Kween Kong’s first ever drag performance brought to the surface all sorts of feelings. It was the first time she fully embodied the femininity that she’d been bullied for growing up.
I had bought this brand new wig, it was a Beyonce shake and go wig, I had a horrible pair of lashes on... and I remember looking at myself in the mirror and just feeling gorgeous, and also just going, 'I can't leave the house. I'm so scared. People are going to judge me'. That was the biggest thing... Meeting her for the first time, well, there was no turning back.Kween Kong
Hear from powerhouse drag artist Kween Kong as she shows us what it means to rise above the hate, to find power in her femininity and give back to the community that nurtured her.
Hosted by Yumi Stynes, SEEN is a podcast series about the trailblazers who persist and succeed without positive role models in mainstream culture. In this season you’ll hear from leading tech creative Tea Uglow, activist Tarang Chawla, academic and writer Dr Amy Thunig and more as they share their stories of resilience and courage.
Follow SEEN on the SBS Audio website or app, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host: Yumi Stynes
Producers: Mandy Yuan, Laura Brierley Newton, Marcus Costello
Sound Design and Mix: Ravi Gupta
Executive Producer: Kate Montague
Theme Music: Yeo
Art: Evi O Studios
SBS Team: Caroline Gates, Max Gosford, Joel Supple, Micky Grossman
Original concept by: Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn
Transcript
Yumi STYNES (Voiceover): We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land we’re recording from whose culture includes a rich tradition of storytelling, the Cammeraygal people and Gadigal people, and their Elders past and present.
(Theme music)
STYNES (Voiceover): I’m Yumi Stynes and if you’re new to this podcast, it’s here we celebrate people who exist outside of the mainstream — people who push the limits of what ‘motherhood’ means, who fight racism, break generational cycles, and who make huge waves often as the first of their kind, whether it be as a tech creative, an environmentalist, or a drag queen.
Today, I'm talking to Kween Kong, a drag artist and activist who was already a star when she cracked the mainstream through season 2 of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under.
KWEEN KONG: I'm in dags like, oh my God, I'm going to KFC leave me alone. Don't take pictures. And they're like, can we get a photo? I'm like, no.
STYNES (Voiceover): It’s recording day. When I see Kween Kong arrive in the SBS lobby she’s ostentatiously gorgeous, tall, and commanding. I immediately recognise her as the day’s guest and feel kind of proud to be seen kissing this queen as we meet and head into the studio.
We're going to hear more about how Kween embraces her female side and her own form of “motherhood”, leadership and kick-ass advocacy, but first, let’s get the origin story because Drag Queens do not arrive on Planet Earth fully formed!
STYNES: What I'm seeing here is this very flamboyant, very beautiful, attention grabbing character.
KWEEN KONG: Oh, thank you.
STYNES: Full of charisma. But what were you like as a youngster?
KWEEN KONG: I think I was always those things like growing up, I was always very clearly a performer and like I was a show off.
STYNES (Voiceover): Before Kween Kong, there was young Thomas Fonua, born in New Zealand to parents who had moved from the Polynesian islands. At home, the gender lines were clear — women in the kitchen, cooking; men outside, drinking.
KWEEN KONG: The sass has always come from my feminine side, you know, because I was always in the kitchen with my mom and my aunties and my grandmother always cooking, always laughing, you know, we got to be myself, but outside with the men, I was always like, “I hate these people.”
Like I hate it out here. I don't want to drink kava. It's like dirt water, like God. So yeah, it was always really weird growing up.
STYNES (Voiceover): Here’s something we’re going to understand a bit more by the end of today’s episode. Performing your gender, and by that I mean, “acting like a REAL man” and so on — that performance is policed by your peers. From being abused or teased for being “too girly” to being bashed for wearing a “gay” shirt, men in particular, are violently policed by other men if their gender performance doesn’t sit very neatly within the binary.
KWEEN KONG: The women in my family have always, and I think in most Pacific environments, the women have always been a lot more understanding of what we were pre colonial, pre Bible, they had more of an innate understanding based on how they would feel.
