SOPHIE HARRIS: When you are on stage and you see the audience react to what you do, it’s a very out-of-body
experience but in the best possible way.
SOPHIE HARRIS: My first experience of drag was my mum took me to a show in Turkey and I remember
looking at the stage and thinking just how flamboyant and talented they were.
My name is Venus Dimilo and I am a Drag Queen.
SOPHIE HARRIS: So the first time I saw myself in drag, it was almost surreal. I felt very powerful and confident.
And yeah, it was really surreal. My drag name means Venus Dimilo as in the Greek statue with no arms.
A lot of people don’t actually understand it but it completely embodied what I want my drag to show and teach.
SOPHIE HARRIS: The condition I have is thrombocytopenia absent radius. It’s shortened to TAR
syndrome but I prefer to impress people with the long name. It’s basically the bones in my forearms are
missing. It’s a blood disorder, which means that my blood doesn’t clot properly. When I was younger, I was
quite a confident person. I never really thought about how I was. It was not really until I became older that I
became self-aware. I was sort of insecure about certain things.
SOPHIE HARRIS: And yeah, then drag started and I did a 360 and it completely changed it all.
DANIEL HARRIS: Well! When she first started drag, she never told me about it. I was on a night out and she had a
wig on. She had like a purple wig, this leotard thing and I was thinking, ‘What the hell are you doing?’
I was just thinking. ‘What’s going on?’ Then it just evolved from there.
She was just like, ‘Oh! I am you know, with the drag queens now.’
SOPHIE HARRIS: I don’t use the term Bio Queen, which a lot of people put on female-bodied people.
But I think my drag is as valid as anybody else’s.
SOPHIE HARRIS: A lot of people do criticise Bio Queens. A lot of it seems to be online, not many people tend to
say it to your face. At the end of the day, it’s my drag and I do it for me and
if you don’t like it then you don’t have to like it.
SOPHIE HARRIS: Now we are all off to Boulevard if we can all fit inside the taxis.
SOPHIE HARRIS: The strongest reaction I have probably ever had was my T-Rex performance. Essentially what it
is, is a T-Rex who can’t masturbate because they've got short arms and they can’t reach. And I come out with a
dildo attached to a wooden stick and that’s probably the most positive and loudest reaction
I have ever had to anything that I have performed.
DANIEL HARRIS: So I used to find the kind of, disability jokes hard to come over just for the sheer fact of how
much time we have spent protecting Sophie when she was younger. But it’s not that I don’t go to the shows
because of her disability jokes or anything like that.
There’s just certain things a little brother should never see an older sister use.
SOPHIE HARRIS: When you are on stage, it’s a validation for the hard work you have put into it and
it gives, sort of, like a power.
SOPHIE HARRIS: It’s all about self-expression and you have got to embrace it and if you think people are not
going to like what you do then it’s just more reason to do it. When people see me perform, I’d like them to see
inclusiveness in what I do and I like to think that I represent at least one thing that other people can
associate with themselves and inspire people, I think. I'd like to inspire people.