Salt Lake City — known as the hub of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a crossroads for world-class outdoor attractions — has become the focal point for a burgeoning drag scene.

Drag performance has exploded in Salt Lake City in the past few years, much of it credited to the mainstream cultural acceptance of it. But it hasn’t been without some pushback.

Protests have happened at many shows billed as “family-friendly,” most recently at a back-to-school drag show hosted by BYU students in Provo. Video from a Salt Lake City tea shop’s all-ages drag event went viral and drew complaints nationally. Earlier this summer, a drag group called Quorum of the Queens hosted an all-ages event at the Gallivan Center, which also was met with protests.

Drag performer Trey McEuen, known professionally as Hysteria, said the drag scene has “grown immeasurably” in the last three years. Some of the credit goes to new venues, like the drag bar Why Kiki, which opened last year.

“Now, you go to Why Kiki on a Saturday night, you’ve got three drag shows there earlier in the day that all have 12 people in them, and there’s four new queens showing up who look better than half of you,” McEuen said.

Studying gender through drag

McEuen, an interdisciplinary performance studies major at the University of Utah, is working on a thesis focused on using drag as a means of promoting social change.

For McEuen, drag is as much of an art as it is a science. They are interested in the gender performance of drag just as much as the unconscious gender performance everyone plays a role in on a daily basis.

“We look at strangers on the street and their identity expressions, and we suddenly garner from that unconscious performance aspects,” McEuen said. “We can pick up on things like masculinity, femininity, race [and] gender, and we make assumptions.”

McEuen said they take conscious and unconscious performance in communication and use both in drag to teach about social change, “whether that is something completely ridiculous or a more serious conversation about violence, or about protest.”

(Trey McEuen) Salt Lake City drag performers Skigh Copier (aka Sky Faux) and Trey McEuen (aka Hysteria), pose backstage at a drag show.

Staying safe amid opposition

In order to broadcast social change to wider audiences, performers at the Quorum of the Queens event in July took precautions to ensure the show would be family-friendly.

The event’s organizers warned that protests might turn violent, and that the performers needed to be extra cautious in preparing their stage numbers.

“There was a lot of communication upfront with us performers who were at the event that there may be danger,” McEuen said. “When we did the show, we had to be so aware of this that we had to do 3-minute numbers. They had to be non-explicit, there had to be no sexual themes.”

Often, McEuen explained, performers will do a “reveal,” where they remove an article of clothing to reveal a new, exciting element of their outfit. For instance, a queen might take off a pair of black slacks to reveal a sequin skirt.

“Those were not allowed,” McEuen said. “You were not allowed to take off any articles of clothing.”

Sky Faux, a junior resident performer at Why Kiki, also performed at the Gallivan event. Sky Faux is the stage name of Skigh Copier, who is nonbinary and was assigned female at birth.

Though Salt Lake City has many women who perform drag, few of them adopt a feminine character onstage. Faux recognizes that people, even within the queer community, struggle to understand why women and femme-presenting people would adopt hyper-feminine personas onstage.

However, they said they’ve been welcomed with open arms, save for a few exceptions, by the Salt Lake drag scene.

“Drag is just like any other mainstream art form,” Copier said. “We’re not going to show up to an all-ages drag show in the same look and with the same performance that we would for an over-21 show.”

Copier said drag queens are just like anybody else when it comes to taste and theatrical sensibilities. “We know what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate,” they said, noting they felt so confident in the age-appropriateness of the Gallivan show that they brought their 8-year-old sister to dance along with them.

But no matter how discerning queens are when constructing acts for audiences of all ages, some people are still opposed to the idea of drag, McEuen said — and a threat of danger continues to exist.

“At Gallivan we had to have double security, and then because it got so elevated, the Salt Lake City Police Department showed up,” they said, adding that the city protected the performers and made sure kids had access to see the performances.

Taking an early interest

Both McEuen and Copier became interested in drag when they were young, and it helped them discover their identities outside of the gender binary.

McEuen secretly watched “RuPaul’s Drag Race” at age 12, and faced their father’s disapproval for it. Copier said they wished they were born male, so that they could be a drag queen.

“Just seeing people happy, and loving themselves, and putting on a celebration of identity, a celebration of grandeur, opulence, spectacle, and self is major for someone, especially when they’re going through puberty and developing a sense of identity,” McEuen said.

