A timely biography of drag queen Doris Fish
‘Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag’By Craig Seligmanc.2023, PublicAffairs$29/352 pages Tennessee, home of Dollywood, just passed legislation banning “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors.” “If I hadn’t been a girl, I’d have been a drag queen,” Dolly Parton has said. (Make of that what you will, Tennessee Gov.
Bill Lee.) Nothing is more timely than cultural critic and writer Craig Seligman’s new work of queer history “Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?
Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag.” One day in the 1980s, Doris Fish, a San Francisco drag queen, sat for a shoot in a beauty salon.
Sitting under a dryer, “curlers in his yellow fright wig, wearing a fuchsia top, turquoise pedal pushers, white peep-toe pumps and (too much) matching makeup, wide-eyed in what looks like despair,” Fish modeled for West Graphics, a local greeting card company, Seligman writes.
