Beastie Girls — Feature Article

DOING DRAG WITH

DISCUSSIONS OF HOMOPHOBIA. THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS HOMOPHOBIC SLURS AND

WARNING

Hughes — Charlie Photo

BLASPHEMY, SATIRE AND ACTIVISM WITH NIC BEDFORD OF DRAG ROYALTY TRIO THE BEASTIE GIRLS.

WORDS – GEMMA CLARKE

“You can’t really get more intimate without fucking someone,” Nic Bedford tells me, sticking a fluttery black eyelash down with some glue. “It actually is fully like a family.”

Clad in a breastplate, unusually large bum pads and six pairs of tights to hold it all in, Nic is getting ready to transform into Benign Girl. He’s telling me about the relationship he has with his “sisters” – fellow queens Lazy Susan and Zelda Moon. As a trio, these self-described “stunning businesswomen” perform as The Beastie Girls, taking the piss out of everything from pyramid schemes to The Saddle Club. Often touted as Melbourne drag royalty, they’ve worked with Charli XCX, starred in music videos for Troye Sivan and even been on Neighbours, Australia’s longest-running soap.

Historically, drag was an art form that saw men dress in women’s clothing and exaggerate signifiers of femininity for the purpose of entertainment – but it has evolved to be much more than that. The culture, which hit the mainstream in the ’80s, bursts with invention and creativity, and sees performers come from all over the gender spectrum (including plenty of drag kings). Though it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with sexual preference or gender identity, drag is often used as a form of flamboyant self-expression and a celebration of queer pride. For Nic, who loves performing on stage, it’s a consolation prize for never having gone to drama school. “Benign’s character is inspired by the depths of suburban Australian culture,” he tells me. “I’ve taken bits from all the important women in my life, or women who’ve made a mark on me, and rolled it into one.”

With long blonde hair and the kind of contouring that could make her TikTok famous, Benign Girl is sassy, sculpted and wickedly funny. But as with all skills, this took time.

“I used to – drunkenly, around the house with my friends – sing and dance to songs. So when a competition called ‘So You Think You Can Drag?’ popped up, we all decided I should enter,” Nic explains. From there, he was asked to head a new night at The B-East – a burger bar and live music venue in Melbourne’s Brunswick East.

“When I started, I looked like a mess. I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t have a perspective and my character wasn’t built as well. I never even used to shave my face. Then I did it once to see what I would look like, and I was like, Oh my god, she’s so hot. I can’t go back to having a beard!”

A chance encounter on a night out also resulted in a name change from his previous moniker, Cleo Taurus: “Walking home, there was a bunch of random stuff all over the street. My friends and I decided we’d pick a present for everyone waiting at kick-ons. There was a toy Barbie phone, and when we opened it up, it said ‘Benign Girl’ on the screen. We lost our shit, like why that combination of words?! I just had to take it on as my name.”

Wanting company at The B-East, Nic put an ad in an online fan group for reality TV series RuPaul’s Drag Race. The moderator of the group, Zelda Moon, replied – someone Nic had fangirled when he’d seen her perform.

“IN ONE BIT, A SADDLE CLUB GIRL FELL PREGNANT TO THE HORSE. THE OTHER TWO GIRLS WERE LIKE, SUPER UPSET BECAUSE SHE WENT BEHIND THEIR BACK AND DIDN’T TELL THEM SHE WAS FUCKING THE HORSE..."

“I was shy! I’d only ever performed to a straight audience, like, I hadn’t entered the queer scene as a drag queen, so I thought she was too good for me.”

Zelda had worked with Lazy Susan before – a queen who’d won the crown the previous year in a Victorian competition called Drag Net. “She was the kooky weird one; they chose a wild card,” Nic says. “Older pageant-y queens were like, ‘Oh my god, Lazy Susan?!’ She was making waves, so the thought of her coming on board was really intimidating for me as well.”

The trio hosted their first show together on an Easter weekend in 2017. Called Bad Friday, it told the story of the rise and fall of Jesus Christ – drag edition. Naturally, the audience thought it was a scream, and The Beastie Girls have been “like three peas in a pod” ever since.

When asked where they fit in to the Melbourne drag scene, Nic is unsure.

“There’s the Choreography Queens, there are Cabaret Queens… but our fan base is not your typical gay-bar patrons. It would be interesting to hear what other people have to say about us. “We’re not that polished. We don’t care too much about shaving our bodies, or having the perfect wig, or doing the best drop split. None of us can follow steps properly. We’re more like a mix of comedy and fuckery.”

By fuckery, Nic means fully immersive shows that reel the audience into a narrative. Though COVID obviously threw a massive spanner in the works, The Beastie Girls hit the ground running coming out of lockdown, hosting a bunch of events including once-in-a-lifetime feminar ‘And So Can You!’ – a send-up of a multi-level marketing scheme conference. Another show, ‘Ruin your Childhood’, saw the sisters parody a ‘Where Are They Now?’ of ‘90s and ‘00s children’s shows like Madeline and The Saddle Club.

