"There is a lot of discrimination and taboos" | Cosplay, e …

A few hours after meeting Alberto Fernandez's candidacy as a presidential candidate, social networks exploded with comments about his son Estanislao: "The son is a drag queen and a cosplayer!". Many have celebrated and even sworn that with this Fernandez "had won his vote". Others made fun of and made discriminatory comments. But what is the culture of drag? What does it mean to be cosplay?

Estanislao started a few years ago to venture into this culture and has come to have more than 15,000 followers on Instagram, where are their photos and their productions. As soon as it was announced that his father would be running for president, the number of his followers grew by almost one hundred percent in just a few hours. This does not stop being surprised, even if he recognizes that this subject is not popular and that we do not know much about the Drag Queen culture in Argentina. In this sense, he stated that he often suffered from discrimination and violence. He however stressed that he was not silent when he was attacked or insulted, because "to remain silent, it is allow them to continue to say it".

Aware that this is not a popular culture and that discrimination prevails because he saw it in his flesh, he acknowledged that when his father told him about his candidacy for the Presidency of the Nation, he was not only surprised, but he thought that here everything was over. "this" for him, he was going to have to "take care of him". However, he pointed out that after talking with Fiore (the father's partner), he realized that it might also be an opportunity to make the dragon visible.

– Before knowing the pre-application, you already had a public image of what you are doing. What is cosplay?

– It's the representation of characters through clothing and makeup. The word comes from costume which in English means disguise and play which means interpretation. It's the interpretation of the characters through the costumes. In 2014, I met the cosplay because I was dating a girl who was doing it and I started to face it. Afterwards, I decided that I wanted to start doing it myself and, at the same time, I started to know the trail.

– And what is the trail?

– I can not define it because it's something so personal that it changes with everyone. Personally, I think what touches us all is that it is an artistic manifestation of the gender-related individual. The drag queen is a person – a man or a woman – who, through his clothes, his makeup, his wig, his nails and others, manages to create a character so expressive and exaggerated that it does not necessarily have to be a hundred to female cent. It can be an androgynous character. If you add the queen to the dragon, it tends to the feminine; if you add the king, to the masculine.

– And the interpretation of this character also implies a kind of performance or is it only aesthetic?

– From the moment you produce, I think your performance starts there. You could say that it's a performance of its kind.

– You have a large production, does it take a long time?

– I got to a point where I can wear makeup in an hour and go out, but I have friends who put between three and five hours to wear makeup. I can be faster at that.

– And you prepare your own clothes?

– Yes, a lot of costumes that I prepare. A friend of mine has a workshop where she teaches sewing and taught me. These days (since we know that his father will be running for president), one of the comments I read on Twitter was "we will stay with him because the costumes and the photos are paid by everyone, "but I learned how to sew and I do myself.

– Once you are produced, where does the character appear?

In general, the trail is closely related to the night because when it starts to return something mbadive in the United States, in the 70s, there was so much homophobia, discrimination and transphobia, that these people were forced to isolate themselves in clubs. Over time, even though it was something related to the night, it spread to many other areas. In 2008, RuPaul – one of the most popular drag queen – made a reality show that popularized drag and drove it to areas where it was impossible before. Today, there are drag queens who have their own makeup lines, who are sworn on television or on singers. Originally, the perfo in boliches was the interpretation of a famous woman, all very exaggerated, like a living statue that danced over a loudspeaker. But now, he was able to expand to other areas and open up the possibility that a drag queen or a drag king could arrive wherever you want.

– Is it an artistic research?

– Overall, but also many people find things by themselves. Many have discovered their gender identities by drag. Is that when you're done rolling and you look in the mirror – whether it's the first time or not – it's a highlight because you can not believe you're . All your life you have seen in one direction and now you see another.

– And how is the Argentine drag scene?

– It's still quite late at night and isolated. It's something very new. When I started, I did not want to go clubbing because I never went out dancing. I started doing drag when I started doing cosplay and there were not many people doing that. Above all, do both things by hand, because in the cosplay environment, there is also the crossover game (a variant of cosplay in which a person disguises himself as a character of the opposite kind) and when I'm in the mood. I started in the cross game, he looked more like a girl doing as a boy than a boy doing as a girl, because the environment is still pretty macho. There is a lot of harbadment, from badual to cybernetic. So, I did not know another boy to play the role of a girl and if there was one, it was something very calm, zero exaggeration, which is all that the drag carries. I included the cosplay in the trail. For me, the drag is anyone who gets up and goes out on the street like that.

– Is there a lot of harbadment in the environment?

– Yes, but over the past two years, a campaign has led the actors of the Nerdro chain called "Cosplay IS NOT Consensus" and has generated a big change. At first, five boys went to events and distributed pins, pamphlets and harbadment complaints, ranging from verbal abuse to badual violence or you want to hit. In comic events, I have encouraged and there is no place to file formal complaints. So there is no statistics on the number of times this happens, but I think 90% of cosplayers have been harbaded. With this campaign, last year, in the first comic strip of the year, posters were placed to make this problem visible and demand the respect of the population. And that was the big change: the biggest event in Argentina is to recognize that there is a problem.

– You say that you do not care about politics but, in a way, there is a lot of politics in what you do.

– It's really a level of discrimination and taboo. The majority of drag queens work in the LGTTBI collective clubs, never in a heterobadual bowling, where the gay who goes there is more covered and is not feminine. And when I start going to events, for people it was shocking. I remember that the first event I went to was with my girlfriend – even though we were not going out yet – and with a group of friends, and I had to record all the comments you can expect. They always shouted from afar. If they tell me something, I answer.

– When did you start, did you talk to your old man? How was it

The first few months, I did it without leaving home. I lived with my mother and I had a schedule where I was alone and it was time to explore that. Also because socially in 2015, it was a little more taboo than it is today. For a long time, I only did it for events and photos. Not at home because I did not talk to my parents. When I spoke, in September or October of last year, he had a very good reception, thankfully. I told him, because at the time, we were traveling with my mother in New York, at Comic Con, and I wanted to go to a character that I really like, Junko Enoshima, a Japanese character to gigantic pink hair. Then it was time to tell him.

– When your father said that he was going to be a presidential candidate, did you have the impression that what you would do would be a problem?

– When he told me that it was a bucket of cold water because he was not aware of it and he was not expecting it either. The first thing that came to my mind was, "Here's this for me, I'll have to take care of myself." If they've ever told me to drag things along or even pretend to be a disguised man and see me as a rare thing, it'll be worse now. But thanks to Fabiola (Yañez, Alberto Fernández's girlfriend), I started to see an opportunity to make all these problems visible. And now I do not suffer. It is rare that they send me messages of means and brands proposing things to me. Since the announcement made so far, I have added more than ten thousand followers on Instagram. I've had my account since 2012 and over all these years, I managed to get 13,000 subscribers because I managed to be recognized as being Dyhzy, the drag queen.