McEuen said they believe drag can help young people who are struggling with their identity amid societal expectations of binary gender.

Copier said they gravitated to the gender expression of drag, but also the importance of drag as an art form. Drag, Copier said, encompasses many hobbies they love — dance, music, performance, style and fashion.

“I think drag at any age can be a really cool way of play, of putting on a character,” Copier said. “Just like kids play dress-up, I think it’s the same thing. I think it’s a very welcoming form of entertainment, artform and community.”

McEuen said Salt Lake City’s drag performers will not stop doing what they do, and will not stop hosting all-ages events.

“The future is now, and the future is big,” McEuen said. “Drag in Salt Lake is revolutionary — it’s punk, it’s counterculture, and it’s something that is a force to be reckoned with in the waves of making change. Open your eyes and come to a show.”

Jude Macher wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.

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This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through student journalism. Jude Macher wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.

The pandemic persists and its effect on mental health continues to rise.

A recent study published by Science Direct revealed an increase in depressive symptoms in U.S. adults from 27.8% in 2020 to 32.8% in 2021. Depression, anxiety and stress can impact academic performance, which experts say explains why the transition back to in-person learning for many college students has felt awkward, difficult and draining.

People can’t control the pandemic, but they can control how they cope with it. Using cognitive strategies, emotional coping skills and mindfulness-based exercise can make the transition back to in-person learning and normal social interactions a smoother one.

“There’s been a college student mental health crisis over the past 10 years, and it seems like the pandemic has exacerbated that,” said Scott Kadera, a psychologist and counseling manager at Salt Lake Community College.

Kadera said the need for mental health services has increased since the pandemic, although utilization of services at SLCC has dropped. The Center for Health and Counseling, Kadera said, is providing more counseling sessions to fewer clients.

“There are more people in distress,” he noted. “A confounding factor is that our enrollment dropped, so there is less demand. If we had the same [enrollment], my impression is that more would be coming in.”

In 2020, SLCC saw its enrollment drop by 2,000 students. In the fall of 2021, the number was down, but only slightly, another 68 students. The college has an overall enrollment of 27,225.

He said depression can cause people to experience a decrease in energy, motivation, attention and resilience. That makes returning to activities we once did more difficult, even if it’s a positive change.

“There have been a lot of studies in the last few years that demonstrate when a system is stressed or under a lot of pressure, there can be physiological changes to the brain and it has a significant impact on an individuals function,” said Mark Fox, a speech-language pathologist specializing in cognitive rehabilitation at Intermountain Healthcare.

This, Fox said, explains why the transition back to in-person learning has been difficult for so many college students. Isolation has caused social skills to atrophy when it comes to interpreting environmental stimuli, body language, social cues and complex environments. He noted people might feel awkward when socializing in-person, distracted by the unfamiliar environment around them, and feel much more drained at the end of the day compared to interacting virtually.

“As people start re-engaging, there’s going to be discomfort and some feelings of, ‘what am I doing?’” Fox explained. “Communication is a skill, and social interaction has a myriad of components. Just like any other activity, if you don’t practice it to a certain extent, you can lose it.”

Being on campus requires more energy and engagement with surroundings, as well as thinking about social responses in real-time. When communicating via text or email, there is an opportunity to perfect a message before hitting send.

“It gives a sense of distance when you communicate virtually. In person we have to manage our body language,” Fox said. “It’s spontaneous communication, which is more difficult.”

Under conditions that cause the brain to be stressed or alerted, the brain hyper-activates primitive portions focused on survival, fight and flight, Fox explained.

Being in primitive states makes it harder to think, pay attention and process information. If the nervous system is constantly activated like this, it affects cognition and executive function, leading to struggles with academic performance and anything involving cognition.

“A lot of the things that stimulate primitive responses aren’t necessarily life-threatening,” Fox said. “We have to learn to be able to go through a process of using our higher-level cognitive functions to decide the stimulus is or isn’t something to worry about.”