“In one bit, a Saddle Club girl fell pregnant to the horse. The other two girls were like, super upset because she went behind their back and didn’t tell them she was fucking the horse. On stage, she gave birth to a half-horse half-human hybrid baby.”

As well as blasphemy and satire, The Beastie Girls dabble in activism. “When there’s an opportunity to make a point about something, we’re obviously gonna do that,” Nic explains.

In early 2020, ANZ received enormous public backlash in the wake of its ‘Love Speech’ ad campaign timed to coincide with Sydney’s Mardi Gras. In it, members of the LGBTIQA+ community introduce themselves using the homophobic and transphobic slurs they’ve had hurled at them. Aside from the fact that brands need to stop pretending to solve social issues through advertising, the video was uncensored and featured no content warnings.

“It was so obviously queerbaiting, for the pink dollar,” Nic rolls his eyes. “They were just using the community to make money for themselves. So we were like, ‘Oh, we will have a go at you if you’re gonna do that! We’re not just gonna be quiet about things.’”

In a clip that’s clocked tens of thousands of views, The Beastie Girls parodied the campaign, introducing themselves with anti-bank slurs –like “predatory lender”, “Liberal Party donor”, “pinkwasher”, “coal guzzler” and “capitalist oligarchy”.

Nic even recalls a time he had a go at Victorian Premier Dan Andrews at the NGV Gala.

“We were performing and mingling with those of society, and we got a photo with Dan Andrews. I’d been taking full advantage of the free drinks at this event, as I usually do in drag, so I was like, quite wasted. Instead of saying cheese, the photographer said, ‘Let’s say, Let’s declare a climate emergency!’”

It was a cheeky move by the photographer, since this is a call Dan Andrews has rebuffed a number of times, and on this particular occasion, the Victorian Premier tried to deflect with, “Oh, I think we should say, ‘Let’s declare an equality emergency!”

In his drunken state, Nic launched into a tirade: “Oh, what’s that? You want to come in here at the last minute? After all these queer people before you have done all the hard work, and all of a sudden you want to be the queer saviour? No, it doesn’t work like that.”

Nic laughs as he remembers the encounter. “We had a bit of a back and forth... I don’t really remember what I was saying. But apparently, 10 minutes later, I was hanging off him being like, ‘Oh, thanks so much for everything that you’ve done for us Dan Andrews!’”

Though for Nic, doing drag has incredible perks – among them the thrill of performing and his connection with Zelda and Lazy – it’s not without its challenges. Nic doesn’t love the long process of getting ready, sometimes spending three hours to prep for five minutes on stage. And he and the other Beastie Girls still experience various forms of homophobia and discrimination.

“In the queer world, it’s very understood who you are and what you’re doing, but when I’ve been on my way to gigs, or in between things, like on the tram or walking on the street, people will be freaked out,” he explains. “Obviously it’s not really transphobia, ’cos I’m able to take my wig off at the end of the day.” Then there are the straight men who feel they’re entitled to pester: “I’ve had it happen quite a bit. They clearly know what the situation is, but they have a fetish to sleep with someone who’s cross dressing. I’m not personally into that, but I do find it quite funny and like, play with them. Let them have a little bit of a go until I’ve had enough.”

Also, though Nic reflects fondly on having found a partner who embraces his drag alter ego, he explains, “a lot of gay men have an aversion to hooking up people who are overly feminine – which is bullshit.”

Photos — Aidan Calabria

“It’s actually a form of homophobia within the queer community,” he says. “Some men are scared of femininity because they’ve bought into ridiculous social ideas around what a ‘poofta’ is… So by doing drag, you’re actually narrowing your dating options due to this shitty internalised homophobia that heaps of the community still have.”

Like most creative hustles, drag is hard to make a living out of full time. All members of The Beastie Girls have other jobs – most drag queens in Australia do. Nic prefers having the separation anyway. “I don’t want to be [Benign Girl] all the time,” he says. “I wouldn’t like that to take over my entire life.” This March, after barbering for six years, Nic opened his own barber, Chop Shop on Brunswick Street in North Fitzroy. “I wanted to make a place where anyone can get their hair cut, regardless of who they are,” he shrugs. “And to take away the lad’s pad culture of a barbershop.”

“At the base of what we do is just bizarre stupidity,” Nic says. “We never take ourselves too seriously… Some drag queens are like, ‘Oh my god, I’m changing the world by doing drag!’ and it’s like, ‘Girl, you’re putting a wig on and dancing around stage – you need to calm down.’ But, also, unknowingly, we do make an impact.”

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