They could understand that this is my child, and I want to love my child. I'm not going to stop them from being what they are. I'm going to protect them. And there was never a conversation about queerness, but it was always a conversation about not being afraid to be who you were.
STYNES (Voiceover): So there were two columns: the fierce female, and the male.
STYNES: Explain what the men were like.
KWEEN KONG: Oh, look, men were always drinking. There were always like in the round and there was always jokes, but it was always like at someone else's expense and generally speaking, it was always about me, like there was always an issue, you know, my memories of those times always just like, every time I was outside I knew I was not safe, like, I was gonna get picked on, or I was gonna, someone was gonna say something about me, which would mean that my dad would be embarrassed, and then he would take it out on me afterwards.
STYNES (Voiceover): That threat of violence, retribution for being too gay, too feminine, too unusual — was countered by a kind of invisible force field.
KWEEN KONG: I think externally I look very strong and powerful, but I think the thing that really has carried me through all my years has been my spirit, which is very feminine and it's loving, it listens and it's not afraid to feel.
(Gentle uplifting music)
That energy has always been the thing that's gotten me through some of the hardships in my life. I think when I think back to my childhood and moments where this was always like something that would, it was like a shield.
STYNES (Voiceover): That power was also manifested in a real person. Nana.
KWEEN KONG: Because my Nana was, like, the matriarch of our family, because she accepted me, there was nothing that those people could do, you know, until she died, you know.
So, she just protected me, and looked out for me like crazy since I was a baby. She knew since I was a baby I think my Nana was my first fag hag. Like she literally was like the OG fag hag like she set the blueprint for all of my strong women that are in my life now I'm like if you're not like my Nana then get out of my life. (Laughs) Like, just protector.
STYNES: I've never heard anybody call their grandma a fag hag.
KWEEN KONG: Yeah, she'll probably smack me if she was still alive like.
STYNES (Voiceover): Nana’s advocacy was, at times, ferocious. One particular memory from childhood stands out.
KWEEN KONG: So at school there was one day I was, my Nana got called into the office and I was about seven, I think. Me and one of the boys in my class were playing around and we were trying to kiss each other just being idiots in school and this principal pulled me aside and isolated me and was yelling at me in the office and my Nana walked into him calling me a pervert and saying you know like because he knew I was like queer the other boy was just fucking around but he knew that I was the gay one so, he's berating me and the way that my Nana absolutely tore this man to shreds from the head to the toes, like, you know, absolutely defending a seven year old being yelled at by a fucking 50 something year old white man telling me that everything that I am is wrong.
I remember looking at my Nana going, “Oh, yeah, get him. Like, get this motherfucker.”
Like I'm so sick of this man. You know what I mean? (Laughs) And my Nana had like broken English. So she was like, cause she was from Samoa. So she had broken English and listening to her articulate herself so eloquently with so many swear words, was just the best, the icing on the cake. (Laughs) You know what I mean? So yeah, that woman was the one.
(Gentle uplifting music)
That's when she started telling me “you're more”, you're not different and there's nothing wrong with you. So, so I think that kind of passion and that lack of fear to put yourself at the forefront of something that might be received really badly. I've never had that bone in my body. Yeah.
STYNES: Far out, I've got goosebumps thinking about your grandma.
KWEEN KONG: Oh, she was the one, and her name was Alofa.
STYNES: What’s her name?
KWEEN KONG: Alofa. And Alofa is a Samoan word for love, which is, she was, she's that in all forms, like unconditional love, but tough love. Like that was a strong woman, definitely a rock for all of us, our whole family.
STYNES (Voiceover): Nana saw Kween’s queerness and gathered it into her bosom of unspoken, unconditional acceptance.
KWEEN KONG: When I think back to it now, like I never really understood it because, um, I didn't know what she was saying to me, but I knew I was different and I think rather than me thinking different was wrong because I feel like that's why she would say, “no, you're more”, it's because she knew that the word different in the way that I was receiving it was like that something was wrong with me, you know, so she's like, “no, no, no, you're more”, you know, you are more and I am way, way more.
