BK's Ultimate Diva is a Sexy Sadistic Dentist
a Q&A with drag artist Mx. Ology
Hi divas,
It’s Mo aka DJ Gay Panic, and this(!) is The Deviant Dispatch. I’m blogging from my corner of the NYC underground to bring you subcultural musings, scene updates, and queer shit. There will be typos.
If you’re not tapped into the NYC drag scene, the above headline might have caused some alarm. Why are we talking about dentistry? Has the Deviant Dispatch started reporting on medical abuse? Has Mo fallen into an IRL version of Little Shop of Horrors? Allow me to explain.
Ultimate Diva a drag pageant run by veteran diva Janelle No. 5, a queen known for her polished aesthetic and comedy chops. UD’s format is familiar to fans of drag. There are 4 categories: talent, swimwear, impersonation, and evening wear. The prize is $2k. Some of the prospective divas included Tiktok/ Reels star Anania, Atlanta’s Ivy Fischer, and the very-booked Elle LC.
But last Tuesday Mx. Ology, a self-described “gutter-rotted, smart-mouthed clown,” flipped the script and took the crown. “Some folks have already called me the ALTimate diva,” they1 told me over text.
Such an upset does not come out of nowhere. Mx. Ology had already been nominated for a GLAM Award (a sort of oscars for NYCs drag-based nightlife community) and placed second in the Mx. Nobody pageant last year.
A freak beating out the familiar isn’t a new story either. Rupaul’s Drag Race fans remember in 2012 when the spooky queen Sharon Needles beat out the more conventional queens for the crown. Janelle herself has been known to say that “anyone can be a Diva.”
Still, I wanted to take this moment to showcase Mx. Ology, a true original whose talents include sewing, lipsyncing, and a dadaist comedic sense that feels representative of the new generation. Gen Z has gown up in the most chaotic world imaginable, and it’s encouraging to see their art rise to meet today’s unhinged world. Even for people who don’t normally consider themselves fans of drag, Mx. Ology is one to watch.
Not one to hog the spotlight, Mx. Ology took multiple moments in our text convo to shoutout other members of the drag/arts scene whose talents poured into this winning pageant package. In the most extreme case, designer/queen Pinwheel Pinwheel got stuck on an Amtrak train for 11 hours attempting to deliver Mx. Ology’s tooth fairy dress to Brooklyn. Eventually Pinwheel gave up on the failed US public transit system and drove the dress from Buffalo just days before the pageant.
In the following Q+A, I explore the details of Mx. Ology’s package for the 2025 Ultimate Diva competition. Standard journalism caveat: this interview has been edited for length and clarity. It’ll still be too long for most email inboxes (blame the fab photos by Julian Lazaro), so I really encourage you to click into the substack app / view this in your browser for the full experience.
🦷 At the risk of being shady, your style of drag doesn’t strike me as typical for this competition. How did you feel going in? Were you expecting to win?
Totally. I don’t think it’s shady at all, I mean I thought the same thing even from the day I messaged Janelle with interest in competing.
I had been dreaming up the idea of doing a complete dental package first as a joke, but then as I began to imagine each look, I realized it might actually be a really cool and impressive way to showcase myself.
And I can’t stress enough how many friends and chosen family members had a hand in what I presented, more than I’m able to credit in this interview without having a whole separate production credit page. I went in day-of not only surrounded but such intense, true love, but knowing I didn’t have anything to prove because I believed in what I was bringing so completely.
To me, Tuesday night was more about having fun and putting on a great show. I went in expecting to do well– and that in being kind of a wildcard pick, my only job was to deliver. And not to try to distort myself for the sake of “trying to do well” within the format, but to be like “no, there’s no compromising. I can be funny AND sexy. Freaky AND polished. Elegant AND gory.”
And there’s something to be said for a strong, crisp brand. I don’t think you can argue with that.
🦷 Can u describe your number/performance for the talent catagory?
The guiding concept for the number was “bizarre medical fantasia.” For those not at the event, I performed a commercial advertising my dental practice, set to Blondie’s “Call Me” complete with “hot hygienists” and “sexy dancing teeth” that culminated in my giving Janelle No. 5, played by the outstanding Aimee Amour, an erotic root canal. So y’know, another day at the office.
As someone who’s passionate about spoken word lip sync, part of the talent isn’t just the performance itself: it’s the writing, it’s the storytelling, it’s my deep love of Elvira/Mae West style one liners.
The Mugler-inspired doctor coat I wore is a dream collaboration with Ten Yards, something I designed so meticulously to be one of my most practical performance garments (fabric that would resist liquids, deep pockets for prop storage, cotton lining made to look like the inside of a mouth for reveals).
