Vanity (drag queen)

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Ben Moir (born September 28, 1978), mostly known as Vanity or Vanity Faire, is a drag queen based in Sidney, Australia. She is founder and co-owner of the wig company 'Wigs by Vanity' together with fellow Australian drag queen Courtney Act. She has provided drag artists all over the world with her wigs, including RuPaul, Alaska Thunderfuck and Trixie Mattel.

Early Life

Vanity was born the second child of three. She has two sisters. Her family was not wealthy and she grew up on a trailer park on the Central Coast of New South Wales, where she lived with her family and other relatives close by on the park. Early on, she showed interest in her sisters' Barbie Dolls and secretly dressed up in her sisters' clothes. At first, she started sewing costumes for her younger sister and was able to sharpen her skill before using it to create garments for herself. The general reaction she received for expressing enthusiasm for more "feminine"-labelled activities lead her to question her identity early in her life but particularly between ages 14 to 18. Moving to Sidney at 18, she was able to come to terms with her identity and begin her career as 'Vanity'.

Personal Life

As a non-binary person, she considers herself on the trans spectrum. She is known for openly discussing and sharing her struggles with identity, depression and her past of substance abuse on various medias, like on her Instagram profile, her YouTube Channel or her podcast. She also features her infamous Barbie collection on her social media.

Career

After dropping out of school before the age of sixteen, due to immense bullying, she started a four-year long apprenticeship as a hairdresser. In the first year of the apprenticeship, she took a job in a hair salon to learn more about "female haircuts and -styles" to compensate for the educational program which focused mostly on "male haircuts". This job also allowed her to study more "old-fashion" techniques, coming in handy later on in her career. After finishing her apprenticeship, she continued to work at a hair salon for another nine months before taking a job at a Drag Shop, where she was increasingly asked to style other drag queen´s wigs for them. Shortly after, she ended up working at a high-end wig shop, where she was given the information of a wig manufacturing company in China, which would later become the manufacture of her own company 'Wigs by Vanity'.

Drag

Vanity started doing Drag in Sidney after finishing her apprenticeship to become a hairdresser. Originally, she planned to perform as "Adora Belle" when a fellow drag queen and friend suggested the name "Vanity Faire" to her. Today, she has unofficially dropped her last name and is most commonly known as "Vanity".

In the year 2000, she was voted Rising Star and Entertainer of the Year at the Drag Industry Awards (DIVA). Already being an established drag artist and pioneer in the drag scene for her approach of creating a female illusion with her drag, she was introduced to a young Courtney Act in the early aughts, who had not yet started to perform in drag themselves but was inspired by her. Courtney would later become Vanity´s best friend and co-owner of WigsByVanity. Both consider each other "Drag Sisters" without traditionally coming from the same Drag Family. In 2002, Vanity appeared in Blue Magazine. Since then, she has become one of the most famous and legendary artists representing the "Aussie Drag" scene. She often can be seen performing as Mariah Carey or Liza Minnelli.

Vanity almost appeared on the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under. Although, she was not cast as a contestant, many of her wigs can be seen in several seasons of the show, worn by contestants as well as host RuPaul himself.

Most of her Drag aesthetics are inspired by the fashion of the 1980s and TV characters like She-Ra and Jem and the Holograms.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Working as a full time Drag Queen for over eight years, Vanity experienced a phase of stagnation in her career, where she could barely find inspiration unless being intoxicated. She adapted a lifestyle of heavy partying and extensive drinking which amplified her resentment towards Drag. While attempting to turn her life around and focus on new projects, the stage production of the Australian movie Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert gained popularity in the Australian Drag scene for their intention to cast real drag queens. Unlike most, Vanity was most interested in a job behind the scenes. Through a friend´s recommendation she was hired to do the makeup and hair for a photo shoot and ended up being hired to work on the production permanently.

For five years, she worked for the Priscilla musical production and travelled the world with it. She worked on Broadway in New York City and lived in London for two years while touring with Priscilla. Vanity worked her way up from makeup artist to deputy and head associate makeup designer and wig supervisor. After her time with the production, she came back working as a full time drag queen in Sidney, regaining the creative freedom again, which she has missed at her job for the musical.

Wigs by Vanity

In 2003, Vanity and Courtney Act started the wig company 'Wigs by Vanity' together. Inspired by RuPaul´s famous lace-front wigs, which were geographically and financially unavailable for themselves, they created a company providing drag queens all over the world with affordable lace-frot wigs. Vanity, with her qualifications as a trained hairdresser and with her self-taught skill to hand-knot wigs, took the part of the creative influence of the company, while Courtney focused more on the business side. With their "one-size-fits-most" approach, they have become an esteemed wig company especially in the Drag scene. Many famous drag queens are recurring costumers of Wigs by Vanity, such as RuPaul, Trixie Mattel, Willam Belli or Alaska Thunderfuck. Their most popular model is the Über Riah.

Brenda, Call Me!

In February 2021 the NOVA Network launched "Brenda, Call Me!", a podcast, where the Australian drag queens, best friends and business partner Courtney Act and Vanity catch up on events in their lives and in the world of drag. The podcast is based on the premiss of their friendship, where they have been trying to catch up through phone calls while being in different parts of the world. Brenda, Call Me! is a 20-part podcast series with bonus episodes. They share stories from their lives, discuss their experiences growing up queer and with the show RuPaul's Drag Race. On the podcast, they feature a segment called 'lavender linguistics', where each week a word or phrase in Polari, a secret slang used by the LGBTQIA+ community until the 1970s in Britain, is being explained. Guests on the podcast include: Adam Lambert, Bianca Del Rio, Trixie Mattel, Katya Zamolodchikova and Rhys Nicholson, alongside others.

References

This article "Vanity (drag queen)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Vanity (drag queen). Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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