GCN__February_2018

“
If we keep informing them,
letting them know the history
and not letting them forget…
then they’ll get it, and they’ll
know why they were able to
come out of the womb shitting
rainbows and glitter.
Visage herself is the mother of a queer child – her 18
year-old daughter, Lillie identifies as bisexual. “I knew I’d end
up with a queer kid,” she laughs. “I just thought it would be a
choreographer, or an interior decorating boy or hairdresser,
but it ended up being a girl who is still questioning and finding
her way.”
While a bi kid couldn’t hope for a more clued-in mother,
Michelle says it’s only recently that she’s come to accept the
viability of bisexuality.
“Back when I started with the community, in the 1980s, it was
close to a death sentence to come out as gay. It was safer for
the boys, not the girls, to come out as bisexual even though
they were gay. So, it’s only in the past three years or so that I’ve
realised bisexuality is a viable way of being.
“My daughter identifies as bi and non-binary. She’s dealt with
some pretty serious depression issues, so she’s finally coming
out of that now and exploring her bisexuality. She’s 18, so it’s
later in life, whereas some kids might do it at 13, so I don’t know
if she even needs that validation yet. She might, in university,
realise how important it is, because bis and trans get the shitty
end of the stick. It’s not fair. Being the mother of a bisexual kid, I
will scream louder for her rights, which do matter and are real.”
Although the America in which Lillie is coming of age is a
much more evolved place than when her mother was living
it up on the New York underground with her best buddy, the
young RuPaul (aka Andre Charles), one year into the Trump
administration, with the roll-back of protections for trans
people and rhetoric, along with the erasing of gay recognition,
there are clear efforts to turn the evolutionary direction
backwards.
“It’s very hard in America right now,” says Michelle. “But the
stronger and louder we are, and if we band together, we will
be heard. Our brothers and sisters did not fight in Stonewall
all those years ago for it to go back to the way it was. We’re
no longer being pushed back into the closet; we’re no longer
being silenced.
“As a mother of a queer kid, I can only look to the future. It’s
a lot easier to be under the queer umbrella these days than
it has ever been, in my life, so I want those kids to know why.
If we keep informing them, letting them know the history and
not letting them forget… then they’ll get it, and they’ll know why
they were able to come out of the womb shitting rainbows and
glitter.”
Visage herself was born to an American-Irish mother in 1968,
then adopted by a Jewish family in New Jersey and christened
Michelle Lynn Shupack. “My mother couldn’t have me, other
circumstances got in the way, but she loved me enough to
give me up for adoption,” she says early on in our chat, but
later, when we’re talking about Drag Race again, it becomes
apparent that this presented its challenges.
“If it were me growing up, my self-loathing, and the hatred I
had for myself, not knowing why I’d been given up for adoption,
if I’d had a show like Drag Race, maybe I wouldn’t have had
an eating disorder, maybe I wouldn’t have thought I was
ugly, or didn’t fit in or had nobody who didn’t understand my
weirdness,” she says. “But I didn’t have that, so I had to go
through all that shit, to come out the other side and realise,
I’m not going to sit back and let somebody bully somebody
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