Erickatoure Aviance dishes on Wendy Williams and Drag Identity Politics

DRAGSCRIMINATION // Last week the Advocate released a story about a New York City drag queen who was poorly treated at a taping of the Wendy Williams Show.

According to the article, the controversy arose when Erickatoure Aviance was informed that she could not sit in the audience due to show’s “no costume” policy. While she was eventually allowed in, she was told not to ask “Hot Topic” questions and placed in the periphery of the audience behind a tall man.

The minor gay blogosphere uproar that followed brought many questions, accusations and general shadiness to the table about Wendy Williams, but also the intentions of Ms. Aviance.

Being very familiar with this very interesting queen (FULL DISCLOSURE: we are good friends), the timing of this incident is practically serendipitous (more on that later) and opens up a dialogue on gender politics, a hot topic at the moment.

But first I think some background is warranted.

A gay man who grew up in Portsmouth, NH, Ericka came to New York in 1999 to study ballet and modern dance at the prestigious Tisch school at NYU. Entranced by NYC’s legendary nightlife scene, she “wanted to be one of the pretty people, the glitterati who don’t wait on line or pay for drinks,” as I learned in a previous interview. She went on to work at places like Tunnel, Twilo and Exit while they still existed.

But it was her love for fashion and personal expression (can you find the word “couture” in her name?) that formed Ericka’s persona of today: a New York City queen who dresses in outfits of her own styling; design that reaches for the sui generis in women’s fashion.

Aviance performs regularly in drag, “pulling shows” in six-inch pumps with lots of high kicks, full splits and the many skills she holds as a professional dancer (yes girl, she can runway—get in). She can lipsync along with the best of ‘em but is also a talented singer and knows how to engage a crowd—a necessity for a queen who plays hostess at parties. Plus, in my opinion she makes a beautiful woman (FULL DISCLOSURE: I on the other hand, do not. I’m an ugly-ass girl).

Over the summer, Aviance has performed at the gay pool party Dr!p, the Spank magazine party at the Hose and weekly at her Saturday night residency at the Ritz. Her face has appeared in a Jeremy Kost photo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem and is the subject of portrait photographer Jean Korotkin. In terms of her exposure as a performer and model, Ericka is blowing up right now, which brings me back to the timing of this incident.

The aforementioned serendipity refers to the fact that Aviance will be releasing My Pumps, her first original song, this fall along with a music video. Unofficially, it already has a spot on LOGO and some other possible airplay within the MTV networks. She also recently finished another handful of songs to be released in an E.P. sometime later this year.

One commentator on the Advocate article (who styles himself “Hermie Dick”) points this out this impeccable timing as an engineered “scandle” to gain publicity points.

While she admits that any press is good press, Aviance insists that there was no connection to her own career, and she could have “jumped to the microphone and dragged me kicking and screaming” if she wanted to do a publicity stunt. She dressed up, demurely, for Wendy Williams because she thought the TV hostess would “get a kick out of it,” like every other audience member that puts on a look when appearing in a studio audience.

After almost a decade hitting the streets in pumps and a high-fashion “beat” (the Queen’s English for makeup), her look is anything but a costume, Aviance says.

“By most definitions, a costume is wearing something that makes you appear what you are not. I’m not always dressed in what’s considered normal for my gender, or perhaps, my sex,” she says. “But I don’t dress like that just to perform and I was not wearing a costume.”

Most drag queens would find the term insulting. For those who might disagree, please go conduct your own personal surveys—I’m sure your insurance will cover post-traumatic stress disorders.

“It’s not just a character, it’s a part of me,” Aviance says of her choice of dress. It’s a part of my life and who I am. ”

Her own statements describe the outfit—a babydoll dress, pumps, tights and gloves, all in black and accompanied by a red bang-and-ponytail hairpiece—as demure, especially for her but also in comparison to the rest of the audience. She is convinced that being a “man in a dress” is what drove the Wendy Williams Show staff to mistreat her.

The challenge to her identity  is what was so hurtful, she says.

From a personal note, although I see Ericka all the time in “boy clothes,” I still use female pronouns like “she,” and “her,” and call her Ericka. Not exactly mind-blowing if you’ve ever met an urban gay, but for most of America I realize that this, and the concept of non-binary human gender, is mindblowing.

Says Aviance, “Gender is fluid, there’s evidence in it in human nature and the way it expresses itself in different cultures. What you wear is personal expression, that people should wear clothing supposedly innate [to their sex] is ridiculous.”

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