When Micael Donegan was a young boy, his mother threw away all of his sisters' dolls. He was the only one who played with them, and his heart was crushed. But his spirit was not. Determined to have what he wanted, Donegan managed to rescue a few dolls from the trash. When he later came across a $20 bill, he walked three miles to buy himself a Barbie.
The dolls were his canvas; he created outfits for them, styled their hair, and captured his artwork in photos. Now he is his own canvas, and his art is more complex. "I feel like I'm kind of the same as Briar versus as Micael," he says. As he speaks, he is out of drag, sporting a hoodie, exhibiting the same radiance he embodies as Briar Blush Mercy. Briar is sophisticated, edgy, seductive; "an it-girl of any time or place," Donegan explains.
Drag is more mainstream than ever, but many members of the community feel it's being misrepresented. Beyond the glamour and thrill that shows like RuPaul's Drag Race present, drag has always been an intricate art form and agent of change. Donegan explains how the show has contributed to misgivings about the work that goes into drag, and elaborates on one of its greatest failings: presenting drag as an activity primarily for cisgender males. "That's something that needs to be shouted from rooftops, that trans women are some of the true pioneers of drag," he says, his voice flooded with passion. The show has been similarly called out for racism, creating conflict for the camera, and more. It's clear that drag's most public representation is a flawed one, but the question stands: what does drag look like off-screen?
For Donegan, a 20-year-old queen based in Boston, drag is about telling a story. "I think my first love when it comes to drag is just the visual aspects, and the creativity of creating a storyline for performances," he says. A fashion enthusiast since childhood, his face lights up when he talks about the process of creating a look. Despite being in a more stable place than when he started his drag career (at 17!), he still does a lot of the work himself. "I'm somebody that makes a lot of what I wear, I style most of my wigs," he says, adding that no matter how much fame or fortune he amasses, "I definitely will always be a part of the creative process."
Briar Blush is a classic Hollywood beauty, with a touch of Bratz doll. She loves dark hair, bangs, exaggerated winged liner; she also loves to step completely out of the box. A self-titled Pinup Princess, Donegan brings immaculate detail and a bit of an edge to the classic beauty he observed in icons like Betty Boop, and his own mother. As we chat, he's creating something a bit grungier, with a deep brown smokey eye, and a mullet-y bob. It took him about two hours—from gluing down eyebrows to popping on the wig—to complete the look, and become Briar Blush.
Briar Blush's last name, Mercy, comes from Donegan's drag family. "I joined a burlesque drag house while living in Orlando, and I'm still a part of it," he explains. It is a five-person house, and somewhat untraditional, as it includes not only drag queens, but several female burlesque dancers, and a gender-nonconforming member. Burlesque has always been an aspect of Donegan's drag, and he notes Dita Von Teese as one of his quintessential inspirations. "Taking off your beautiful garment into beautiful lingerie, and then getting down almost naked...there's such an art to it," he describes what burlesque means to him, and how it has empowered him. It gives him a sense of control, and a space to just feel beautiful and have fun.
Though Donegan has curated his drag as a vital creative outlet for himself, the road to this point was not as fulfilling or fun. "Nobody in my life understood what I was doing," he explains, "and to even start drag, it's more expensive than it's worth at first." Financial struggles made drag difficult in his early career, but the fight to have this kind of life in the first place began long before that.
As a Latinx person, Donegan grew up surrounded by the cultural norm of machismo. Expected to embody masculinity, to never cry, to not play with dolls, Donegan struggled for a long time to grasp his own identity. "I was so confused because I didn't understand the concept of femininity and how to express femininity," he says. Growing up, he says he didn't know if he was trans, or if he was a boy, expressing that he liked being a boy but wanted to be feminine and sensitive as well. He had been taught that those things were, more or less, mutually exclusive. "The expectations of me... I just had never met, ever since I was little," he says somberly.
