8 FEBRUARY 12-18, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Black Girl Magic COCO BARDOT IS GEARING UP FOR ONE OF HER BUSIEST MONTHS OF THE YEAR. BY CLEO MIRZA For drag queen Coco Bardot, this year’s Black History Month started early. “My fi rst event was on the 29th, because we were like, ‘Let’s just go ahead and start it early!’ We’re gonna co-opt January,” she says of her extended cel- ebration. “Literally every Thursday through Sunday is fi lled up.” Bardot has been a drag entertainer for the past thirteen years, and has made a name for herself with her unique brand of Black Girl Magic: theater geek meets video vixen, with an extra helping of attitude and a dazzling (if often mischievous) smile. Originally from Ohio, she’s lived all over Colorado and currently resides in Denver. “I visited here a bunch as a kid, and I moved here like, a month after high school, because Ohio was just not the tea,” says Bardot. “I lived in Canon City for about two years. My aunt and her wife live in Canon City, so I was getting, I guess I’d call it my ‘gay training’ from my aunts, without knowing I was getting it.” She was drawn to the performing arts because of her musical theater background, and that eventually led her to drag. “I’ve al- ways kind of gravitated towards theater, and I happened to fi nd Club Q when I moved to the Springs,” she says of the Colorado Springs LG- BTQIA+ bar that closed following the tragic mass shooting that took place there in 2022. That bar is where Coco Bardot came to life. But she didn’t start out as Coco Bardot; she started as Janet Weiss, the wide-eyed protagonist of cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. “I started doing Rocky Horror shadow cast, actually,” she recalls. “Honestly, the fi rst time I saw [Rocky Horror], I was like, ‘I don’t get the hype.’ Then I went to a shadow cast, and it was life-changing for me. I was like, ‘I want to do that.’ So my shy little self auditioned for Janet and got Janet. I did that for two or three years before I started doing drag.” During her shadow cast shows, often hosted by Club Q, other performers in the audience took notice of Bardot’s natural talent for the stage. “People were like, ‘Hey, you’re pretty good, you should try drag.’ I put the wig on, and here I am,” Bardot says. Veteran drag queen Porsha Demarco Douglas, who has raised numerous Colorado drag performers, was like a drag mother to Bardot; she also got support from burlesque dancer and producer Mr. Valdez. “[Porsha] was like the resident house drag mom at Club Q, and we were roommates for a little bit,” Bardot recalls. “I was lip syncing to a song, and she was like, ‘You should put a wig on and do this!’ So she was part of it, and Mr. Valdez, who is a producer down in the Springs.” Bardot’s stage name came from the sex symbol who helped her realize her own queerness: the legendary Pam Grier. “My queer awakening was watching Coffy with Pam Grier, and then Foxy Brown and Jackie Brown. Pam Grier has been my heart and my gayness since I can remember. So I loved the movie Coffy, but I thought ‘Coco’ was a little bit sweeter,” she says. “Bardot” comes from legendary French starlet Brigitte Bardot. “I’m Haitian on my dad’s side, so I liked the French thing, and I thought ‘Bardot’ sounded really fancy.” Unfortunately, the recently departed original Bardot turned out to be racist, mi- sogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic and generally problematic, so now the surname is more of a reclamation than a tribute. “Someone brought up, ‘Hey, are you going to change your name?’ No. I found out years ago, maybe a year or two after I started drag, and I was like, ‘Oh well.’ She has no correlation to me,” this Bardot declares. “Brigette Bardot is a piece of shit, and Coco Bardot is better, so it’s like a reclamation for all my queer people and brown people that she hated. I’m taking it and making a profi t off of it!” Equally inspired by old Hollywood lead- ing ladies, clownish camp and contemporary recording artists, Bardot’s drag embodies ev- erything she desired and desired to be when she was growing up. “I always think back to the bio that I use professionally, which is like, ‘Coco Bardot is a mixture of Baby Tate meets Mae West, with a little bit of clown girl mixed in,’” she says, referencing sex-positive queer singer and rapper Baby Tate. From Grier to cartoon characters (Bardot is also a cosplay queen and has recreated many iconic Black fi gures for her “Black Girl Magic” tribute series), Bardot’s biggest infl uences are other empowered Black women. “I just want Coco to be every vivacious, hip-swinging woman that I ever envied as a kid, every beautiful, busty soul singer. Jill Scott is a huge infl u- ence, too. Her sexuality and sensuality just do it for me. Coco is defi nitely an amalgama- tion of all that, on top of like, the emo art girl from 2009.” When Bardot fi rst started performing, many people she encountered were uncom- fortable with the idea of a cisgender woman doing drag. Rather than recognizing that drag is more than just men wearing dresses, naysayers tried to push Bardot towards more traditional avenues for female entertainers, like burlesque. “Back in the olden days of 2012, when I started drag as a female en- tertainer, I got a lot of pushback,” reveals Bardot. “It was cute until they realized I wasn’t going to take my clothes off, I wasn’t a gogo [dancer], and I wasn’t performing for the male gaze.” Or, defaulting to the narrow idea of drag as gender-swapping, they encouraged her to perform as a drag king instead: “People tried to make me be a boy in drag, and I’ve done king drag, and it’s terrible. Don’t ever ask me about Coco’s twin brother, Cocaine. That little gay boy is out there ruining lives!” Bardot never took to male drag, but she did dip her toe into burlesque. “I defi nitely embraced burlesque and started to learn from the art more so back in 2020 when the bars started to reopen,” she says. “I was invited to be a ‘variety performer’ in a bur- lesque show, and I took it as a mission to be like, ‘Let’s just try it.’” She ultimately brought elements of drag into her burlesque, and elements of bur- lesque into her drag, and she’s won multiple awards for both art forms. “Usually when I’m booked in burlesque shows, I’m the ‘variety entertainer.’ Somebody who’s not just going to do the strip tease, and bring a little something extra, like a lip sync or a live singer. So I’m usually considered more ‘variety’ when I do burlesque shows,” she explains. “When I’m booked for drag, I go into burlesque because I know it makes money. I know that despite what the crowd looks like, or who I interact with, they’re gonna live when I start taking my clothes off. It’s not just like a coat reveal; it’s a whole act with a story. Burlesque defi nitely makes me tell a story more with my drag.” Even seasoned audiences may have never seen a drag performer quite like Bardot, but her presence signals a shift away from the male-centered attitude that has too often ruled over queer nightlife. “Now I can com- fortably and confi dently say I’m perform- ing for the sapphic gaze, and the gay boys and everyone else are just there to give me money,” says Bardot with a laugh. As a pansexual Black woman, Bardot is acutely aware that she represents more than just herself every time she sets foot on stage. “There are so many layers of it, really. I’m not only performing for myself when I perform in drag. I’m there to be part of the show, and kiki with my castmates, and make money to pay bills, and get that little itch of serotonin and bring my art out there, but I’m also well aware that as a female Black drag queen – a queer female Black drag queen, because if we’re women, they always think we’re straight – I am a representative of what that looks like,” she confi rms. “I’m well aware of the impact I have with whatever I do on stage, just because of how I identify.” As one of the most recognized and re- spected Black drag entertainers in the city, Bardot’s February calendar is packed. She’s also producing several of her own events this month, particularly with The Pearl, the sapphic-focused bar CULTURE continued on page 10 KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS Denver drag queen Coco Bardot started Black History Month in January this year. Coco Bardot is one of Porsha DeMarco- Douglas’s many drag children. BRIAN DEGENFELDER JAY CUPCAKE PHOTOGRAPHY