So I think it was more to try and reinforce some form of like value in what I was rather than fear and you know, what people think of it. You know, which was definitely what was happening outside, you know, outside the house.
STYNES (Voiceover): Outside the house and back in Tonga, the Fonua family name was connected to the monarchy. Kween's father was accustomed to a certain level of respect. He was kind of a big deal.
But that changed when he moved to New Zealand, where Pacific Islanders often experienced racism.
KWEEN KONG: They were just treated like absolute mud. The media was sort of pushing that where we came from was densely populated by Pacific Islanders and Maori people. It was like a drain on the economy because, you know, the perception was that we were having way too many kids than we could afford. And like, you either go into the rugby field or you work in a factory, which was the thing my dad never wanted us to become.
STYNES (Voiceover): A limiting stereotype: you’re either a well-paid rugby star, or you work in a factory.
As it happened, young Thomas was a talented rugby player. At 16, he was on track to play for the New Zealand Men's Under-19's rugby team, which is seen as a crucial first step towards playing for the All Blacks.
This was a huge source of pride for his dad. It was also the birthplace of what would eventually become Thomas’s drag name.
(Sounds of a rugby game)
KWEEN KONG: So the name Kween Kong comes from the rugby field again, because I was very tough, you know, and also I was just very feminine. So it was initially an insult, but I loved it. And the boys in my team loved it too.
(Playful music)
Cause it's like the name just captured everything that I was really. Feminine, but also a massive gorilla (laughs), and so unafraid. Yeah.
STYNES (Voiceover): This young Kween saw another pathway outside of the binary of rugby or factory. He wanted to be a dancer.
KWEEN KONG: So to be a dancer, my dad was just like. The fuck? Like, what?! Where was this in the like, in in the plan? Absolutely not. Like, you know-
STYNES: (Laughs) It's not in the guidebook?!
KWEEN KONG: Yeah. Not in the guidebook. What do I do? Because he's going, there's so many Islanders everywhere in rugby, you're going to make a good career, you make good money, you know, you'd be respected.
And so, everything that we were raised under was based on his fear of the world.
The thing that he was always worried about was people are going to laugh at you. They're gonna laugh at you. Are you ready to be made fun of, you know? “Can you imagine an Islander wearing tights?”
And I'm like, yeah, like that's hot. (Laughs) Like I want to wear tights, I want to show off my thighs. You know I always had this like arrogance inside me when I was younger that by the time I was at that point I just went no, I deserve to do this, and I want to do this, I've got the support of all of the women in my family, and those women are the ones that taught me how to be a man, you know, in the best way.
STYNES: How did your dad react when you said you weren't going to join the rugby team?
KWEEN KONG: He just stopped talking to me. Yeah, I lost touch with my father for about two, three years because I wanted to pursue a career in the arts.
STYNES (Voiceover): She auditioned, and Kween was offered a 2-year apprenticeship at Black Grace, one of New Zealand's leading contemporary dance companies. At 16, Kween was the youngest person to join the dance company and her sister, and freshly divorced Mum stepped up to support her.
KWEEN KONG: My little sister dropped out of school so that she could help my mom support us so that I could go and become a full time artist, and they did that without even consulting me. They just decided. My sister was really young. She's three years younger than me. She just went, because it was very rare for anyone like us, where we came from, to get an opportunity like that at that time.
STYNES (Voiceover): Make sure you stay til the end of this episode because you’re going to hear what became of Kween’s heroic little sister.
(Gentle uplifting music)
Supported by the women in her life, Kween's dance career took off. She toured Europe, Asia, North America, and Canada. Kween took up a position as a faculty member at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada, and later joined the Australian Dance Theatre in 2015. But as one of only a few dancers of Samoan and Tongan descent in contemporary dance, Kween found herself always having to educate.
