DECATUR — Ceduxion Carrington said she was “tricked” into becoming a drag queen.
In 1995, during what Carrington describes as her era of drag pageantry, a pageant was not held without at least three contestants.
A friend of hers, drag queen Anita Mann, was putting together a pageant in Peoria and had only two contestants. At the time, Carrington was a frequenter of the shows but had no sights on becoming a queen herself.
“Anita Mann, myself, and my now present drag mother were in my apartment in Bloomington, Illinois, trying to brainstorm, and then it gets quiet,” Carrington said. “And then I just happen to look up and they’re both looking at me and I’m like, ‘Absolutely not!’”
With the promise of her costuming being paid for, the earliest iteration of Ceduxion Carrington was created. And even though she was just a rookie, she went on to win her first pageant.
“What they failed to tell me was that by winning that pageant I was obligated to perform at that bar for a year and it was what’s called a preliminary to a state pageant,” Carrington said. This propelled what has become an almost 30-year career of performing as a drag artist.
“I always tell people, drag is a summation of all my life’s failures. Everything I wanted to be, drag lets me be.”
Carrington said growing up, going to school in the ‘80s and ‘90s in Decatur, Illinois, they weren’t told being an artist or choreographer was a viable career choice.
Carrington said drag has become an outlet for her childhood dreams.
“I said I’m a nerd, it allows me to express my nerd-ism on stage,” Carrington said.
Having grown up drawing her own superheroes, she now gets to dress up as one. Carrington used to mostly choreograph routines for other performers, but she now also often takes the stage to dance.
Carrington is a member of the Carrington drag family, one of the most prominent in central Illinois. She says a drag family is just like any other, except tied together by a love of performance.
While most of her drag daughters have retired, she continues to perform as her drag granddaughters do. Two of her family members are 12 years old, she said, performing as drag artists due to their love of cheerleading and breakdancing.
“When you have drag family members that young, you have to be careful how you introduce them to society because someone will always make it something that it is not,‘Oh you’re sick. Oh, you pervert,’” Carrington said.
In their career they have dealt with their fair share of homophobic confrontations. And in recent months, with the rollout of a slew of anti-LGBTQ+ directives and executive orders by the Trump administration, Carrington said Illinois Gov. JB Prtizker’s comments in support of protecting LGBTQ+ rights have made them feel cautiously comforted.
“I think we are, knock on wood, lucky we are in Illinois, which has never come out of my mouth before,” Carrington said.
But she worries for performers in Tennessee, where legislation explicitly bans drag.
At the end of her shows, Carrington warns her audiences to travel to their cars and to their homes in groups.
“There’s been an influx of self-ascension among people who are thinking they can do more [harm] now that Trump’s in office,” Carrington said. “They’re a little more boisterous and don’t have a problem attacking you ‘cause they don’t think there’s gonna be repercussions.”
Carrington said what drag artists need now is numbers, to make their importance known to their audiences and to the business venues where they perform.
“Wherever there is drag, support it… Your attendance is needed. This is the time to let society know we are here and we are united,” Carrington said. “There are things in life we take for granted and now here we are, something as simple as performing is being threatened.”