New York Times best-selling authoresses Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova are back with a follow-up to their hit Guide To Modern Womanhood because reading is what? Fundamental!
This time around, the divas have set their sights on the professional world with all sorts of tips, tricks, how-to’s, and no-no’s for anyone looking to slay the career game without girl-bossing too close to the sun. Who better to give you vocational advice than two self-proclaimed “out-of-touch drag queens,” right?
In all seriousness, Trixie and Katya have been around the occupational block more than a few times, and they’ve channeled their experiences into the (shockingly) comprehensive and (not-so-shockingly) hilarious Working Girls: Trixie And Katya’s Guide To Modern Womanhood. Whether you’re unsure what career path might be best for you, wondering how to ask for a raise, planning for an early retirement, or trying to figure out what a “QED report” is, this book has all the answers. Well, except for that last one.
To celebrate the release of Working Girls, Queerty sat down with Trixie and Katya over a boozy business lunch to review the pair’s credentials. In our conversation, the gabbing gal pals touched on everything from their first dream jobs to their earliest paid gigs, to why they’re so hesitant about encouraging others to pursue drag as a career path (hint: it rarely pays well).
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
So, read on—and we’ll need that detailed summary report of the conversation on our desk by EOD.
QUEERTY: I want to start by going all the way back on your “resume”—if we were to ask a young Trixie and Katya what their dream jobs were, what would they say?
KATYA: Mine was a Cirque du Soleil acrobat. And I mean that for real, in the most serious way. To the point where I was plotting out not going to college and applying to the Montreal circus school. So, from I think 11 to 15 I was extremely dead-set on that.
What threw you off that path?
K: Oh, it was a bunch of things, but mostly Satanism.
Well, of course. But, come on, how do we not have a Satanic Cirque du Soleil show yet?
K: Right, there’s not! And I think it’s because they’re all a little bit cheesy, but that’s a great idea, actually! I mean, they do a pretty sexy one in Las Vegas, but it is time for a Satanic one.
TRIXIE: And I just wanted to be on QVC, I wanted to be on a home shopping network. I used to stay up late and watch the informercials, and I wanted so badly to be one of those sales people. And, well, now I kind of am!
There’s a very clear through-line between QVC and the Trixie Mattel persona.
T: Yeah, I just think it was the extreme pageantry of it all. The way they could create entire 45-minute segments talking about the fabric of like a Chennile throw? And we always joke about how they’re selling Fabergé eggs or things like that, but they’re never selling anything that’s essential or even good. It’s an end table. Or an all-in-one makeup product. Or some weird thing that’s supposed to do everything, but you can tell really does nothing. It’s the belief in that and the pageantry of it that I always thought, “Oh, I would love to sell things on TV.”
In the book, you admit upfront that your combined professional experience is minimal. But so much of our idea of what it means to have a job, of office culture, of all of that is shaped by pop culture, by movies and TV—
T: Yeah, we’ve never had those kinds of jobs and I think it’s pretty obvious. [Laughs.]
So are there certain movies you remember seeing when you were younger that made you think, “Oh, so that’s what a job is!”?
T: Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead!
K: Yes, exactly! It’s those types of jobs where I don’t even think the writers of those movies knew what those jobs were like! Because they’re all just shuffling papers, and typing numbers and slashes and dashes on the “QED report.” It’s all generic business banter about mergers and all this crap—it’s so funny. You just think that’s what it means to work in an office.
T: You can tell which jobs we actually have experience in, like retail and hospitality and stuff. But, I would say, for the office sections [of the book,] we mostly just took from watching The Office. [Laughs.]
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But the retail and service industry experience really does shine through. And those are the sorts of jobs that really prepare you for the real world, like how not to be a terrible person in public.
T: Right, and it’s not that having a retail job means you’re not a terrible person, but it does teach you how to never be the jerk in a store, or at a restaurant. I once went out to a brunch in West Hollywood with a bunch of people, and when they all got up I realize nobody had tipped. I was like, “Oh my f*cking god.”
K: Oh, that just makes me sick.
T: I mean, Katya and I have been places where people we know and work with don’t talk to someone the right way and we’re shocked.
K: A waiter or waitress could come and grab me by the neck and call me a bunch of slurs and say that she’s got my parents locked up in a cage somewhere, and we will still give a 25-30% tip.
Throughout the book, you do share stories from some of the past jobs you’ve had, but what we want to know is: What’s the very first job you ever held—the one that earned you your first paycheck?
