How would you feel about flash? How about flashing?

[Natalie moonlights as a photographer]

"How did you stuff? What would you say if I asked you to show me?"

You aren't really supposed to ask a lady to flash — but then again, with their tendency toward vulgarity, drag queens aren't always exactly ladylike. It's not something I would have done — but then again, I go to bars in cardigans and have an abiding affection for my over-sized mustard sweater, so I'm not exactly the poster child for attention-grabbing nudity.

But, I'd seen drag queens strutting around in thongs. On stage. I wondered how far one could push the envelope with a drag queen — whether they'd react like real women. So it was worth a shot to see if I could get Svet Lanna to show me her goods.

She wouldn't. But she was willing to share her girly secrets. Cramped in a room dimly lit by a lamp crafted from deer leg's that Aron aka Svet Lanna's mother had shot, we looked at wigs from China, thigh-high boots bought on sale, and nail polish colors to match her wardrobe. Svet Lanna may be devised by a gay man, but she's probably a better woman than I will ever be.

She wore higher heels than I ever did. She said that her 6 inch Steve Madden boots were so comfortable that they were almost like walking in bare feet.

She shaved more often than I did. She even gave me advise on getting the smoothest shave.

And just when I was debating whether I could stand cleaning my house in heels so I could be skyscraper tall, I thought of how she was an exaggeration of femininity. Like the girls who dye their hair vibrant shades of lemon pudding yellow and spray their bodies in sepia tans, she was trying.

 
She was a peacock, primed and ready to attract — but from a distance, from a stage, a performance. A gender performance. She was looking to make a commentary — whether consciously or not — on what it meant to be a woman as an outsider, as someone who would never really be a woman.