(Music fades)
STYNES: You said that in the dance environment, there weren't many people that looked like you. What do you mean? Do you mean big and strong?
KWEEN KONG: Brown. Yea, oh my God like, especially in contemporary dance. Like, that-
STYNES: So is it all skinny white people?
KWEEN KONG: Definitely, you know, I think. In many spaces, I was always the first, first Pacific Islander, first brown person, person of colour.
STYNES: What you're saying is there was nobody like you ahead of you forging the path.
KWEEN KONG: At all.
STYNES: Ever.
KWEEN KONG: Yeah, no blueprint at all.
STYNES: Can you think of any examples of when you had to call things out?
KWEEN KONG: Oh, yes. So for example, like, um, being made to have my hair dreaded, um, wearing like a costume that was very indicative of my traditional costuming, the style of dancing being very like, YouTubing the haka and then going, oh, I've got this idea of this really primitive, like chanting that will be really like quite like confronting for the audience.
Would love for you to task this. Why don't you do it? Like, just things like this that are very like on the nose and wanting to allude at something because of my skin colour and not necessarily doing the education behind it to know what the protocol is to use that kind of material, if that makes sense.
STYNES: Well, it sounds a bit disrespectful.
KWEEN KONG: So disrespectful and just, well, just exoticising, you know, and ticking boxes.
And so there was always a lot of responsibility walking in being the representation of what that means, you know, and being the person creating that space so that people coming up under me could have opportunities like that.
You know, bringing up those conversations, they were never received and never heard until Black Lives Matter happened. And by that point I had enough of the industry and decided to retire from dancing.
STYNES (Voiceover): I should point out that the person with the dance career was Thomas, dancing as a man. At this stage, Kween was waiting to emerge.
KWEEN KONG: Kween's always been a part of me, but I don't think I was ever really introduced to her until I started doing drag… once I started putting on makeup and like hair, it was the first time I saw what my strength looks like, which is inherently like divine femininity. And that was something that I struggled with coming up. Um, especially in my household, She's always been a part of like my artistry because I'm a professional dancer, but even within the arts, I felt really limited because I was a male dancer doing male roles. I think Kween was always a part of me that I just ignored for the longest period of time.
STYNES (Voiceover): Here’s how Kween finally unleashed that energy.
(Club music)
KWEEN KONG: So it was a Halloween variety show. And up to that point, me and my, one of my best friends in the company, we would go to the one gay bar in Adelaide pretty much every weekend and just judge the drag queens really relentlessly. Like, “Oh my God, why are they, why don't they do anything?” They’re some of the most beautiful looking drag queens still to this day, but we were just very much in the toxic mindset of a drag race fan of knowing everything as an armchair expert of the show.
STYNES: But also you're a fantastic dancer, and you have that actual training.
KWEEN KONG: Absolutely.
STYNES: That, that, I mean, you've got a little bit of credibility.
KWEEN KONG: Yeah, absolutely. So we're looking at it going. “Oh, I could do that. I could do that.” And we have been saying that for about two three years. I could do that. And to the point where my best friend was like, there's a variety show. I'm going to sign us up and we're going to finally do drag and I was like...
(Silence)
I don't think we can do it.
(Laughs) Like, what are people going to think? Oh my God. Cause it was also really confronting cause I'm physically, I'm like, you know, people say I'm gorgeous as a man.
But I, I was always really scared of people looking at me like as like, like at my femininity, cause I used to think that it was really off putting. Um, and so the idea of getting into drag was just. Massive.
(Upbeat music)
KWEEN KONG: We didn't learn how to do our makeup because we thought we were amazing and so we literally tried to do our makeup on the day, we could not have gone more wrong.
It took about three hours, we had like Maybelline and Max Factor from the chemist, which is like Covergirl doesn't cover boy, listen. (Laughs) At all.
We looked like, we thought we looked like Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, we looked like their fathers. Um.
