GAY TIMES Magazine

31 July 2018

As Pride season draws to a close, we’re keeping the momentum up to keep queer issues and topics at the forefront of our collective psyche with four cover stories from different subsections of the community. Turning looks, stunting pretty, she’s the bitch from New York City! Fresh from her historic RuPaul’s Drag Race win, we caught up with Aquaria to spill the mothertucking T, honey. When she sashayed her way into the the Season 10 werkroom, she’d already built up an acclaim and reputation within the Drag community that even some RuPaul girls would be jealous of. Aware of her reputation, and after a rocky start, Aquaria proved herself not only as a fiercely talented competitor but also as a deeply humble person. After our gagworthy shoot with America’s Next Drag Superstar, we caught up with her on the latest groundbreaking season of the show, her Twitter spat with Bebe Rexha and homophobia within the music industry. This is well and truly the dawning of The Age Of Aquaria, babes. “People need to be a lot more forgiving and accepting of musicians sounding queer and draggy, and not expect us to all sound like our straight counterparts and competitors.” In the thirsty era of Instagram influence, you’d need to be living under a considerably large rock to not have seen Derek Chadwick pop up in your feed at least once. With over 270 thousand followers, the model, actor and musician is using his cover of Gay Times to come out as gay publicly for the first time. Living in such a public sphere, Derek has felt uncomfortable addressing such a private part of his life until now for fear of people jumping to conclusions about him without being aware of his full story - even censoring elements of his personality and the content that he pushed out into the world. Now out and proud, we met with Derek to discuss his experiences of homophobia in the industry, the importance of queer visibility and using his social influencer status as a weapon to enact change. “Coming out in this way allows me to use the privilege that I have to help other people who don't have that. The opportunities that I've been given to have a voice. I feel like that was the main reason why I wanted to do this cover. I want to be the person that's at those rallies and events advocating for people and anybody. I never felt that I could do that unless I did this, and I think this is a major way for people to see visible queer people.” Baby, how you feelin’? After seeing our shoot with Lizzo, we can guarantee you’ll be feeling good as hell! The iconic singer has developed a close affinity with the LGBTQ community, performing at Prides, appearing as a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race and vocalising her support through her music. We caught up with Lizzo do discuss the troubles she’s seen and experienced in the music industry, body positivity, and the still very current double standards that occur based on race. “When black women can fit into a certain mould, we can get into the industry. It’s hard, because they pit us against each other and create a lot of obstacles, but if you can get through those, you’re good.” Sisterhood is the word we’ve chosen to name our final cover story for August - our first ensemble cover shoot since our rebrand at the end of last year - and their truly couldn’t be a better way to describe this group of inspirational women. Alexandra Billings, Trace Lysette, Alexandra Grey and Rain Valdez are four stars of the groundbreaking TV series Transparent, which saw trans people portrayed with nuance previously unseen - all due to the trans talent both in front of the camera and in the writing room. After the show was rocked by scandal recently, we caught up with this fierce four for their take on trans representation in Hollywood, and the work that still needs to be done in the fight for trans equality. “I think oftentimes we don’t get to see the day- to-day and the joy that we experience and I think that the world needs to see what it looks like when we are happy and when we are loved. It’s so important for the world to see all that we are and not just their tiny scope of what they think that they know about us because these myths are perpetuated over and over by cis heteronormative people, and have been for decades.” Elsewhere in the issue: Shon Faye meets Hannah Gadsby; Harper Watters shares what makes him proud; Isaac Cole Porter on being out in Broadway; the faces of the Queer Commonwealth; a look at the gay liberation movement before Stonewall; Stephen Isaac Wilson’s examines queer clubbing culture in Manchester, plus travel, fashion, film, music, products and much more!