At night, Miss Toto is a fierce, femme-muscular drag queen in shows throughout Miami. He’s referred to as Rock Evans, a masculine personal teacher and bodybuilder who competes in National Physique Committee competitions during the day. Both have their own followings online, so in preference to select one of the alternatives, he decided to apply his influence to task stereotypes in each world. At first, these two roles may appear starkly distinct. But what he soon found out changed that bodybuilding and drag have a big overlap. “Bodybuilding is dragged for directly human beings ’cause it’s all approximately the show,” he said.
Both contain exquisite physical education, grooming, practice sessions, and overall performance. Evans diagnosed that many hyper-masculine men within the bodybuilding global might hesitate to peer it in that manner. But to them, he said, “I wish you knew that you are doing a little of the most stereotypical female things to get equipped for this bodybuilding display, to be on stage and be judged with the aid of human beings you don’t recognize in a tiny little shimmery Speedo.”
Evans grew up in Maryland, wherein, as a kid, his dad and mom were supportive of his sexuality. They advised him that they regularly took him as he was, giving him a secure haven at home. Other gay friends of his, with less accepting households, got periodically here to his house to quite be themselves without repercussions. After he arrived in Miami for grad college, Evans was brought to both worlds he flour and riches today. His entry pulled befell from attending local bar parties, which endorsed free beverages for folks who dressed up non-heteronormatively. There, the drag queens he befriended advocated for him to drag himself, and he began creating Miss Toto’s individual.
It was through Miss Toto that he reconsidered his early stories in Maryland. Despite his family’s popularity of his sexuality while he was growing up, “the concept and concept of nonbinary and gender non-conforming weren’t things. It changed into best you were cis. Otherwise, you had been trans.” By presenting the transformative method from his daylight presentation as masculine to the “femme robust being” of Miss Toto, Evans realized his identification as gender non-conforming.
At the same time he became Miss Toto, Evans started running at a nearby fitness center for extra money and observed himself falling in love with fitness and private training. In those early days, he would go out with his drag queen friends until three a.m. and then head to the gym to open up at five or six a.m.
“Looking back on that, I’m like, I loved it,” he said. “Those were the times that I keep in mind the most about arising within the drag scene in Miami,’ the reason we have been all collectively, we were having so much amusing …”
Today, he maintains an internet site for his non-public training paintings and dual social media accounts for his life as Rock Evans and Miss Toto. In his fitness lifestyle, he wants to be the most outstanding gender non-conforming bodybuilder to go pro. In Drag International, he wants to use Miss Toto to open audiences’ minds as much as all the special iterations of drag queens exist. He hopes to reveal that drag queens can be found in various exceptional methods by acting as a femme drag queens with muscle tissues.
“There are furry queens; there are bearded queens; there are kings which might be cis male, trans male,” he said. By being outspoken about his studies, Evans has helped many fanatics find the confidence to express personal identities explicitly. He regularly gets messages from fanatics who have popped out to their parents after seeing him perform or hearing his podcast in which he discusses LGBTQ+ troubles with friends. Evans admitted that the audience’s nice and cozy reception provides another personal validation layer incorporating acting onstage.
“Originally, I became doing this for myself,” Evans stated. “I’m having fun; that is how I express myself. After speaking to humans, they’re like, ‘You’ve delivered a lot of joy to me just through watching your indicates, and I can inform which you love it, so I then, in flip, love it.’ That makes it even better. It brings it full circle.”