But I just remember, like, looking at myself, I had bought this brand new wig, it was like a Beyonce shake and go wig. I had a horrible pair of lashes on, like, a corset on, and I remember looking at myself in the mirror and just, like, feeling gorgeous, and also just going, I can't leave the house. I'm so scared, people are going to judge me, that was the biggest thing, like, yeah, and so meeting her for the first time, I was just like, well, there's no turning back.
STYNES (Voiceover): It is impossible to overstate the courage it took to get herself up on that stage.
(Sounds of bar chatter)
KWEEN KONG: I remember feeling so nervous about performing, even though there was only like five people in the audience — performing and just feeling absolutely like myself and super overwhelmed at how I was feeling.
And being seen, you know, in that kind of way was really confronting.
It was probably the best performance I think I'd ever felt or done, you know, in my whole career by that point. So I wanted to do it again and I caught the itch.
And from that point I was practising my makeup every day and I didn't even think about drag race as an option I just was addicted to the feeling like feeling like whole, you know and feeling like as an artist I was like oh my god, I have this whole other side to my toolkit that I just like left unutilised like there's magic here I need to figure out what it is.
STYNES: Do you feel that you embody a different sort of body?
KWEEN KONG: Yeah. Well, like, I think the thing is, I've still got the same body, but it's like, you know, the thing about the, the male body that is like, again, I can lead with power. That's like all superficial muscle and just like solid, you know, intimidating physical flesh. I think the thing about drag, once I'm in that character, people see me in a different light and it's softer, you know, which is a lot more welcoming.
And I think the power is a lot more, um, nurturing. I don't know. There's, there’s a lot more responsibility for this space that I share with people, you know, and making sure that I welcome people first and that they feel safe with me. I think that's the power that I have and that I prefer to have rather than out of drag, which I don't necessarily get the same sort of reception, especially with people that don't know me.
You know what I mean? I still get people following me into the supermarket, checking my bags. Like, you know, the other day I went into, into duty free to buy a little Versace necklace for a friend of mine and was absolutely berated by the person behind the counter going, “Do you know how much that costs?”
Like that shit still happens. And I was like, “Yeah, I'll take two.” Like- “And your mom. Is a hoe,” (laughs) but, um, yeah, but like, it's like, when I'm in drag, that kind of stuff just never happens, you know, like. I don't necessarily see what people see, you know, when I'm in drag, but I feel it when I'm out of drag.
(Celestial music)
STYNES (Voiceover): What I’m understanding is that in drag, this divine feminine energy that is allowed to be expressed is one that gathers people in, nurtures, welcomes, and makes people feel safe.
Is it only natural, then, that from feminine energy, a form of motherhood should flow…?
A drag “house” if you don’t know, is a form of mentorship where the older drag performer acts as a “mother” guide and mentor to the younger “children” of the house.
KWEEN KONG: I run a drag house called the Haus of Kong where I've got a bunch of drag kids and you know people always ask me because it is really tiresome work because you are acting as a mother to some of these kids who don't know how to receive love or receive like accountability or be held responsible for things.
When I was growing up, like, you know, I had lots of friends that were kicked out of home or just beaten relentlessly until they, you know, try to beat the gay away or the trans away. And so when I moved to South Australia, like when I started performing, ‘cause I was never really embraced by the scene there, I had to create my own events.
And so, people would come to my shows and naturally these kids that were really displaced, who might have been kicked out of home would just come and flock to the show because it was safe, it was a free show, they could watch drag, like live around a community that's really positive and naturally I'd just stick around and, you know, I'd notice them after time and be like, “What's your story? What have you been doing?”
You know, most of these kids are going through you know, living on the street or through sex work, because it's the only kind of resources that they had. It was really an opportunity for me to create a community or be a part of a community that could help, yeah, these kids.
(Gentle music)
STYNES (Voiceover): These kids are often misfits, outside of binaries of gender, outcast sometimes into poverty — and the radical acceptance found within a drag house or the drag scene, can be the first stepping stone toward belonging.
