Rachel Bender started making dolls based on RuPaul’s Drag Race for fun, but she later realized she could turn them into her senior thesis project.
When a woman from New York bought a doll from Rachel Bender’s Etsy page, Bender was surprised to hear that it was for the woman’s six-year-old niece.
A doll can be typical gift for a little girl, but that’s not what surprised Bender. She makes dolls based on drag queens, and she didn’t know how a six-year-old could be familiar with drag in the first place.
“That kind of got me thinking about the way that we talk to children about gender, and the way that gender is presented,” the senior studying painting said. “Because kids don’t care, and they don’t get it until you teach that to them.”
Upon recommendation from a friend, Bender first started watching RuPaul’s Drag Race in the spring of 2015.
In RuPaul’s Drag Race, contestants dress up in drag clothing and participate in various challenges, including designing their own outfit. The show is currently in its eighth season. RuPaul is known for his work as both a model and recording artist, as well as being a famous drag queen. “Drag” is the word used to describe when a person wears clothes typically associated with the other gender, usually for entertainment or artistic expression.
Over the summer, Bender experimented with making dolls based on the contestants and their outfits. She already had been making felt dolls based on Disney princesses since her freshman year. After making more than 10 dolls, she realized she could continue making dolls for her senior thesis project. Her project will be presented at the “Close Praxis” exhibition in the Ohio University Art Gallery in Seigfred Hall from April 12 to 16. The reception for the exhibition will take place April 15 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
“I’ve always liked things about identity,” Bender said. “I like the showmanship of (drag) and getting to create something — the costumes.”
Johnna Miska, who shares a studio with Bender, said Bender’s decision to make drag dolls “makes perfect sense.”
“I got really excited about it,” Miska, a senior studying painting, said. “I was like, ‘I think you have a chance to say some really interesting things here, and at the same time make something that’s really tangible for people to grasp on to.’ ”
Bender makes the dolls in her fifth floor studio in Seigfred — a slightly cluttered space she shares with a few other student artists. Sketches of drag doll designs hang on the wall above her desk, and finished drag dolls are propped against the opposite wall. Mr. Cat, a black cat owned by Samantha Slone, a senior studying painting, also occupies the space.
After finding a contestant on whom she wants to base a design, Bender cuts the necessary pattern pieces for the outfit out of paper, which she traces to cut the felt, and then sews the doll together.
She makes an envelope for the patterns of each doll, with the materials and production time written on the outside of the envelope. Every piece of the doll — including the hair, dresses and skirts — needs a pattern. When someone wants to buy a particular doll, she pulls out that doll’s envelope and gets started.
Once she posted a picture of one of her dolls to an online forum, she quickly received a request to make a custom doll and ship it. That’s when she realized she could potentially make a profit from the dolls. She started an Etsy page to sell the dolls, with people making purchases from as far as California and New York. So far, she has sold six dolls on Etsy, and the dolls range from about $45 to $65.
The New York woman’s purchase for her niece was a stark contrast to the way Bender’s own mother originally reacted to her project.
“When I showed her, ‘Look at all the attention I’m getting online,’ she was like, ‘Oh, your sewing is beautiful, but I can’t really support what’s going on here,’ ” Bender said.
As the project continued, her mother warmed up more to the idea.
“It’s at least opened up the door to talk about it,” she said. “We present our sides, and I think she might have changed her mind a little bit over the course of us talking about it.”
That kind of exposure is what Miska said she thinks will help people become more comfortable with drag. Being in an artistic environment, she said, has surrounded her with people who are, for the most part, comfortable with drag. But, she said that’s probably not a representation of the general public.
“The reason anything really feels normal to people is because they’re around it all the time,” Miska said. “I think that once people are exposed to it, it’s just another common part of culture.”
Miska was friends with Bender prior to the start of Bender's project, but they became even closer this year. Slone was not particularly familiar with drag before Bender started her project.
“(Bender) was one of those people that made art about things she cared about and that she could speak about with knowledge and research and experience,” Slone said. “I always appreciate those people.”
Bender’s friends aren’t the only ones who have noticed her work — RuPaul once retweeted a picture of one of her dolls. She and Slone will be attending RuPaul’s DragCon in May, a convention in Los Angeles featuring drag queens and celebrities.
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Even after her thesis project concludes, Bender doesn’t think she’ll be ready to stop just yet.
“A comment that I get a lot is it’s very ‘now,’ ” she said. “It’s a topical thing.”
@seanthomaswolfe
