Ziggy Zhuby Ziggy Zhu
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Nymphia Wind/Facebook
AS THE JUDGE announced, “America’s next drag superstar is – Nymphia Wind!”, the room of filled with anticipation and excitement. Nymphia, wearing her iconic all-yellow outfit and high ponytail, covered her face and kneeled down dramatically, overwhelmed by her victory. Born in the United State and raised in Taiwan, Nymphia, otherwise known as Leo Tsao, developed a passion for making clothes and dressing up as a teenager. She transformed her teenage enthusiasm into a thriving career and made history for queer people in Asia by becoming the first drag queen of East Asian heritage to win RuPaul’s Drag Race. Her victory sparked discussions about Taiwanese drag culture, LGBTQ+ rights, and Asian representation across the globe. This article explores how Nymphia evokes the exoticized fascination of Asia in the Global North through her performances and recodes this fascination into tools that empower queer people in Asia.
On RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia appears on stage adorned in a glamorous traditional Peking opera costume with a delicate yellow gown and silky pink and white sleeves. She skillfully imitates opera singers and dances with the music. Given that Peking opera is known as a symbol of Asia in the West, Nymphia’s presence in the extravagant, visually sumptuous, and ‘hyper-Asian’ Peking opera outfit connotates Anne Cheng’s conceptualization of ornamentalism, a form of racial objectification that conflates Asian femininity with ornaments, decorations, and designs. In other words, the concept embodies the history and social reality where Asian people are perceived as exotic and alluring objects, connected to thingness, styles, and aesthetics instead of being seen as full human subjects. These stereotypical images symbolically dehumanize Asian people, leading to racial prejudice and implicit oppression. Nymphia’s performance as a Peking opera character seems to reiterate and reinforce the said ornamental stereotypes of Asians.
In another sequence in RuPaul’s drag race, Nymphia shows up as a whole unpeeled banana in glittering yellow. She stumbles a little bit, taking off her black ‘hat’, namely the banana stem and turns around gracefully. She fans herself playfully with the hem of her banana peel skirt. The use of yellow in Nymphia’s persona holds significant symbolism. Yellow not only evokes historical stigmas of the ‘yellow peril’ and discrimination against Asians, but bananas, as a type of sweet, soft, and seductively shaped fruit native to the Taiwanese soil, could also imply tropicality, wildness, consumable exoticism, and the objectification of humanness. Apart from Peking opera and a banana, Nymphia has styled herself in many outfits that stand for traditional Taiwaneseness and Asianness: A Taiwanese Taoist temple, bubble tea, lion dolls, and etc.
Indeed, this is a recurring trope of her aesthetic, Nymphia repeatedly expresses her love for bananas and the colour yellow to the public. She calls her fans “banana believers” and one of her iconic looks “banana buddha.” In an interview, Nymphia shares the motivation for choosing yellow as her embodiment: “Yellow is not just a colour, it is me as an Asian person. My existence is yellow…… drag taught me to appreciate my Asian identity.” When Nymphia performs charmingly, confidently, and comfortably on RuPaul’s stage, which is never devoid of power dynamism and racial hierarchy, she successfully makes yellow more associated with her talent and charm, and less with the historically racialized imageries and terms: Fu Manchu, Ching-chong, and yellow peril.
Photo credit: Nymphia Wind/Instagram
Thus, as shown by Nymphia’s comments, it is not that Nymphia makes herself into a cultural fascination to appeal to the Western gaze. Instead, Nymphia’s utilization of ‘hyper-Asian’ cultural symbols empowers queer Asian people in her own ways. Like Anne Cheng’s disagreements towards giving ornaments the white agential liberal personhood, Nymphia is neither interested in claiming her humanness over her perceived thingness nor is she eager to disassociate herself from the history of racialization and objectification. Alternatively, she embraces the historical stigma of ‘yellow’ and the conflation of Asianness and ornamentality, turning them into her sources of creativity.
Moreover, Nymphia goes beyond mere appropriation of traditional Taiwanese arts by actively engaging with them. In 2022, she partnered with the Taiwanese Traditional Theatre Festival to create a one-minute pitch video showcasing her drag performances. The video begins with Nymphia, as Leo Tsao, applying white powder to her face, gazing invitingly into the camera. She then lovingly caresses her Peking opera gear before reappearing on stage in a dazzling costume, bathed in glamorous lighting. On the one hand, this video tells the behind-the-scenes story of Nymphia’s operatic persona; on the other hand, her collaboration with traditional theatre festival shows her style has depth and is grounded in traditional Taiwanese arts and her rigorous hard work. In 2023, Nymphia hosted a free drag performance in Fuyo Temple in Taipei, drawing a large and supportive audience. In terms of this event, she excitingly wrote on her Instagram: “I am so happy that I can bring drag to the traditional Taiwanese space, inviting people from different ages to put aside prejudice and enjoy the time together.” Through these engagements with traditional culture, Nymphia showcases that traditional ‘Asianness’ is not in conflict with people’s enjoyment of drag/queer culture, but rather intertwined and mutually beneficial. This challenges the Western-centric stereotype that traditional Asian culture suppresses queer Asian individuals, who need the universalizing Western LGBTQ+ discourses to rescue them. Therefore, by immersing herself in traditional Taiwanese cultural elements, Nymphia not only re-narrates and recodes the stigmas, fetishization, and exotification of Asia, but also demonstrates that Asian queer people could live freely and comfortably while embracing who they are, celebrating their Asian identities. Her triumphant imagery, broadcasted through television and social media, firmly asserts that queer Asian people can navigate the world with their own charisma, humor, and playfulness, empowering the queer Asian community around the world.