Arts, Culture & Entertainment

A cisgender woman in drag steals the spotlight

A cisgender female student shows the USC community that there is a place in drag for everyone

Student performer May Glove on stage holding a heart.
Student performer Jayna Dias performing on stage as her persona May Glove during the QuASA Drag Show. (Photo: Weiwei Huang)

Jayna Dias, an undergraduate Roski School of Design major, is working to carve out a space for cisgender women like her in the drag world, a space popularly dominated by gay men and transgender women.

Dias’ drag persona, May Glove, embodied hyperfemininity in her performance at USC Queer and Ally Student Assembly’s (QuASA) annual drag show this January.

“I feel like, at times, femininity can be very constricting in your day to day life, sometimes it’s not taken seriously,” Dias said. “But when you deliberately decide, I’m going to be as hyper-feminine as possible, and everybody’s going to love it, I think that’s very powerful.”

With drag being a niche and safeguarded community, cisgender women entering this space come with a lot of scrutiny, according to Saneel Sharma, director of the drag show. However, Sharma believes this scrutiny to be unwarranted.

“Cisgender women have always been supporters of drag, and it would feel wrong to exclude them in the community, since they’ve always been our number one supporters,” Sharma said. “In Jayna’s case, it felt like not only was she a fan, but she was an active member.”

Dias wholeheartedly believes drag is an avenue for expression, and that the art form cannot and should not be contained or relegated to any specific notions as to what it is supposed to be.

”Some people just have so much talent, it feels so wrong to try to stifle that,” Dias said.

Not only did Dias perform, but she also served as assistant director for the drag show. She interned for the show the year prior, and was thus recruited by Sharma to help direct. Dias put in months of work directing the show, beginning to plan the show’s theme, “a freak show”, the summer before it even took place.

“We wanted to get into the idea of drag as being kind of underground, often seen as strange or freaky, and we wanted to embrace that,” Dias said.

Sharma and Dias auditioned more than 40 people before selecting 16 performers, held numerous individual and group practice sessions, and scoured for a venue that could seat over 600 people, eventually securing Bovard Auditorium on USC’s main campus.

This was Dias’ first time both performing in drag and directing a drag show.

“For that to be your first time performance, it left every other first time drag queen out of business,” Sharma said. “She just understands the art, and even though it was her first time, it didn’t look like it.

Dias, who has participated in gymnastics for more than 12 years, carried her athleticism with her onto the stage.

“During my performance I was like I’m on stage, this is kind of like a score, it’s a competition, and I’m going to perform it that way,” Dias said.

Dias performed a vintage burlesque number under her drag name, May Glove — her character and name were inspired by Hollywood starlet Mae West. She sampled from a lot of 1950s artists and singers for the musical component of her number, like Rita Hayworth and Dorothy Dandridge. Dias also incorporated a lot of lines from Mae West to help her embody the witty, sexy bombshell of the starlet herself.

“She brought an energy to the show that was absolutely needed,” said Sam Starlov, a close friend of Dias who was impressed with her performance.

Getting into the character of May Glove was a task in itself. During her number, Dias wore a size F breastplate and due to the size of the breastplate, she had to wear a bodysuit, corset, and bra, all to secure the faux breasts. Along with these pieces, she adorned a couple of tear-away items and a shoulder length, voluminous, orange wig.

“I needed the biggest hair, the biggest tits, the tiniest waist,” Dias said. “Because, in my day to day life, I don’t have that relationship with femininity as much, so I need to take drag as a platform and segue for me to tap into that.”

Dias said she chose to wear such a large breastplate to ensure she was on the far end of the scale of femininity. She said she wanted to exemplify an inflated, almost cartoony version of a woman, in order to fully realize a transformation.

“She went for the route of being almost provocative and really challenging the gender norms of what cis women could do with drag,” Sharma said. “She didn’t do just any other average size breastplate. She did one that was ginormous, the most exaggerated size, which is what drag is, [an exaggerated form] of gender.”

Along with practicing drag, Jayna expresses herself through other forms of art. She recently opened her first solo exhibition titled “Clarity and Opacity” through the Roski School of Design.

Her exhibit cataloged her travels in Senegal and stands as an homage to her familial lands and ancestral country. It also explores the nuances of experiencing life as a Black American and feeling distanced from her Senegalese culture. “I consider [the] exhibition a testament to myself and the two sides of my identity coming together,” Dias said.

Starlov said he was impressed and proud that she completed this exhibition all while working as a full time student, assistant directing, as well as performing in the drag show.

“I really cannot wait to see what Jayna does in her future. I have never met anyone like her. Her dedication to her craft is truly something that inspires me. Whether that be in drag or in painting, in sports, she is truly a jack of all trades,” Starlov said. “I believe that she’s really going to go far. I hope people at USC really take notice of what a special person and artist that we have in Jayna.”

This story is part of Flare, an Annenberg Media initiative that focuses on women and queer stories. The goal of this beat is to immerse our audience in the culture, identity, and issues surrounding women and queer communities.