When I think of drag, I think of a gay man dressed in over-the-top feminine costumes, making risqué jokes or lip-syncing to a famous diva. Often a friend, they’re campy and naughty up to a certain line. But usually, under all that mascara, they are AMAB.
So, when QBurgh asked me to interview the first lesbian drag queen who won a Pittsburgh pageant title, I was intrigued.
“Want to go with me to the Soft Spot while I interview a woman who dresses like a man dressing like a woman?” I asked my wife.
It was Riot Grrrls night and Fiona Apple blared in the background about needing a good defense when I met Andi Whorehol. At 6 foot 3 inches, she towered over me. We sat on the sofa near the TV in back and she shared her drag journey.
“I’m so honored to be the first lesbian to hold a major bar title in Pittsburgh,” said Andi. “I’ve wanted to see this type of representation since I started drag, but I never would have guessed that I would end up becoming that representation for so many other people.”
Specifically, she is the first AFAB cisgender lesbian queen to hold a major Pittsburgh drag title, and ain’t that a mouthful? Let’s break it down. AFAB means ‘assigned female at birth’ and by now most of us know that ‘cisgender’ means your gender matches the sex you were assigned at birth.
“I know many people are uncomfortable with the bioessentialism of ‘AFAB,'” she says. “I don’t think anyone’s art or identity should be reduced to their assigned sex at birth. But I think, at the moment, it’s a for-lack-of-a-better-word term. At worst, we’re excluded. At best, we’re tokenized.”
‘Bioessentialism’ is the idea that biological characteristics determine who we are, what we can do, and all that nonsense that biology is somehow destiny.
I Can Be a Queen?
Andi has always been drawn to people who play with gender, and thought if she ever did drag, it would have to be as a king, the binary corollary to drag queen. Then she met a cisgender female drag queen from Florida and was intrigued.
“I’m a girl, and when I found out I could be a queen I said, ‘oh my goodness, I’m so excited! I love this,’ and I immediately started,” she says. After all, she likes theater and guessed she could get into makeup. “And then the rest is performance stuff.”
During the lonely COVID years, she worked on her makeup and once society began opening up again, she hit the bars and met other drag artists. “The pandemic definitely speed-launched my drag career, because in my first year of doing drag, I hosted an open stage weekly with another person. Then I performed at the Warhol Museum, started getting lots of bookings, and that is not the norm,” she says.
You’d think those gigs are how she chose her drag name, but no. “I was driving home from a pumpkin patch with a friend and saw a billboard for the Warhol Museum and I said, what about Andi?” Up until that moment she toyed around with becoming Polly Pickpocket, “But then I found out that somebody else had it.”
The Lady Elephant in the Room
Obviously, there are not all that many drag queens who are born and identify as female as it’s been traditionally a gay male or AMAB genre for decades. So, let’s look at that history. First, for a long time, men played women in performances because women were not allowed to be on stage. By a long time, I mean from ancient Greece up to about 1660. And even after that, it was highly discouraged until only about 100 years ago.
Yet in many non-Western cultures, gender wasn’t as binary as Europeans tried to make it. The Zuni people of New Mexico recognized a third gender called lhamana. We’wha, a lhamana who lived in the 1800s, even visited President Grover Cleveland in Washington, D.C. The Bugis of Indonesia traditionally recognize five distinct genders.
Zoom in on 19th century United States, and “drag balls” began occurring, most often in Black and immigrant communities. By the late 20th century, drag was central to gay male culture. The bars, the people, all of it was already illegal, so why not? Why not have fun messing up gender concepts?
That bit about being outlawed runs through all of this. In 1969, famously, trans women, drag queens, and gay men fought back against police who’d come to beat and arrest them – again – at the Stonewall Inn. And butch lesbians, too, which isn’t always mentioned … for some reason. Cross-dressing was illegal for everyone, after all.
Which brings us back to contemporary drag. It is performance, but also a lifestyle, and the gender-blending is mostly in the direction of masculine to feminine.
But that’s changing. It’s opening up. It’s transforming.
And not everyone is comfy with that.
Red Latex Meat for the Masses
When Andi won her Miss Blue Moon title in February 2026, there were grumbles. Andi discusses the pushback diplomatically.
“I mean, me and some of the OGs are beefing, but that’s fine. The beef is because I was not some people’s winner,” she says. “It has been taken out on me, but that’s how I know that I’m trailblazing, because treading through uncharted waters should never be smooth.” She promises to make waves as long as she has a platform, “because life is not about comfortability and that’s not how we evolve.”
Of course, many others were happy. Plus, she won in a dress styled to look like a whole lot of raw red meat, ala Lady Gaga.
“THERE IS A AFAB HUMAN REIGNING AS MISS BLUE MOON,” gushed Margaret Halo, her fellow drag artist and dressmaker, on Instagram. “When I first started drag, AFABs weren’t even allowed a packet for the pageant … this is major. This is herstory made for Pittsburgh drag. … Go scream that shit from the rooftops.”
Andi matched Margaret’s energy.
“The second that I won it was immediately, let’s go lesbians, this is the year of the Dyke! And that is very much in my platform — I’m trying to make sure that the shows I host reflect all of the different talent and personalities we have in the city. There are shows probably seven days a week in Pittsburgh, so there’s not really an excuse not to have POC performers, AFAB performers, trans performers,” says Andi. “It doesn’t make sense to have these weird old-school shows when this city is so progressive in that way and there are so many talented individuals.”
Dress Like an AFAB Queen
To achieve her winning look, Andi will at times wear as many as five to seven pairs of tights. She’ll add on hip pads, and sadly must often wear a bra. But she tries not to get nailed down into one specific look.
“My aesthetic is all over the place. I love to do so many things, and I never want to feel trapped in just like one set way of doing drag,” she says. “Like today, I just posted pictures of me dressed up as a clown. I like to do it all and make sure that I’m exploring all of my options always, and expanding upon it.”
Her Kaufmo the Clown creation made an appearance during Pride weekend at a lesbian takeover of P*Town bar. And she’s currently planning her 29th birthday bash, a show about celebrities who will always be younger than her. “Like, gone-too-soon celebrities,” she says. Then self-deprecatingly adds, “I love being stupid.”
Andi is a powerful role model for others, reclaiming women’s ability to play … well … women.
“I’ve had a couple of lesbians who wanted to get into performing ask me advice,” she says. “And I always try to give the best advice possible: go see shows, go to drag, go to open stages. Be loud, be proud, and don’t let them forget about you.”
And, most importantly, she has a message for our entire rainbow queer community: “If you aren’t feeling represented on our stages, it may be because we’ve been waiting for YOU to be that representation.”
Catch Andi on Instagram at @theandiwhorehol, and watch her live at Blue Moon on Butler. Her next show is June 27th, with dates through December. For more lesbian shows, Steel Carabiner runs the first and third Thursday of every month at Blue Moon, SZR and Crush Hour bring monthly dance parties and happy hours, and both the Soft Spot, Pittsburgh’s only sapphic café, and Harold’s Haunt, Millvale’s they-bar, are there when you need a place to land.