"I was always the kid fighting for something or someone else. I was always questioning, always open, and always an outsider," says Ladyfag, the Jewess who loves to dress like a Mennonite. Whether a Cher-esque drag queen or a little Victorian prude in piles of petticoats, Ladyfag has turned smashing and redefining boxes into art. Her double entendre of a name aims to unravel the simplistic morals of the most liberal among us and instigate pause (i.e. thought). Politically correct, according to the New York Times, if spelled as one word, Ladyfag -- the name and the person -- cannot be labeled, and that’s just the point.
Ladyfag is as demure with her legs crossed under romantic Transylvanian embroidery as she is untamed with her unshaven armpits and vixen heels. Beautiful as she is handsome, seductive as she is monogamous, Ladyfag's multiplex of an identity has found a den of mutually loyal friends in gay men. “I am like the dog that runs with the wolves,” says Ladyfag, referring to the uber-devotion of her wildly expressive group of black-sheep queers, or, as, she calls them, “My family.”
A transplanted Torontonian in NYC with a background in vintage clothing that is obsessive as it is elaborate, Ladyfag is bedecked and bedazzled in head-to-toe, finger-to-finger pieces, from Givenchy to the Kachins of Burma. But it is in her nightlife, where Ladyfag hosts and produces a variety of parties and events, that the lame pretense, inhibitions, and labels that swirl over sex and gender are obliterated. Among the many poignant statements that Ladyfag makes concerning typical values, the one that strikes us the most is that objectification is appropriate as long it comes from the right place. Such beliefs are essential in order to destroy all the shit we shove under the rug as well the elephants that we leave in the room. "If I'm wearing a short dress that night, it's because my legs feel good and I feel sexy in it and that's OK,” says Ladyfag. “In my world, calling someone a slut can be a compliment."
xo Elisa & Lily
Video edited by Aileen Haugh