Donegan describes his family relationships as tumultuous. He says, without elaborating much, "there was a period of time in my adult life that I thought I would never communicate with my father again." He talks about the universality of this experience in queer spaces; though he has improved his relationship with his father, many queer people end up never communicating with their parents. "Sometimes it's super valid, and that's fine," he expands, but in other instances, he urges queer people to remember that their parents had different expectations on them, and different resources. "If your parents are actively making a difference the best way that they know how, that's the most that you could ask for." Donegan tells me he gets along well with his oldest sister, and has a more tumultuous relationship with his sister closest in age. His tone suggests that he has spent much thought on the matter, as he advises that when it comes to relationships that are not emotionally beneficial, "it's okay to just step away...that doesn't necessarily mean forever." He seems to be content with how things are now, though there is pain present in his voice for most of the conversation.
Donegan moved to Orlando at 17, on a whim, he says, and was dropped into a fairly cutthroat drag scene. "It almost felt like I had gone to college for drag," he reflects. There he competed in Orlando Drag Race Live, landed a gig at the go-to club's biggest event of the year, and made lasting connections among other Orlando drag performers. Boston's drag scene, on the other hand, is much more tight-knit and more creative—people aren't fighting for the same spot but fighting to make their own. Donegan assesses Boston drag as less homogenized, and less competitive, than Orlando drag. Patty Bouree, another Boston queen, expresses that "for a long time, there was very little drag here," while the community has grown substantially in recent years, she still feels that "overall, it's small enough that I think everyone knows each other and—to a certain extent—supports each other."
Though Donegan personally thrives in both scenes, he expresses that in either setting, the drag community can be one seriously lacking empathy. "When you are young, and you enter a queer space, I feel like everyone forgets that everyone around you is also hurting," he says, frustrated. The harshness with which new young queens are met on the scene is disappointing to him, "especially young POC people, because we're all trying to do art," he says, "we need to support each other."
Donegan has frequently been met without empathy in his life. Yet he has always continued to be wholly, excitedly himself, and has always continued to advocate for kindness. "When I was a kid, I would dress so weird in middle school, I was always that kid," he starts, "and so my parents would tell me ‘you can't wear that to school,' and I would be like ‘ok,'" rolling his eyes as I'm sure he did in the moment, "and then I would put it in my backpack, and change when I got to school." He laughs as he recalls it. He explains that he got picked on as the "weird kid," but it never stopped him from doing what he wanted. He's now made a conscious effort of continuing to embrace this attitude he has always possessed, "I'm sort of just always choosing to do what I want to do, simply because I want to do it, and not for the comfort of others."
It seems that Donegan has always been incredibly self-assured. Something he never struggled with was internalized homophobia, as he tells me, "I've always been SO gay... it was never a problem to me," he laughs, "it was a problem to everybody else." He elaborates on his long history of fighting with sexist, homophobic classmates on Facebook. He describes feeling like "that bitch" recalling his favorite performances. And one glance at his Instagram page leaves no question as to whether he is that bitch. Venus Envy, a popular Orlando queen who has known Donegan since early in his career, commented on one of his recent posts: "You've always been pretty, but you're really killing it recently!"
In the past few months, Donegan has done some digital drag shows, put out a curated and beautiful series of Halloween looks, continued to experiment with new aesthetics, and experienced significant personal growth, despite some of the pain that isolation has brought. "I feel like all my dreams and all the things I wanted to do have been halted," he says, dejected. Free of the usual distractions, he's had the time to reflect on the harder parts of his life, "and think about what it means to cope and learn about myself in those ways," he says. His face reveals that it hasn't been easy, but his tone suggests that it was worth it. Off-screen, drag does not look glamorous 24/7, or intensely dramatic. Sometimes it looks like serious inward exploration. Sometimes it looks like using "canceled" beauty products and affordable Amazon dupes, which Donegan kindly recommended to me as he got ready. Undoubtedly, it looks like Briar Blush Mercy.
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