KWEEN KONG: It's just teaching them how to, how to contribute, you know, and then give back. You know, I used to remember some of my early kids coming in, getting their first paychecks and then seeing them pay tax and like what those kinds of little things actually meant to them because they're doing them for themselves, you know, and seeing them realise, that they're capable, that they, are worthy and that anything that they want, they can get,
I've gotten four of my kids through uni, lots of them have stable jobs. I just know that like I would be nothing without people that helped me be what I am but unless they have that kind of positive reinforcement or someone, you know, being like the Nana Alofa version of like, you know, cussing someone out for being a fuckwit.
So if I can make an impact on those 38 kids’ lives, knowing that they'll probably go out and make their own drag houses, like, inevitably we're going to see a better community. And so that's the kind of way that I, I view it and want to do things. Yeah.
STYNES: That's so cool. So that's you being the Nana. And so do they ever feedback to you about how their lives have changed because of your influence?
KWEEN KONG: Oh my God, one of my, um, first drag kids was literally about to graduate and she's going to be about to become a nurse. You know, and that one kid, she was probably one of my first kids and she was kicked out of home at 16.
Um, started doing drag, with me and was really fucking great. She was like an assassin of my house, but I was really clear that drag was like the way that she was finding herself. And because I had my own epiphany, when I got into drag, I was really aware of the impact that drag could have on these kids and majority of the kids aren't drag performers.
You know, they start in drag and it sort of helps them to go, “Oh my god, you know, I'm trans or like, I actually don't want to perform. I want to be this.” You know, it's just a way for them to sort of get out of themselves to notice, you know, what they might want to do.
She had a couple of interactions with in Adelaide, like the, in terms of sex work with the trans community, it's very unsafe anywhere, but, you know, majority of the clientele was like bikies and like people that are, you know, drug fucked and absolutely, you know, on the way out.
So there was a couple of situations with my daughter that she was just roughed up really badly and this is before the age of like 19. She was very young, you know, the last situation I sat with her and I was just like we can't do this anymore. You know, it's not safe. I'm not always going to be here.
I took her to coffee and we're sitting on a place in Rundle Street. And I said, what do you want to do? Like what is it that you want to do? Because you can't be doing sex work. Yes, you're making money but it's not a given and it's you're going to continue to sort of find yourself in these situations and she went, “I want to do injectables.” And I went, okay, love that.
STYNES (Voiceover): Yep — injectables, as in cosmetic fillers, plumpers and botox.
KWEEN KONG: I was like, well, maybe you could be my injectables nurse. But I was like, in order to do that, you have to go and get a nursing degree, you know? And she literally said to me, “okay, well, I'm going to get a nursing degree and I'm going to own one of these shops. And, open up my own clinic.”
And so she graduates this year. Yeah, after four and a half years, five years of studying, yeah.
STYNES: Great. You've got free botox.
KWEEN KONG: That's what I said to her, I was like, well, look, you owe mama, like you need to be, I want filler, like, and the threads, I want to be pulled up, I want to be nipped so tight that if I sneeze, my forehead would combust, so. (Laughs)
(Gentle music)
STYNES (Voiceover): Committed to giving back, Kween got a Master's degree in leadership, absorbing research that she could adopt in the Haus of Kong. She was particularly interested in lateral leadership, which is a theory of leading and supporting community from a place of inclusion, equal footing, and arriving at decisions together. Basically light years away from phalluses of power built on hierarchy, dominance and derision.
When the popular TV show RuPaul's Drag Race started casting their Down Under spin-off, Kween Kong was not a keen Kween.
(Music fades)
KWEEN KONG: I never wanted to do Drag Race. Like I think there was a, there was always a calling and people had asked for me to do it. ‘Cause I think people, most people know me for my over the top performances. Like I am like the dancing queen of Australia and New Zealand, um, humbly. Um, but uh, the reason why I felt drawn to going on the show after watching season one and seeing how poorly production dealt with race and especially with all the controversy that happened.
