Temple University - Templar Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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Celebrating Love and Intersectionality With IDEAL's Annual Drag Show Temple's IDEAL hosts their seventh annual Drag Show to celebrate National Coming Out Week. By Njera Perkins photography by Nate Rogers For the LGBTQIA+ community, National Coming Out Day is a special day for all. This holiday was created to acknowledge growth and encourage people to embrace themselves wholeheartedly. Embracing who you are as an individual is what National Coming Out Day is all about. However, the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, Advocacy and Leadership (or IDEAL) decided one day wasn't enough to celebrate such a special time. For that reason, we now recognize National Coming Out Week every year at Temple. In the last decade. National Coming Out Week on campus has followed a specific theme significant to the LGBTQ-IA+ community. The theme for this year is Love is Intersectional and it explores the multi-faceted identities of race, gender, and sexuality. This year's anniversary of National Coming Out Week is marked with the Roman numeral X for the tenth consecutive year of this unique set of events. According to Nu’Rodney Prad, the Director of Student Engagement at IDEAL, the X also symbolizes the cross between gender identities and gender-inclusive language, otherwise known as intersectionality. Of the eight events planned for the week including NCOW Fest and NCOW Gala, the annual Drag Show, held in Temple's Performing Arts Center, had hundreds of students lined up down Broad Street waiting to get in. I haven't attended the Drag Show before, so I'm excited to see what it's all about, said Tatiana Joaquin, a sophomore International Business major. The Drag Show was a competition-style show where five fabulous drag queens competed for a chance to win prizes. The segments of the show included two rounds of lip-syncing where the contestants incorporated their personalities, clothing, and props into their performances. Each queen got a chance to show off their skills and individual styles to the audience, whether they sang covers of popular songs or used funny storylines in their act. This year's competition portion of the show featured lip-syncing, dancing, and even a performance dedicated to LGBT members who we've lost to violence. Even Starr got a chance to 10

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Photographer William CarerI TEMPLE UNIVERSITY HOMECOMING 2018 wjpMmc,

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show the audience her style of drag by performing a song of her choice. After all the queens got a chance to perform, a winner was finally crowned at the end of the night. Marcha Pisces, a drag performer and LGBT rights activist in Philadelphia, walked away as the first place winner of the show. Her touching performance of Beyonce's I Was Here accompanied by a slideshow of fellow black queens and LGBT members who have passed moved the audience to their cores. Serena Starr, otherwise known as Cory Wade, hosted the event. She was the third runner-up on Cycle 20 of America's Next Top Model and the show's first openly gay contestant. Starr previously hosted Temple’s first ever Drag Show in 2012, prior to competing on the TV show. Aside from performances by the queens, the event was filled with performances by Temple's own D2D and the Xcel Dance Crew, who gave everyone a lesson in voguing. The event stressed the importance of love without limits and the range of identities included in the LGBTQIA+ community. Diamante D-Mo Ortiz, a diversity peer with IDEAL, said The importance of this event is to make sure that there are students who are given the opportunity to have a voice and the platform to really advocate for themselves. The purpose of National Coming Out Week at Temple is to bring awareness to National Coming Out Day itself, but the week-long celebration was first introduced by colleagues Nu'Rodney Prad and Andrew Dies in the fall of 2009. Usually what we see on social media, these issues pertaining to transphobia, homophobia, gender, and sexuality become a lot, Ortiz said, But letting go and seeing the beauty of it in the LGBTQIA+ community is the most beautiful thing. The host of the evening also made it a point to educate the audience on the difference between gender-inclusive language. You can call me he and I will respond, but you can also call me she and I will respond, Starr said. The show was a great way to prove to students on campus that it's okay to be yourself. The positive message touched everyone in the audience and participants in the show. Just seeing all the comradery and how so many beautiful people were gathered for a common cause to celebrate authenticity and love,” said Starr. I had a blast. 11