He said things like stress about school, relationships and the constant stimulation from technology can activate these responses. For higher-level cognitive functions to work, the nervous system needs to be calm. Here are some strategies that could help:

• Create lists, breaking tasks into small steps, to plan out the day, and use a monthly and weekly planner. This helps take the cognitive load off the brain and conserve valuable energy that can be used elsewhere.
• Movement and mindfulness-based activities can help calm nervous system, so a person can respond to a situation, instead of reacting. It also helps shift the mindset to focus on what is controllable, instead of what isn’t.

“Mind-body exercise helps put a pause on your thoughts and consciously choose a different direction to go in,” said Paula Nielson-Williams, SLCC recreation manager. Using tools like the Insight Timer app helps establish or continue a meditation practice, and Yoga Journal offers free, on-demand yoga videos for all levels.

The connection between the mind and body is distinct, and one has a great effect on the other, Nielson-Williams said.

“If the body is moving and healthy it can help the mind be clear,” Nielson-Williams said. “It’s an infinite circle of mind-body connection. One affects the other and vise-versa”

While these exercises can help you cope, it’s important to know when to seek professional help.

“People think they need to have extreme symptoms in order to seek help,” Kadera said, “But if you’re just unhappy and it’s not how you want to be feeling, then that’s a good reason to come in and get some services.”

SLCC offers individual, couples, and crisis counseling to students and staff. There is also the 24-Hour Community Crisis Line at 801-587-3000.

Juliana DeMay wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.

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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Juliana DeMay wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.

There was a moment, the Guatemalan poet Miguel Ángel Oxlaj Cúmez said, when he thought to himself, “if my humanity was going to be ridiculed, why would I speak [it]?”

Speaking at Salt Lake Community College, Cúmez recalled how Spanish colonizers often punished, beat or killed Indigenous people for speaking their mother tongue. The subsequent rise of the Spanish language even resulted in a crop of great significance to the Indigenous Kaqchikel culture — corn — being used against them.

“They would make us kneel on corn kernels until we admitted that Kaqchikel was useless,” he said.

Cúmez spoke at a Feb. 21 event called “Mother Tongues and Their Right to Coexist.” The event — which also featured poet Rosa Maqueda Vicente, from México and of the Hñähñu people — was presented primarily in Spanish (with translation devices available), and put on by SLCC’s Latin American Studies Program and the nonprofit Artes de México en Utah (Arts from México in Utah).

The event focused on languages in Latin America, and the systemic erasure and importance of Indigenous languages. Both poets speaking detailed the stories of their respective languages, and the roots of erasure and discovery.

Before the 16th century Spanish colonization of what’s now México, one could find an estimated 350 Indigenous languages across the region. As of 2020, according to one study, only 5.8% of people in Latin American regions speak Indigenous languages.

Carolina Bloem, associate professor of Spanish at SLCC and director of its Center for Latin American Studies, said language can be a tool of resistance. While some may not realize it, she said, Spanish has become a tool of erasure for Indigenous languages in Latin America.

Indigenous languages, Bloem said, aren’t simply tools of communication. When a language dies out, so does a whole block of knowledge and words.

Cúmez said that continuing to speak his mother tongue is a way to respect and “[honor] the memory of the pueblos.”

Vicente said she often questioned whether her culture left a legacy. She shared how her need to reconnect with her own mother tongue came from the realization that her education was only centered on Mayan history — and the denial of her own roots motivated her to learn past that one version of history.

Vicente, talked about a group project, Siwar Mayu (“A River of Hummingbirds”), a website that highlights Indigenous languages through poetry from different artists — Vicente, and Cúmez among them.

“Being a part of a collective pushes you forward,” Vicente, said.

Fanny Guadalupe Blauer, executive director of Artes de México en Utah, shared a familial story of reconnection — about her grandfather, who held regret for not learning his mother tongue.

Her grandfather’s final words, Blauer said, were “I ask for forgiveness from my mother, because she spoke to me in her mother tongue, and I never answered. I ask for forgiveness of you, because you carry her name but not her language.”

Andrea Silva, a staff member at Artes de México en Utah, said events like this one raise the question of where our languages come from. Although some people may not speak a mother tongue, the discussion can lead them to question the origins of their language.

“It is important to question where you come from, who you are, and who you want to be,” Silva said.

Ashley Orduna wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.

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NOTE TO MEDIA PARTNERS PUBLISHING WORK

We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text: This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Ashley Orduna wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.