

It’s been great! I’ve been received with open arms, and everyone’s been really friendly and excited to see me perform.

That’s good to hear. You describe LoUis as: “the gender bending, sexuality offending Sheriff of Soho”; was it always your intention for him to send up the stereotype of an alpha male, whilst also being quite camp and sexual, thus injecting a sense of gender fluidity? 

For me it’s about creating a character who has a spectrum personality, one who doesn’t match common misconceptions. For example, he looks very masculine from the waist up, but when he starts to move he embodies what I call masculine femininity. I’m trying to encourage people to discard their previous knowledge of image and representation to understand LoUis. I want them to learn LoUis not labels.

Why did you decide to go down that route with him?

I wanted to explore the representation of gender whilst also trying to understand why I saw myself one way (camp), but others assumed – based on my short hairstyle and dress sense – I was another way (butch). This meant I was also assumed to be aggressive and I suffered for this loss of translation. I felt nobody knew me. Having the opportunity to explore this through performance helped me to attempt to find ways to encourage a step back away from branding people based on old social binary structures.

So, challenging those stereotypes is very important to you?

It’s the most important thing to me. If it wasn’t for drag I might have jumped on the surgeon’s table long ago, because if you’re told something enough times, you eventually start to believe it.

“I’m in the business of challenging stereotyping not just stereotypes.”

What were you told?

For my whole life I got told I was a boy; that I was butch, aggressive, and so on, but I’m not. I know that. Society just isn’t used to front-running alpha women like me. So naturally they try to reject and neutralise that which they do not understand. I’m in the business of challenging stereotyping not just stereotypes. I’m trying to displace the people who do this so they cannot rely on the process of signified guesswork, because it’s unreliable. The more I show the displacing, the more people will have to use the information presented not their binary ideologies about gender.

Why do you think these ingrained social perceptions still exist? And how are attitudes changing? 

It used to work for us to understand each other using binary. Because everyone obeyed the social rules surrounding identity. But then some people were unhappy having to be a certain way to navigate through their social worlds. They started trying to push those boundaries, until now where there are little restrictions left over who and how you are. So, to understand each other now, we might have to actually know each other!

Do you think some of LoUis’ appeal and fascination comes from the fact that he blurs those lines of gender, opening him up to a wider audience, more than other kings?

Oh yeah, everyone gets to enjoy sexualising him and his pistol – regardless of their sexuality or persuasion. I never divulge his gender or sexuality though. LoUis is just LoUis.

He is clearly very masculine in appearance, yet you’ve still had a few problems with people’s use of pronouns: calling him ‘she’ by mistake. Why do you think this is? 

He is visually of masculine traits – a cowboy sherif – and still gets called ‘she’, this is true. I think it’s the lack of understanding or perhaps not having a previous stereotype to attach me to. There isn’t one, thank god! So people are faced with a choice and not the usual etiquette you may have with drag queens. It’s actually great for me to see because I learned that the unknown creates a very soft innocent ignorance. People aren’t sure, some think I’m trans, some think I’m actually a man. Some think I’m below a drag queen in the pecking order because I don’t tear into people using insecurities. However, I don’t mind the pronouns issue too much, as I call everyone she anyway. What I really hate is when my name is spelt wrong, that’s just lazy ignorance not innocence.

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