The dressing room is exactly as I had expected it to be.
Wigs, make-up, dresses & glamorous photographs cover every inch of the
room. I’m here to talk candidly with Bláthnaid McGee, a staple on the Irish
drag scene.
Bláthnaid set off on her path to drag stardom at the age of
17, having set her sights on becoming Panti Bliss’ Performing
Assistant. Panti had only opened her bar, aptly named ‘Pantibar’, and was
searching for her right hand, emm…woman. After losing out on the top prize, the
enigmatic Bláthnaid McGee was asked back to play giant Connect 4 with the
audience, as it was hard not to fall in love with her bubbly personality. Ever
evolving, she started performing and then DJing, eventually being noticed and
being asked to perform in other venues. Now 5 years on, she’s an established
performer, still here, “Still being a big, huge, Man-Woman of a Saturday
night”.
Coming out can be hard enough, so coming out and then telling
your parents you want to be a drag queen I can only imagine is 10 times more
difficult. However Bláthnaid’s parents are beyond supportive. She tells me how
her mother’s reaction was,” Oh I hope you don’t want to become a woman or
anything!” which Bláthnaid immediately shot down saying that it was just a job
and purely for money. It’s funny how parents always jump to that conclusion. As
for her father, it was the typical fatherly, “Ok whatever you want son”. It’s great that different generations can
appreciate the art also. Bláthnaid’s mother is actually going in to see the
show next week with a few of her own friends.
Asking how her day-to-day life differs from her drag life, the
most accurate phrase was, “I’m more glamorous”. I’m told when as a man on the
train, he looks “BLEH! With hair undone, tracksuit bottoms on and not a care in
the world. Then later, “I’m going to be a big huge glamorous woman!”. I’m also
told how personality wise, she is more outspoken. “I’m kind of more outspoken
in drag. I can just kind of say whatever pops into my head. I suppose it’s just
a different version of me. I’m louder & more out there. You can say
whatever you want & you can get away with it. You’re dressed up like a
woman and nobody cares”.
As I sit chatting away, watching the transformation from
Ciaran to Bláthnaid, I can see the amount of time and effort that’s put into
this and it’s no surprise to me when I’m told putting on make-up is her
favourite part. “I LOVE doing my make-up. It’s so fun. Sometimes you’re not in
the mood to come in and go to work but when you’re sitting there, doing your
make up for about 2 hours you kind of get in the zone”. Ever the perfectionist,
she tells me she wonders if people would notice if something went undone but
that she couldn’t do it because she’d know and she’d care. A true sign that her
work is important to her. She recounts a funny story to me about a show she did
recently, “I was doing a show up in Belfast and I was wearing these peep toe shoes so I only painted the first three toenails and I kicked off my shoes
during the song and there was a woman in the front like ‘OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT!’,
I was so annoyed I forgot about that. I was raging. Ooopsie”.
Walking around as man dressed up as a woman you would think
you would get into some bad situations, however Bláthnaid hasn’t which I think
is a great sign for the people of Ireland,“ I don’t think I’ve received any
stigma, but you get abuse every now and again from straight boys In the street
walking around in drag. But you just kind of give it back. Some people are like
‘Oh you’re a drag queen you dress up like a woman do you want to be a woman’
but I couldn’t be bothered with people like that. Now if somebody says that I’m just like, ‘F
off’. When I ask if she herself believes Ireland is accepting of drag culture
she agrees. “I think so. Panti had her show in the Abbey there recently &
then she went off on tour to Australia. Then the Wright Venue and the Gilbert
& Wright bars, well they have Annie Balls. She works in all the different
bars doing the bingo Monday to Friday. All the straight bars! Yeah we’re all over the place these days”.
The difficulty with drag according to Bláthnaid is how small
the scene is. “It’s a really small scene and there are only 4 or 5 bars up here
so only so many jobs going. Only so many things you can do. So I suppose breaking
out in the drag scene weekly would be a bit difficult. Learning words too. I
can’t dance or anything so sometimes the spoken word thing is easier but it’s a
lot more learning. It’s funny, it’s something different. It’s not just the same
‘oh look at him in a wig and dancing to a song’. You can be so easily replaced.
Like because there’s so many of us out here you’ve got to keep it fresh, new
and stuff like that. Unless you buy your
own bar, then you can do whatever you want!”.
My last question was where she saw herself in 10 years. “I
don’t see myself here. I want to live in Edinburgh and I like the job that I’m
doing at the moment so I want to work my way up there and move. I
don’t know whether I’m going to do drag over there just kind of see what
happens. I never planned on doing it for 5 years so I don’t know in 10 years if
I’m still going to be doing it!”.
The last thing Bláthnaid said to me was probably the best way
to sum her up, “I don’t really think of myself and Bláthnaid being different
people. Just because I’m still the same person I’m just in a wig. I’m slightly
more drunk and more glamorous than I would be”.
I think regardless of where she ends up, Bláthnaid will win
everyone over with her charm and charismatic demeanour. I wish her all the luck
in the world.
