Student Work
Text and images by Christina Alison Huff
This multimedia archive of drag performers in Mississippi includes video, photographs, and audio documentaries that are meant to bring more awareness of LGBTQ life in the small-town South, while also taking a deeper look at what drag means to these Southern performers.
For her master's thesis project for Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, Christina Alison Huff interviewed five drag performers who live in Mississippi in order to capture what it's like to be a modern drag queen in the conservative South.
Also in eGrove: Drag in Mississippi (image gallery)
Meet the Performers
Born and raised in Fulton, Mississippi, GoDiva Holliday started performing drag in 1999. She was inspired by her now retired drag mother, Jack McCrory (former stage name Baby Holliday). GoDiva Holliday is currently the co-owner of Miss Tupelo and Oxford Pride, and as a show director, she has worked hard to create and maintain queer nightlife in the northern parts of Mississippi.
Originally from Holly Springs, Mississippi, DeePression Holliday is living and thriving in Corinth, Mississippi. As the drag daughter of GoDiva Holliday, she started experimenting in drag in 2019. Suffering from depression, DeePression Holliday named herself after her mental struggles. She says that drag has pulled her out of her depression and that she genuinely feels happy having this kind of outlet where she can fully express herself.
Originally from Ontario, Canada, Mixed Greens lived in northeast Mississippi for most of their life. They are a queer drag nun also known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, founded in 1979. Mixed Greens is a non-binary person who explores their gender identity through a type of drag called genderfuck drag, or drag that incorporates both femininity, masculinity, and everything in-between to challenge our ideas of gender.
Born and raised in Columbus, Mississippi, Jada Lee Symone uses drag to accentuate their LBGTQ identity. Jada started playing in her mom's makeup when she was in middle school, and as an avid lover of art, music, dancing, performing, and theater, it all came together for her in high school.
Born in Amory, Mississippi and raised in Tremont, Mississippi, retired drag queen Jack McCrory started his journey with drag when he was only eighteen. Formerly known as Baby Holliday on stage, he was GoDiva Holliday's drag mother when she was just starting out.
Video and Audio Projects
Put On Your Face (2019) is a short fly-on-the-wall documentary about two Mississippi drag queens putting on makeup for a fundraiser event in Memphis, TN.
This film is the first piece in my series, and my gateway into working with Mississippi drag queens. In early October of 2019, I attended a drag show in Tupelo, MS for class, and I was interested in documenting this community. I reached out to a classmate of mine who knew some of the performers, and I gauged the interest of GoDiva Holliday and DeePression Holliday.
In late October of 2019, I agreed to an invitation to their studio at the Link Center in Tupelo, MS to meet and document them. After spending an entire afternoon filming the Holliday duo getting ready for the Memphis benefit event, I edited this piece which became the first project to many.
Queering the South: Through Drag (2019) is the second installment in my documentary series for this project. This short film highlights the relationship between Mississippi drag queens GoDiva Holliday and DeePression Holliday and their family ties. This film also emphasizes why GoDiva and DeePression were drawn to drag, and the Southern inflection of drag as well.
​After I produced Put On Your Face, I spent some time traveling to places like Starkville, Mississippi and Tupelo, Mississippi to capture more footage of the Holliday duo. After I had several hours worth of footage, I thought it would benefit the project to get a few interviews of the two talking about their lives and their stories as drag queens. In early November of 2019, I was able to book a few hours to sit down and talk to them, which aided in this next project.
In this short film, queer drag nun Mixed Greens talks about how they use genderfuck drag as a roadmap to understand and explore their non-binary identity. As a person who considers themselves a-gender, they they explain how and why they use their makeup to blur the lines between femininity and masculinity.
The fourth piece in this series, Dude in a Dress (2020), examines GoDiva Holliday's experience as both a drag queen and a show director. GoDiva emphasizes the importance of diversity in her shows, and how she finds it problematic that many show directors discriminate against certain types of drag performers. She also touches on what makes Southern drag different compared to the rest of the country, such as places in New York or San Francisco. Lastly, she explains how drag has been a long journey for her and how over time her drag has evolved and she has found a brand new passion for the art.
This short film was created due to the Covid-19 pandemic. During the spring semester of my first year as a graduate student, I was taking a documentary class that required two short films, one mid semester and one at the end of the semester. By the time the end of the semester rolled around, we had already been almost two months deep in lock down, and doing in person fieldwork was out of the question. Instead of choosing to do a remote interview, I decided to rework my film Queering the South: Through Drag to create a solo story about GoDiva Holliday and her experience as a drag queen. I had already collected a large amount of footage and interviews of GoDiva Holliday, and as a performer that has been performing and directing shows for over twenty years, I felt like I had enough material to create a new film revolving around her story.
Born and raised in Columbus, Mississippi, Mississippi drag queen Jada Lee Symone takes us on the adventure and allows us to walk in her shoes to help us understand what it is like for an LGBTQ person to grow up in the South during their most formative years. From a very young age, she's been interested in makeup and creating different looks, and as someone who knew she was different right off the bat, theater helped bring out her voice and her confidence.
Jada also speaks on Southern pageantry drag, and how it is an aesthetic that she feels like is exclusively in the South.
This audio documentary was created during the Coronavirus pandemic over the summer of 2020. As a graduate student in documentary expression, I felt that working in the field and interviewing people in their homes was unsafe. This project was produced out of my desire to keep doing fieldwork by any means possible, even if that meant going remote. This interview was conducted over Zoom, and my interviewee, Jada Lee Symone, recorded the conversation on her iPhone voice memo app.
In this audio documentary (2020), retired drag queen Jack McCrory (formerly known as Baby Holliday) recounts his experiences growing up gay in Tremont, Mississippi. From talking about subjects ranging between his coming out story all the way to why he chose to retire drag, McCrory welcomes us into his journey as a Mississippi drag queen.
While speaking on the importance of family and relationships, McCrory also talks about his relationship with Eric White, (GoDiva Holliday), which adds another layer of the story and the history between the Holliday drag family in Mississippi. Here, the audience gets a taste of how drag families form and why they are important for up and coming baby drag performers.
Lastly, the audience listening to this audio documentary gets a unique perspective of someone who was a drag performer who retired because they wanted to get to know themselves as Jack McCrory instead of Baby Holliday. In this piece, the listener understands how involved and tiring drag is.