Draglab. I go for King because I have a lot of typical „feminine“ attributes (long hair, big boobs, red lips, a softness in the body). I don‘t look as the transformation happens, somehow to let the fullness of a new character arrive, by observing the process I would feel the potential more for understanding how it was constructed and less a comprehensive new identity. Smaller eyes, widening the jaw, taking away the lips. My partner comments later, „to go male is actually making the person less beautiful, making the eyes smaller, lips too“ we all decide it is not this simple but to see the small tasks/adjustments of features in it makes you more aware of what we see as male/female characteristics, yeah sure of course. Once I am transformed there is a moment of readjustment, searching the right wig and clothes and then bam, my other identity arrives with a football shirt, old loose jeans and a beanie. Derek he feels like. I hang more in my body, somehow it just calls for it and also I know it‘s part of minimising my boobs, they don‘t fit now. I am surprised at how easily this new identity arrives and how clear it is, who he is, what he does. It taps in to an alter ego I have but which was never so articulated. I have something from a teenage boy in me sometimes and in this moment he took over.
The Draglab marked me a lot. It comes up in a lot of conversations somehow and those that I went there with we were busy with it for days after. To see how someone gets shaped by their new appearance, how this can tighten the body, slow someone, make them hang is incredible. And suddenly the relationships shift. I was there with my two female partners (two of us went king, the other queen) and suddenly the relationship doesn‘t work in some directions, it feel less to do with gender and more that these personas don‘t share a chemistry but sure questions of what the relationship is and how much of „you“ is this new persona come in to it.