Drag artists unite to get out the vote, babes

It’s Thurs­day after­noon and Drag artist Crys­tal has just scraped her make up off — a bit of errant eye­lin­er around her eyes is the only thing betray­ing the face she’s just removed. She is, she admits as we talk over zoom in a hasti­ly arranged inter­view, ​“tired”.

Indeed haste is a key theme of our con­ver­sa­tion as we talk about Vote, Babes!, a new vot­er reg­is­tra­tion ini­tia­tive the east Lon­don leg­end launched that very after­noon after com­ing up with the idea just 5 days pre­vi­ous­ly. ​“I mes­saged pho­tog­ra­ph­er Matt Ford on Sat­ur­day morn­ing and asked if he would be inter­est­ed in doing some­thing after I read a stat that said only 40% of young peo­ple would vote in the next election.”

The sta­tis­tic comes from polling con­duct­ed for the Prince of Wales award. The research shows that, although almost two thirds of the 3,000 18 – 24 year olds asked had been involved in some sort of polit­i­cal activ­i­ty in the pre­vi­ous three months, less than half would use their vote in the election.

“I want­ed to do some­thing to hope­ful­ly spread a bit of aware­ness about the reg­is­tra­tion dead­line, hope­ful­ly encour­age young peo­ple to engage and to see there is actu­al­ly some­thing pow­er­ful you can do with vot­ing,” she tells me. ​“Matt said, why don’t I get a few more peo­ple involved and so I mes­saged basi­cal­ly every drag artist I know basi­cal­ly and before you know it, we had a pret­ty huge list which is real­ly cool!”

In total over 20 drag artists from across the coun­try came togeth­er to be involved in the project, which encour­ages young peo­ple to sign up before the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dead­line of the 18^th June and use their vote. Those involved include a num­ber of Drag Race UK alum such as Davina de Cam­po who said, ​“It’s always the most impor­tant elec­tion ever but this time real­ly feels like it is. Super excit­ed for change! Hope­ful­ly see you at the polling booths!”

On organ­is­ing such a big project, that includ­ed 20 shoots for pho­tos and video con­tent, I ask how Crys­tal man­aged to pull it togeth­er in such a short amount of time. Drags, I posit, are quite famous­ly unrush­able. She laughs, sigh­ing slight­ly as she does. ​“What­ev­er is more chaot­ic than herd­ing cats, I guess herd­ing drags, but it was that!” she tells me, before admit­ting the tight dead­line actu­al­ly helped focus things. ​“In many ways just mes­sag­ing peo­ple on Sat­ur­day say­ing — we’re doing this thing on Mon­day and Tues­day, are you in or out, actu­al­ly helped bring it togeth­er but I still can’t quite believe we’re on Thurs­day. Our Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Matt has basi­cal­ly been either shoot­ing or edit­ing non-stop since Mon­day and every­one has been so gen­er­ous with their time, it’s so appreciated.”

This is an elec­tion that is com­ing against a back­drop of increas­ing homo­pho­bia. One of increased Trans­pho­bia, and the weapon­i­sa­tion, not just of trans peo­ple but also drag artists specif­i­cal­ly. What comes next real­ly mat­ters for so many, but espe­cial­ly those in drag com­mu­ni­ties, their fans and the wider LGBTQ+ community.

“I think our com­mu­ni­ty tends to be pro­gres­sive, and I want to see more of that rep­re­sent­ed in Pol­i­tics,” Crys­tal tells me. ​“I think a lot of peo­ple are feel­ing dis­il­lu­sioned because they feel like their choic­es are between Con­ser­v­a­tives or Labour and nei­ther of them are par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ing right now to pro­gres­sive peo­ple, but I still think it’s real­ly impor­tant to vote, so that we show that our voice, and our dis­dain for those two options is counted.”

For Crys­tal it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly about say­ing ​‘don’t vote Labour’, ​“in some places, maybe the most pro­gres­sive or best chance you’ve got is Labour, but in oth­er places you can do a protest vote, spoil your bal­lot, or actu­al­ly help elect a Green MP with more pro­gres­sive poli­cies than what’s cur­rent­ly on offer.”

“When I think about the 60% of young peo­ple who aren’t plan­ning to vote, I just imag­ine what we could do if we tapped into that. It’s just such a huge opportunity.”

The cam­paign, enter­ing its sixth day of exis­tence as I write, is in its infan­cy. It is, per­haps a lit­tle pre­vi­ous to ask about future plans, but I do it anyway.

“One thing I’m def­i­nite­ly doing is cre­at­ing a mail­ing list so I can send out reminders about the dead­lines for reg­is­tra­tion for proxy vote, for postal vote, for actu­al­ly get­ting out and vot­ing etc which peo­ple can sign up to on the web­site,” she tells me. ​“Beyond the elec­tion, you know pol­i­tics is some­thing that is at the heart of what I do as a drag artist so I will def­i­nite­ly con­tin­ue agi­tat­ing for change, whether or not that’s through a cam­paign called Vote, Babes! or some­thing else!”

Find out more about Vote, Babes here.

Read more Huck Elec­tion con­tent here.

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