At night, Miss Toto is a fierce, femme, muscular drag queen who plays in indicates throughout Miami. During the day, he’s called Rock Evans, a masculine personal instructor, and bodybuilder who competes in National Physique Committee competitions. Both have their own followings online, so rather than pick one or the other, he decided to use his effect on assignment stereotypes in both worlds. At first, these roles would possibly seem starkly extraordinary. But what he soon realized changed into that bodybuilding and drag have a huge overlap. “Bodybuilding is actually dragged for directly people’s purpose. It’s all about the display,” he said. Both involve a super deal of bodily education, grooming, practice session, and performance.
Evans recognized that a number of the hyper-masculine guys in the bodybuilding international might hesitate to look it that manner. But to them, he stated, “I want you knew which you are doing a little of the most stereotypical feminine things to get ready for this bodybuilding show, to be on stage and be judged by human beings you don’t recognize in a tiny little shimmery Speedo.” Evans grew up in Maryland, which as a kid, his mother and father have been supportive of his sexuality. They instructed him that they widely wide-spread him as he changed into, giving him a secure haven at domestic. Other gay friends of his, with less accepting households, frequently got here to his residence to effortlessly be themselves without repercussions.
After he came to Miami for grad school, Evans changed into delivered to both worlds he prospers nowadays. His access to pull befell from going to nearby parties at bars recommended loose liquids for folks who dressed up in a non-heteronormative manner. There, the drag queens he befriended encouraged him to drag himself, and he started to create the character of Miss Toto. It becomes thru Miss Toto that he reconsidered his early stories in Maryland. Despite his circle of relatives’ attractiveness of his sexuality while he changed into developing up, “the idea and concept of nonbinary and gender non-conforming weren’t matters.
It became best you have been cis. Otherwise, you were trans.” By undergoing the transformative method from his daylight presentation as masculine to the “femme strong being” of Miss Toto, Evans found out his identification as gender non-conforming. At the same time he changed into growing Miss Toto, Evans commenced operating at a local gym for extra money and discovered himself falling in love with fitness and personal training. In those early days, he would be going out along with his drag queen pals till 3 a.M., heading to the gymnasium to open up at five or 6 a.M.
“Looking back on that, I’m like, I certainly cherished it,” he said. “Those had been the instances that I don’t forget the most about coming up within the drag scene in Miami, ’motive we have been all collectively, we have had a lot a laugh … ” Today he continues a website for his private schooling paintings and dual social media accounts for his lives as Rock Evans and Miss Toto. In his healthy existence, he desires to be the maximum outstanding gender non-conforming bodybuilder to go seasoned. In the drag global, he desires to use Miss Toto to open audiences’ minds as much as all the special iterations of drag queens that exist.
Though appearing as a femme drag queen with muscle tissues, he hopes to expose that drag queens can present in various approaches. “There are hairy queens; there are bearded queens, there are kings which are cis male, trans male,” he said. By being outspoken approximately his personal stories, Evans has helped many of his fanatics locate the confidence to specific their very own identities. He regularly gets messages from enthusiasts who have popped out to their dad and mom after seeing him perform or listening to his podcast, where he discusses LGBTQ+ issues with buddies.
Evans admitted that the warm reception from audiences adds another layer to the personal validation that includes acting onstage. “Originally, I changed into doing this for me,” Evans stated. “I’m having amusing; this is how I’m expressing myself, whatever. After speakme to human beings, they’re like, ‘You’ve introduced so much joy to me simply thru looking at your indicates, and I can inform which you adore it, so I then, in turn, find it irresistible.’ That makes it even higher. It brings it full circle.”
