Throughout the month of June we've asked our very own Brand Ambassadors to write a Pride Guest Blog. First up we have award winning freelance photographer Corinne Cumming!
"In 2015, I was the in house photographer at Dingwalls in Camden when I met Mynxie, a self proclaimed Drag Ghoul and DJ. She walked into an awards afterparty being held there and invited me to a drag show at a bar down the road called Bloc Bar (later known as Her Upstairs). Little did I know that this would be the beginning of my journey into self discovery, body positivity and finding my chosen family.
Growing up, I had very little self confidence, on the outside I was loud, bubbly and described as ‘too much’ but on the inside, I compared myself to others constantly and let everyone’s comments about how I looked get inside my head. Every time I looked in the mirror, I replayed my grandma commenting on my ‘puppy fat’, girls at school laughing at how big my bras were, and a friends boyfriend saying at a picnic in the park ‘I didn’t know fat girls could do the splits’. So I bought large or extra large t-shirts to cover my boobs, my stomach and my arms, in the height of summer I would wear cardigans for the same reason.
By the time I met Mynxie, I was 21 but I was very much still the person who hid behind layers of clothing, but through that chance encounter, I discovered the world of drag queens, drag kings, cabaret and burlesque. Seeing people of all ages, sizes, races, genders, sexualities, on stage platforming their art and their bodies in a way I had never seen before started to help me to unravel all of the damage I had sustained to my self-image.
In a short time, I had begun shooting shows at Her Upstairs and making friends with everyone who worked or performed there, which led to me getting my first drag club night job at the one and only Cybils House, described by my drag mother Cybil War as ‘just like a messy teenage house party but everyone is queer and you’re legally allowed to drink’. Every month has a theme like Slumber Party or Fet Gala, where everyone turns a look based on the theme. Beautiful people of every description would walk around so confident and scantily clad, but I would wear tights, denim shorts and a baggy t-shirt. Until December 2018, as one of my drag sisters was throwing up in the dressing room toilet, they encouraged me to try on her abandoned corset, and I had never felt more confident in my own skin in my entire life. I looked in the mirror and surrounding me were people who loved me, who cared for me, who encouraged me and cheered me on at every turn. They told me I looked beautiful and when I looked at myself, I could finally see what they could, I didn’t see all of the things I perceived as imperfections, I just saw someone who was starting to love herself.
It has been a number of years since then and I now proudly attend Cybils House as the photographer as always, but dressed in accordance with the theme (most recently in the Scantily Sex Education set). The last few years have been hard for many but particularly for LGBTQIA+ people, we are a group that depends and thrives on queer community, which due to covid was greatly affected. But we took our community online, creating safe spaces such as Queer House Party, and when it was safe to do so, we went back to being ‘IRL’. Being back in physical spaces after everything we have all been through in these past few years just solidifies for me that we are not just a community, but a family, and I am so thrilled to able to celebrate Pride this year the way that it should be, loud, proud and in person."
