There are mothers, and there are Mothers. The former is a role as old as time; the latter you may have heard of only if you’ve seen Paris is Burning or RuPaul’s Drag Race, or follow Pat McGrath on Instagram. To be Mother is one of the highest titles one can earn in the drag scene and beyond, and signals a leader’s place at the head of a drag House (or leader of a pack of any like-minded people). It’s how Tracey “Africa” Norman earned her name.
Norman was a model from Newark, New Jersey, who began working in the fashion industry just when Black models like Pat Cleveland and Bethann Hardison were gaining influence. Her soft, striking features made her particularly suited to beauty campaigns. One of her first breaks came when legendary photographer Irving Penn cast her in a two-day shoot for Vogue Italia. Another came when she modeled for a shade of Clairol’s Born Beautiful hair dye, and her face appeared in drugstores and supply shops nationwide. (She heard hers “was the hottest selling box.”) But every so often, jobs would drop away, and agencies would excuse her, for seemingly no reason at all. She knew the reason: They discovered she was trans. As the ’80s came to a close, and modeling jobs dried up, a friend suggested Norman walk at a drag ball uptown. The grand prize for an elegant evening presentation was $1,000 and Norman needed the money. She didn’t get it—she forgot an evening bag, a major deduction—but she did earn the attention of the House of Africa, which needed a member to walk the high-glamour categories. Then they asked her to be Mother.
Norman is 71 now and has been a mother since childhood. “I’ve always felt like a mother, especially when my mom got me a puppy at seven,” she says. Being Mother was different. “I was treating them [House of Africa members] like they were my real kids.” She would assign categories and style her children. By day, she worked at a peep show near Times Square and then at a shoe store. A 2015 profile in New York Magazine, spotlighting Norman and her Clairol campaign, led to a renaissance in her career. Clairol shot her for another ad campaign and she recently signed a three-year contract at The Muse agency. But a mother always worries: “I’m a little more comfortable now because I get a check, but there hasn’t been a time when I wasn’t afraid of losing a roof over my head and feeding my fur baby,” she adds. “Even as I’m here talking to you, I’m in survival mode.”
Top image: Earrings from Paumé Los Angeles. To get the beauty look: MAC Lustreglass Sheer-Shine Lipstick in Succumb to Plum.