“Can Fauxnique survive a roast?” asks Monique Jenkinson of her vain drag queen alter ego, exposing Fauxnique’s need to control everything—even “what people are saying behind her back,” insisting she “acts like a baby who didn’t get a Guggenheim.” And roast she does, during a stand-up comedy segment where nothing is held back—not her weight, breasts, or multiple personalities, which include, but are not limited to, Joan Crawford, Marina Abramović, Tammy Faye, and Céline Dion—at times even looking like the latter two.
How Do I Look? is not pretty. No dunce cap is too small or too pink to be worn, no gold pump too big for gold pom-poms, no vulnerability too fragile to be marketed—hip replacements as source material. No local dancer too great to be mimicked in a dance sequence, and no leotard too tight it can’t be stuffed with wigs or tissue paper like a pimento. Stage-length fabric and circular paper, placed as shapes across the floor, are transformed into campy saris, ’50s-style cocktail dresses, a Dior gown, or a beanbag monster when Fauxnique moves beneath a bolt of satin. Meanwhile, a sound effect—vocals that resemble bombs falling—fills the theater; on other occasions, a female aria adds trill to the drama.
How Do I Look? is shameless—shamelessly self-conscious in a universal fashion. No narcissism is impossible. No megalomania unreasonable. No neurotic need too great—like the windmills of your mind, Fauxnique’s persona grows even as she dances a piece she calls “unselfing.”
Its structure is that of a carousel—one that can be boarded anywhere in its hour-long merry-go-round cycle. As if it has no true beginning or end, yet each bobbing, up-and-down moment Fauxnique rides is a complete creation. And in this whirling of observations, self-judgments, and doubts—in the bells and whistles of need and whipped-together costumes—something oddly profound happens. The audience is captivated, quiet, reverent, even during the sometimes slow, often quirky transitions that soundlessly lead one episode into another. Magic happens despite itself. Fauxnique happens.
And in that happening—in her need to be in control—she manipulates the audience into a call-and-response repartee:
F: “I feel pretty.”
A: “You look pretty!”
F: “I feel witty.”
A: “You look witty!”
F: “I feel ugly.”
A: “You look ugly!”
F: “I feel like Beyoncé.”
A: “You look like Beyoncé!”
Yet in this playful gimmick, the essence of reality is revealed. We get what we project. If we feel like Beyoncé, then life is a Super Bowl performance, a Coachella extravaganza. But if our negative bias is broadcasting our thoughts, running the show, then this is the world we experience—this is the depressed audience we are stuck with, taking it all personally. Where “I want you to like me” becomes “I need you to like me.” The rest is too messy.
Choreographer, performer, and author (Faux Queen)—beloved, bewitched, and bedazzled—Monique Jenkinson was the first cisgender woman to be crowned a pageant-winning drag queen. Called by the San Francisco Chronicle a “drag anthropologist,” and by Justin Vivian Bond “the Jane Goodall of drag,” Jenkinson created How Do I Look?, choosing Jesse Hewitt to direct and shape the dramaturgy.
David e. Moreno