K: Funny enough, I think it was probably the best paying job I’ve ever had. Well, besides this one. I was the busboy at the Holiday Inn restaurant. But unfortunately, I did something I’m very ashamed of, which I don’t think I admit in the book: I was 14 or 15 years old, and I stayed up all night and then had to go to work because it was a 6am breakfast shift. And I fake-fainted at work so I could go home! It’s so shameful because the other two waiters—this lovely couple—drove me home and I can’t believe I lied to them. They were so wonderful, and I’m such a lying b*tch!
And then I did the same thing when I worked at the [Boston University] library. I was signed up for an overnight shift, and then I faked that my mother was dying and that I had to go see her. I almost started crying—it was a really good performance—so they let me go. I was so bad; evil stuff going on there—personality disorder kind of stuff.
T: And that goes to show you how low the bar is for professionalism in the drag industry. Like, this person is considered reliable, hard-working—
K: [Laughs.] Exactly!
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T: I was 13 or 14-years old and I worked at a place called Lickity Split—it was an ice cream place, and we served over 36 flavors. And, at night, the high schoolers would go rearrange the letters on the marquee to say, “LICK MY CL*T.” Then I would not realize, so I’d get a call from the manager like “Hey… yeah… they did it again!” So, it’d be nine in the morning, and there’s me switching the letters—covered in acne with a mohawk, taking down the word “CL*T.”
But, I will say: People know us as what we do now, but we have had a lot of day jobs, and night jobs, and afternoon jobs. You know, until I did Drag Race, I was in school full time, and I had three jobs. I was a server, I worked front desk at a hair salon, and then I was doing drag shows four nights a week. So I’ve always been psychotic.
That’s why we’re also good collaborators on this topic, because we have completely different approaches to work and what we get out of work. What matters to us, at the end of the day, is different things. I care more about somebody saying I did a good job, about getting an award or some recognition. And, well, she doesn’t. [Laughs.]
K: I just like how it feels. I just want to have fun—[in a sing-song-y voice,] I just want to feel good, baby!
Trixie, you bring up an important point: Drag is so rarely a lucrative career path. In fact, you wrote a whole chapter about why people shouldn’t become drag queens.
K: It’s not achievable! It’s pie in the sky!
T: And, you know, that chapter is heavily satirical—and now’s a good time to say that everything in this book should be taken with a heavy grain of salt. [Laughs.] So, we are satirizing how hard it is to be a drag queen, but we’re also doing something important, which is: mediating the expectations of what could happen to you should you put on a wig and pretend to sing music.
Nowadays, drag is sold as this glamorous thing. I know people who quit their day job, buy wigs on Amazon, and then just start hitting the clubs. And then they think they’re entitled to a certain amount of success. I mean, Katya and I represent the 0.000001%—
K: Out of the Drag Race alumnus set, we’re probably two of five who get to enjoy this level of popularity and success—out of hundreds of hundreds!
T: So we’re joking about it, but in that chapter I think we also do a good job of saying: Look, if you are into drag, then go ahead and f*ck around with your friends, laugh, have a drink, act a fool—you’re set! Because that’s the reason you should be doing it. That’s what you’re gonna get out of it, whether or not you’re paid, or anyone knows who you are. I mean, most of the reason I started doing drag was so I could go to the bar with my friends and get free drinks!
So, let’s say you’ve done drag for some period of time, but now you need to find a job in a more traditional workplace—are there transferable skills from being a drag queen?
K: Humiliation. Degradation.
T: [Laughs.] I would say it’s been the flip-flop for me. It’s like Slumdog Millionaire, where shitty jobs that I’ve had have now inform my drag. One of my first jobs was at a restaurant at a motel; I now own a motel. I worked at a makeup counter; I now have a makeup company. So, if you pay attention to your sh*t jobs that you think don’t matter, you’d be surprised how many weird little skills you pick up that do come back in your career.
K: I’ve worked tons of retail, and so now I know how to talk to people! I’d say I don’t like people very much, but that’s not true—I just don’t like customer service roles. But I think all those all those years taught me how to talk to people. And then, at a Meet & Greet, when you have to talk to 100 people in a row, it’s so strange. Like, they pay money to come meet you, and that makes things sort of transactional. And there’s nothing bad about that, but it’s just strange, and only retail could’ve prepared me.
T: You do have to be a little bit industrious as a drag queen. Like, you want to work? Perform? Make money? Great! Well, how do you make that happen? If I could go back and do it all over again, the first thing I would’ve done when I turned 21 was walk into bars that don’t have drag shows and say, “Can I start a show here? You don’t even have to pay us right away!” When I was a young drag queen, I was like, “I’m gonna have to wait until one of these older drag queens gives me a job.” And I don’t know why that was the mentality! Because, in fact, you’re basically a walking small business—you’re a food truck!
Working Girls: Trixie and Katya’s Guide To Professional Womanhood is available now, wherever books are sold. You can find more info here.
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