I sewed the under-dress myself and then my friend Oracle, who in addition to serving as a kind of first assistant director on the entire package, did most of the heavy lifting rhinestoning a lot of these pieces (her work stoning the toothpaste bikini I sewed is insane). I really couldn’t have felt hotter. And making my drag mother and sister2 tongue each other was just the cherry on top. Or I guess in this case, the gold filling in the cavity?
🦷 Can you describe your evening dress?
YES! This is probably one of my proudest elements of the package. When bouncing off ideas for this dress, Lindsay Blowhan, Atomic Annie, and I spent a lot of time asking ourselves “okay, instead of something literally and directly on theme, how do we elevate this? How do we make this couture?”
Initially, I wanted to go for a Schiaparelli-inspired kind of “Portrait of Madame X” gown with a built-out hip, and embellished with blue and red veins (a nod to cross-section diagrams of human teeth) but the silhouette looked too similar to the other pieces I was presenting. And gearing up to sew it, it just didn’t feel exciting to me. It didn’t feel dangerous enough. I wanted to appear threatening.
It wasn’t until I was listening to a film podcast breaking down David Cronenberg’s 1996 disasterpiece “Crash” that I started to go “wait omg omg I’m so DUH, anatomy-meets-machinery is the exact type of stark contrast this look demands!” So the dress became way gorier and more severe.
I wanted to change the tone for evening wear because so much of the package already had such a sense of humor, and the escalation to a body horror princess, “mad scientist-type distorted by her creation” story seemed like a ravishing final beat.
Plainly, it felt like such a power bitch move to come out for evening wear in something so shocking. I think it pushes the impression of what beauty and glamour is. To a sicko doctor, she might be thinking about the beauty of the tools she works with and the actual inner workings of the human body as opposed to sequins and furs.
And I’m a ginger diva, so choosing to come out for nearly the first time in hair so starkly different from what I usually wear pushed the transformation even further.
Construction-wise, the “mechanical” half of the dress is entirely hand-stitched, including all the textile manipulation on the surface of the pleather. Stasia is this wickedly talented body horror sculpture artist and made sheets of veiny latex “flesh” textile for me to cut and pattern.
The fleshy side of the dress features a hip abscess I created from latex scraps, and liquid latex-treated yarn “guts” (stoned, mind you!) I did most of the construction of this half of the garment on David Cronenberg’s birthday, which felt like such an interesting, full circle moment. I just kept thinking to myself “I know I’m throwing glue over the top of this and having a really goopy time, but for this to work, it CANNOT look like a craft project.” And I’m so thrilled that it didn’t.
I’m geeking at how the dental mirror on the cigarette holder I carried ended up appearing as a scepter in the crowning photos. I looked disgusting. I felt gorgeous.
Who are we kidding, I also looked gorgeous too.
And it felt wicked cool to realize “wait– I won Ultimate Diva in jewelry from the hardware store and shoes I thrifted on my lunch break and upcycled and a dress I made completely by hand.”
I know that’s an essay, but if my Q&A made anything clear, I’m not known for being succinct.
🦷 What are you planning on doing with the $2k prize money?
Wall to wall shag carpeting in my entire dental office. Next question.
🦷 What are you excited for next?
On a businesswoman level, out of all the really exciting gigs I have coming up (check my Instagram @mx.ology for more), my drag sisterwife Miss Woman and I just hit one year of co-producing our Shark Tank parody show, “Shart Tank” (April 2nd at C’mon Everybody!) and she’s about to put on her one woman lip sync performance of an entire Sex and the City episode this upcoming week, so after each doing our big ones, I think hosting this installment of the show will feel like an epic homecoming for the both of us.
(click the below flyers for the un-cropped view + details)
I really hope this win can continue to kind of close the perceived gap between Brooklyn and Manhattan drag, and “weird” and “pretty” drag, because it’s just like “Weird to who?” “Pretty to who?” I think in this current political moment, we also probably have more important things to worry about, and as queers could maybe stand to unify a little more.
Otherwise, the plan is just to keep perving out and encouraging people to do the same. Stay wretched.
out of drag Mx. Ology is trans masc, and even tho their drag persona is a mad woman scientist, I used the they pronoun cuz I’m talking to the artist behind the character. In fact, Mx. Ology is the first trans masc winner of Ultimate Diva, so let’s celebrate that!
Mx.Ology is talking about Jay Kay and Miss Woman The Woman, both who were in boy drag as “hot hygienists”