Miss Toto wants to change your entire perception of drag queens
Behind the Drag aims to showcase the off-stage lives of some of America's most talented drag queens. The intimate series gives us the opportunity to meet the people behind our favorite over-the-top drag queens.
Rock Evans is a personal trainer and group fitness instructor living in Chicago who's challenging the traditional body standards for drag.
"Why is muscle associated with masculinity?" he asks. "There are so many women within the fitness community, the body builder community, that are even more jacked than I am. And I'm like these women are more feminine that I will ever be, even when I'm in drag."
As Miss Toto, Evans believes that being strong actually helps him to be a fiercer drag queen. He points out that it's not every day you see queens doing backflips or pulling themselves up in the rafters and dropping into the splits.
Evans was first introduced to drag at a young age — he remembers in the second grade saying that he felt like a girl inside. To him, Miss Toto "is an extension of all of the feminine energy that I envision to be in a person. It's just this vision that I want to put out into the universe. Just creating my own bionic, bodybuilder goddess."
When Evans first began performing drag, however, he said he received pushback from the community.
"When I first started, a lot of people were like, 'Oh, you can't do drag because you have muscles, and you can't do drag because of this.' And I'm like, well, I'm doing drag. So, where's the rules book, because if there is one, show me."
Every day, Evans is helping to change the hyper-masculine world of fitness and hopes to open people's eyes as to what being queer really is. And at the end of the day, it's all about having fun — having fun with yourself and the audience.
"You can do whatever you want as a drag performer because it's your creative outlet, not anybody else's."
If you enjoyed reading this article, you might also like reading about the world's "strongest mom."
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