STYNES (Voiceover): Kween had concerns about the lack of rigour on the show.
KWEEN KONG: Like there was no audition process and minimal screening on what the queens had done outside of the show.
And one of the contestants had a history of not only just doing blackface, but mimicking and making fun of lots of POC communities. You know, she basically went to every fucking continent, like with makeup, you know, painted herself up. And lots of these acts were to mock these, you know, these cultures and the way that they brought it up on the show. Obviously it's like a delicate situation with nuance.
But the thing is, it's like by that point, by the point in the season that they brought it up, they had eliminated all the queens of colour, which was only two on the season, and so the way that they sort of played it out was like, okay, um, this has happened.
You've done blackface. I feel like we need to do and give an exercise to the community to, you know, exercise remorse. And I think remorse is important, but I also think it's really important to hold people accountable, you know, and for the person that made, the mistakes that they made, um, to take the full brunt of what happened.
And I don't believe in cancel culture, but I also believe that there is a way to, um, to come back from a situation like that you know. And after seeing how they handled that I was like, oh I need to go into the ring like and I need to go in there and like, make sure, and see what's wrong with the system before I sit there and cancel it like everybody else, I need to see what's happening behind the cameras, see what the team looks like, you know, and the conversations around race.
I want to make sure that the nuance is there and that they're hearing about it from people that actually have the lived experience rather than a romanticised version from a white lens for white people.
STYNES (Voiceover): The thing with Drag Race is that you don’t get to veto the edits, and you have to show yourself out of drag.
KWEEN KONG: I think generally speaking, I am a private person like naturally, I like to sort of keep things to myself you know I think especially like when you're on a TV show like that which is like puts you under a lens already and you never know what the edits gonna be but I think yeah, being in that sort of space was really confronting knowing that people are going to see me outside of drag. ‘Cause I used to love the anonymity, being able to do the gig, get out of drag, and then no one would know that it was me that was on stage.
STYNES: You could be in the same club.
KWEEN KONG: Literally. And no one would know. So I could go out and, you know, just have fun.
Whereas I knew that I was removing that sort of right. I was giving that up to go on the show. So going in there, I had the purpose and pure purpose to go and make sure that if there was conversations around race, that I was going to make sure that I not only led them, but led by example so that that the queens coming up under me would have a space to be heard in the next season.
(Upbeat music)
STYNES (Voiceover): Kween stepped up, allowing herself to be seen in ways she wouldn’t have chosen.
The payoff is that she's had an impact on the subsequent seasons of Drag Race Down Under.
KWEEN KONG: This season they've got seven queens of colour, which is great. A couple of people of colour in the editing room, which means that already they're going to be able to handle the storylines that these queens bring because they understand what these people are talking about and even if they don't they'll have a network of people that they can go, this person from this background brought up this. Do you know anything about it? Like how can we honour, you know, those conversations are so important to editing reality TV, which is not very reality you know based — it's just TV.
STYNES (Voiceover): Kween was a runner up in her season of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under. She has been super busy ever since.
But success doesn't automatically mean acceptance. Her relationship with her father is still strained.
(Music fades)
KWEEN KONG: You know, the older my father got, my grandfather got all of these big, strong, looking men, the older they got, the more vulnerable they become.
And the thing about that vulnerability was that was the thing that they never embraced growing up. Like it was always “toughen that one up” you know, cause I was always so feminine and also really soft by nature.
So the irony of my father is like, you know, I pay his mortgage, you know, and it's, it's this wig and it's this, these nails and this costume that pays for that fucking mortgage.
And every now and then, if he acts out those lights don't get paid for about a month (laughs) and he sits in the dark until he apologises. So like, I mean, I think he's definitely seen the success that I've accumulated over my years as an artist, as a drag queen, um, he sees it, but he doesn't see it. And that's fine.
You know? And I think within our Pacific community, there's so many hangups. They're like this thing of he's, but he's your father. And I'm like, yeah, but he's fucking toxic. Like, you know, why would I, enable myself to be triggered or continue to put myself in situations that push me back like 20 years. Whenever I have a conversation, it's like, I'm happy with the relationship I have with him.
