CSD Stendal: Why a 17-year-old dazzles as a drag queen

He is a tender, young man, Johannes Maasch from Osterburg. Anyone who looks at him notices that he is somehow different. Short, dark, wavy hair, fuzz above the upper lip like a boy, but also these soft movements and gestures, more like a girl. And Johannes can be both, namely when he dresses up as a drag queen and becomes the seductive Trixi.

It’s fun to take on a role, says the young man MDR SACHSEN-ANHALT, but of course there’s also a message behind it. Namely that all people should practice more tolerance and let their neighbors be who they are. Some people like to play football, others like to relax in their room, others just like to dress up.

Not everyone around him accepts Johannes’ passion to transform himself into a woman and – for example on the queer Christopher Street Day, or CSD for short, on the weekend in Stendal – to walk in the demonstration in eye-catching clothes, with perfect make-up and to be a little more dazzling than other. At school, Johannes feels like he has to justify himself again and again every day, he says. There are students there who accept his passion. Many of them had a different sexuality themselves. But many classmates are also “incredibly against it.”