This rather muddled and affectionate profile tells part of the story of group of outrageous outsized African/American middle-aged women in Richmond Virginia who have adopted the personas of Drag Queens. Centered around Anelica O. Mark-Harris their large-than-life queen bee, these women bedeck themselves out in flamboyant camp dresses and top their look off with a wig piled high (usually blond) and clutching a stack of dollar bills hit a local drag bar where they become the life and soul of the party. Sometimes they are up on stage lip-syncing their hearts out, but most of the time they are right out front screaming their heads off and generously showering the performers with money, before crawling home at 5 am.
Anelica has a (white) very supportive husband and five children which she dotes on and somehow manages to run her large household, and be the administrator at a couple of Seniors Residential Homes, none of which impedes on her manic nighttime life at all. She has an unbridled passion for living life very loud, and full of as much glamour that she can muster, and has found that the gay community of drag queens are the most welcoming group in society that will allow her and her friends (including her 60 year old mother) to do just that.
Beyond seeing them shopping for yet more clothes, or getting some gay friend to do their make up, and partying quite wild, this very patchy narrative never gives much insight into anything much below the surface such as how they can afford to pay for this lifestyle. Nor does it give us any idea of how/why this started, or more importantly question any of the women to uncover some of their more fundamental and underlying motives of wanting to be recognized and acknowledged as drag queens.
They are definitely a very colorful bunch of women who seem to delight in being recognized in their circle as M.O.B. Wives i.e. Magnificent, Outspoken and Beautiful, but their story as presented here in a low-budget superficial Reality TV style with rather haphazard editing, would have made a much better impact if it had been made into a short film instead.
Labels: 2016, documentary, drag