I think generally speaking, I've just gone, I've made peace with the fact that he will never be able to let go of his own fear and just embrace me as his son.
(Upbeat music)
STYNES (Voiceover): Or daughter. Or Kween! A beautiful idea to end on: that we have to lay down our own weapons, our cudgels of fear, in order to embrace and accept those we love. And if they won’t love us for who we are? They shall shiver in dark, unlit rooms with empty fridges that do not hum.
(Music fades)
KWEEN KONG: I come from like a family of migrants. So it's like, you know, I have a mentality that is like, you know, I need to provide for the family, but I also want, want to be, I don't want to be working like this forever.
And I'm conscious that my, this lifestyle as a drag queen is only going to be very limited to what I can do ‘cause I'm a performer. No one wants to come to a drag, to a Kween Kong show and see me do a ballad, like (laughs), they want to see me throw myself around like a dickhead so, I don't know the older I get the more I'm like, “my knees are getting sore so let's get those 108 shows in for the next three more years and then retire.”
(Gentle music)
STYNES (Voiceover): So I promised you that we'd find out what happened to Kween’s sister — who gave up school to work and support Kween’s career all those years ago?.
KWEEN KONG: My sister's got two babies who are like my kids, but they were living in New Zealand for ever. I hadn't lived with my family since 16, I moved out of home. So after Drag Race, I moved them over and we got a house out in Coburg in Melbourne. And so, we're living under the same household and we're raising the kids together and, you know, we're able to be a family and under our own terms.
And, you know, it's an opportunity for me to help my sister realise what she wants to do and you know, she got a really good job at the airport and they're on holiday at the moment this week. They've gone to Cairns for the weekend, you know, for a few days. The kids are in the pool. I'm like, we're just living a life that we deserve and, you know, thriving, you know, based on all the sacrifices we've made, we're not struggling anymore.
We're very happy and we deserve to be.
STYNES (Voiceover): It’s this kind of energy I am hoping to bring into 2024. You have imposter syndrome? Nuh-uh.
“I’m very happy and I deserve to be.”
For Kween Kong, for all of us, a way towards happiness is by giving, by returning power to community.
KWEEN KONG: I just know that by the time I'm ready to put up my dancing shoes, my high heels, I'm going to feel very content about, all the things that I've done and, um, the impact that I've kind of made and I see it in my niece and my nephew. I think there's something about having kids in your family that brings a new love into your life, you know. I've always wanted to have my own kids, but in some ways I've had my drag kids, you know, and now I've got, you know, nieces and nephews who are just like, the reminder of why I get up and do what I do.
STYNES (Voiceover): And I’ve seen it myself. The new generation of kids are so much less fixated on policing gender. They, don’t care.
(Theme music fades in)
KWEEN KONG: Me and my niece, we, we do self care together. So we always get our nails done together. Um, I always do my nephew's hair. Like we just have little rituals and knowing that they don't look at this as confronting, they look at Kween Kong as like a superhero, Like literally they just. Openly embrace everything. It's the thing that I go, you know what, things might've been hard, but it's not going to be hard for them. And that's good. That's good enough for me.
(Theme music)
STYNES (Voiceover): This has been SEEN. If you loved Kween’s episode, make sure you like and share this episode, and don’t forget to follow because the upcoming stories are just as excellent.
This podcast is hosted by me, Yumi Stynes, produced by Audiocraft in collaboration with SBS.
Season 2 of SEEN was produced by Mandy Yuan and Laura Brierley Newton. Sound design and mix is done by Ravi Gupta, and Executive Producer is Kate Montague.
The SBS team are Caroline Gates, Joel Supple, Max Gosford and Micky Grossman.
Our podcast artwork is created by Evi-O Studios.
And music is by Yeo.
SEEN's original concept was by Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn.
(Theme music fades)
