Was ist ein Drag-K >

The boy who wants to change the world in women’s clothes.

D esmond Napoles is sitting in a New York café playing with a fan as long as his forearm. With a determined movement he bends his wrist, throws his hand forward, the fan opens with a cracking sound. Again and again he makes this movement, it crashes and crashes, until a passing Asian woman with a pram squeaks and starts up. His mother Wendy laughs. “You frighten the mothers!

The boy is just eleven years old, match-thin and wears a black t-shirt dress with a pink glitter print. During the conversation he almost sinks behind the table, and he is an expert on the big show. One who is used to being cheered, eyed and insulted. Desmond Napoles is a Dragkid, a boy who likes to wear women’s clothes and make up. His artist’s name is “Desmond Is Amazing”. Three years ago, oh what, he jumped for the first time in the rainbow tutu and with a golden wreath on his head at the “Pride” parade of his hometown New York. A video of it was eagerly shared, and more than 70,000 people now follow it on Instagram. His message: “You are good as you are.

Wherever he appears, Napoles skillfully lifts his hands into his narrow hips, turns around himself several times on high platform shoes and confidently looks out into the audience with eyes framed with eye shadow. His show talent has already earned him a modeling job at New York Fashion Week, as well as jubilant articles in New York Magazine and US Vogue. The boy’s fame is so great and special that questions arise. Do you even know who you are at that age? Does he really want to be in the limelight, or didn’t his ambitious mother Wendy help out?

As Desmond Napoles tells his story in the café, he sounds above all like someone who actually knew at a very early age what he wanted. He was born on 23 June 2007 in a hospital in the heart of New York’s gay community Greenwich Village. Two years later, on family television, he saw the Dragqueen RuPaul talent show, in which other Dragqueens compete against each other as performers.

“Whoo-hoo-hoo. “

“I liked RuPaul so much that I made costumes out of my mom’s towels, clothes and shoes,” says Desmond with a squeamish, breathless child’s voice. In the meantime, he was able to inaugurate the DragCon with RuPaul, one of the most important events of the scene. Now he gives interviews like a routine, today he wears pink Chucks, earrings in rainbow colors and a slightly faded eyelid line, of course drawn by himself “Would I never get it that way”, says Wendy Napoles.

But her son needs help making his costumes. He draws sketches in his sketchbook and his mother sews them, imaginative collages of clothes made from leftovers, old clothes, paper and sequins. Desmond Napoles, who counts Alexander McQueen and Comme des Garçons among his favourite labels, has already worn an ensemble with Keith Haring prints and a giant heart on his head, a bottle-green sequined dress with tulle sleeves in rainbow colours.

Everything normal? That was the question the parents asked themselves – they were office managers, he a software engineer – for a long time until they went to the therapist with the seven-year-old. “Everything was a little out of control. The therapist advised to let the boy make, to allow him to wear clothes, skirts, wigs. If it were a phase, he would already grow out of it.

When Desmond was nine, he told his parents he was gay. “Gay. ” he now exclaims enthusiastically over the table. Wendy Napoles says she was not surprised. “It all started in first grade, when he came home in the afternoon and told me who he was fond of. There were never any girls.” Desmond first yelps in protest as his mother talks about his early childhood heartfelt affairs, but then shrugs his shoulders. “That was a million years ago.”

“I will change the world. And you?”

But even a million years later nothing has changed in his emotional world: He likes boys. And he loves jumping across the catwalk. He prefers the American catwalk style,” says Wendy Napoles. “No, the European one,” she corrects her son. He explains the difference as follows: “American style is masculine. And I’m not masculine.”

Since a video of Napoles’ performance at the 2015 Pride Parade went viral, his fame has grown steadily. And also the number of critics and “Haters”, as Desmond calls them. Not a day goes by without someone writing that they want to burn him,” says Wendy Napoles, who deletes all hate comments before letting her son access his Instagram profile. It’s both easy and hard to be a Dragkid in a country where children are encouraged to uninhibited self-portrayal at school and where the limits of self-realization are tightened and the president treats transgender soldiers like enemies of the state. In such a country a young boy suddenly becomes a civil rights activist, even if he can only guess the dimensions and consequences of his activities. On Instagram, Desmond explains to the “haters”: “I will change the world. And you?

Wendy Napoles, in any case, a small, strong woman in tight jeans and blond dyed hair with a very broad dark approach, insists that she only helps Desmond live out a passion that is important to him personally. She doesn’t make any money with interviews, photo shoots and parade performances. However, her son now has a real manager who advised Wendy Napoles to teach Desmond at home. “But I think it’s important that he continues to go to public school. There he dresses normally, wears no make-up, he likes to play on playgrounds. His ego shouldn’t get too big with all the glory.”

The classmates don’t know anything about his show character, but they suspect enough to tease him sometimes. More important to Desmond are the children and teenagers who write him on Instagram about their fears and bullying experiences, including other Dragkids. “I give them confidence,” he says. His mother is currently working on a social network for children like him, the House of Amazing. There are many plans: a YouTube series, a magazine for LGBTQ teenagers, a fashion label, a children’s book about self-love.

Sounds like a lot of work for a guy who would totally like to visit Disneyworld – and now grabs his mother’s smartphone. He puts his headphones in his ears, turns on the music and sings along silently. At No Doubt, one of his favourite bands. Wendy Napoles looks at him. “Somehow you’re still a normal boy.”