Dr. Maria Tonka:
Drag Superstar
Text by Jake Carroll
Set Design by Jack Vickers
Photography by Sophie Fallon
“I think body image has always been a weird one for me”, Maria says. We meet them in a brief pause between stops on Shampain’s Millenium Madness tour. They move through our college corridors almost incognito, in a tracksuit and Crocs, with their makeup half-hidden behind oversized sunglasses. Once inside our studio, the hoodie is removed to reveal a corset and the crocs are replaced by a pair of heels they pull from out of a suitcase. The rockstar-like entrance is striking, but also a reminder that drag does not move easily through the everyday world. “There’s definitely a level of fear, safety-wise,” they explain. “A big thing is getting me from where I’m getting ready to the venue in drag, because there’s that fear that someone will see something they don’t like and make it known to you.”
A drag queen might not be the most obvious person to find onstage with a DJ, but Maria is, by their own admission, “a bit of a club rat”. Outside of touring, they co-founded SQUEEZE, a Galway club night rooted in community, joy and resistance. “My drag has evolved a lot, even in the last year compared to three or four years ago when I started”, they say. “I like dancing to electronic music and stuff like that. I’ve lost what I thought would be my theatre roots, but I’ve seen a lot of growth. I’ve gotten a lot darker aesthetically, a little more vampy”.
Beyond the aesthetics, there is an inherent political aspect to drag that Maria is acutely aware of. “I think to sit here or stand on stage dressed as a different gender, is always going to be a statement” they acknowledge. “Drag has always been very underground. It’s meant to go against everything. So I think if it’s totally accepted and I can walk down the street, that’s super, but it’s not political anymore”. “It should be safe to travel in drag. But I think we need to remember authentically what it is. It’s meant to be jarring and it’s meant to be kind of a protest of society and of those norms. It’s definitely complex in that way”.
Jake: How did you start doing drag?
Maria Tonka: I always kind of loved it. I watched Drag Race when I was 13. Then I moved up to Galway. I used to do theater a lot, but I stopped doing theater when I moved to Galway. Then I met Devon Diva, another drag legend in Galway. I said to her one night when I was really drunk, “Diva, I want to do drag”, and she said, “Come down next Thursday”. So I went down to the bar looking terrible and that’s just kind of how it started.
Where did the name come from?
My friend Kieran used to work on the Jo Malone counter in Brown Thomas Galway. It was going to be my first night in drag, and we were like, what will her name be? My favorite fragrance from Jo Malone was Myrrh & Tonka, so we went with Maria Tonka and it just kind of stuck. Also, the tonka bean is in it and a tonka bean warms up on your skin and smells really nice. So I was like, I’m a hot bean. I thought that was kind of good as well.
Does your drag reflect who you are as a person or does it feel separate from who you are outside of it?
I would consider it a separate kind of person or separate persona. Out of drag, I’m not shy, but I’m a really anxious person. I have never felt anxiety when I’ve been in drag. It’s because I’m in a different headspace completely when I’m doing it. It’s nerve-wracking to perform and even to walk down the street in drag, dressed as a woman. It can be a little bit scary, but I’ve never felt nervous or anxious in drag and I feel anxious all the time outside of it.
When would you say you feel your most confident?
I think I feel my most confident on stage. Peak confidence is right after I do a death drop and everyone screams and I get back up. That’s when I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m so talented.” I watch back my performances on my videos all the time and I’m obsessed with myself. It’s so funny because you’ll see at the start of the video I’m performing in one way, and then I do my death drop kind of toward the end, and when I get back up I have so much more energy and passion. I’m always passionate about what I’m doing, but it peaks my confidence after my death drop.
“My body is still very much mine, even when I’m performing or when I’m in a full corset. It’s not yours to take. It’s not yours to touch.”
Would you say you have have two separate body images to deal with?
100 percent. I have two distinct images of who I am in my head, and they cross over slightly because I’m like, well, if I went to the gym I’d be more confident in my day-to-day life and then in that I’d become more confident in my drag as well because I’d be working on the parts of me that I’m self-conscious of in general. The weird part is that the person I’m trying to be outside of drag is a little bit more of a masculine body type. I want to be able to flex my arms and have muscles and stuff like that. But when I’m in drag, I want to be supermodel slim, flat all the way down and I don’t want to have a bulging muscle or anything like that. So that’s where there’s a disconnect between the two.
How do you balance that, or can you?
It can be frustrating at times to have two separate goals that don’t work hand in hand. But then I’m a non-binary person, so I think for me I work toward a traditional sense of masculinity and then I remember, “You’re not a boy, David,” so we can reel it in a lot of the time.’
Would you say your body image has improved in ways since you started doing drag?
Yeah, there definitely are aspects of it that are positive. When I put on a corset and I look at myself in the mirror, I’m like, “Look at her. She has the tiniest waist in the world.” I never knew I had such a beautiful ass until I started drag. I have the most phenomenal ass in the world and I’m really proud of it. I have lovely legs. I do actually have nice arms, even if I’m a little bit self-conscious of them. There have definitely been times where I’m looking at videos of me performing and I can see the shape of my body or the way that my body moves and I’m like, “Okay, actually calm down. You’re actually fine.”
Is there anything that people don’t understand about your body image or about drag that you wish they did?
I think my biggest thing with people’s conception of my body in drag is that it’s for them, or that it’s an object. My body is still very much mine, even when I’m performing or when I’m in a full corset. It’s not yours to take. It’s not yours to touch. What I do in drag is very sexual and that’s my whole aesthetic. It’s hypersexual, but I also hate being sexualized in drag. It makes me uncomfortable sometimes. So I suppose that’s a new kind of issue I’ve developed as the person I am in drag that I don’t have as the person I am out of drag.
Another one would definitely be that people don’t understand how hard it is. It’s probably one of the most difficult things anyone could ever do, in my opinion. Wearing a corset means you’re pushing all your little organs around. I have my balls inside the socket they came from before I hit puberty and my penis is in my ass right now, so it’s an extremely uncomfortable situation. My wig is like a headband, so that’s super tight. I have my eyebrows glued down and lashes on. Not one part of doing drag is comfortable. So when someone comes up to me and says, “When you turned around and I saw the back of your corset, it was honestly just disgusting,” that’s when I’m like, “Leave me alone. You have no idea what I’m doing right now.
If your aesthetic is hypersexual, why does it feel uncomfortable to be sexualized?
My whole aesthetic is meant to be this idea of a woman. It’s big lips, small waist, big ass. It’s meant to be this idea of a woman, and that’s what I’ve built my character off. But to have someone actually come up to me and grab me while I’m on stage, or make a pass at me, or message me on Instagram and be like, “I want to do this to you”... because my aesthetic is sexual or sexy doesn’t give you an invitation to touch me or message me or make me into a sexual object, because I’m a sex icon, you know?