Gender fluidity, femininity, and drag

Matthew Nouriel Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media, I'm Sabrina Mirage Naim. With me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass, a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere. Today we're talking with Matthew Nouriel aka the Empress Mizrahi about gender fluidity, gender dysphoria, gender non-binary, and all the ways we need to retrain our brains to deconstruct labels that we are so familiar with.

Kassia Binkowski
Sabrina Matthew grew up in London, England, now lives in Los Angeles, California, and has spent their entire life living with tensions between these cultures: tensions between being a queer child and an Orthodox Jewish school, between the gender non-binary adult experience and the Iranian-Jewish community that they're still a part of. We're reflecting on the impact of all of this and how it's shaped them into who they are today.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And Matthew also talks to us a lot about the drag that they have become so comfortable with as The Empress Mizrahi and not just as a separate identity, but really as one in the same person, and Matthew reflects with us about how we need to be more comfortable with our own personal evolutions in different stages of our lives to not get so married to one phase, to one stage, and that it's healthy and beautiful to evolve into what we feel we we need to grow into.

Kassia Binkowski
Yeah, and I think they challenge us to reflect on the labels and the boxes that we so instinctively put on people that we so instinctively put on our children, when really our only responsibility as parents is to fully love and accept our children unconditionally for exactly who they are. I think above all else, Matthew challenges us to...to reflect on that and to rise to that challenge. It was an eye opening conversation, for sure.

Sabrina Merage Naim
This was a really educational conversation for us. It was personal. It was deep. It was vulnerable, and we really appreciated how Matthew opened up their past and history and thought process. So take a listen.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Hi, Matthew, thank you so much for joining us.

Matthew Nouriel
Hey, Sabrina and Kassia, thank you so much for having me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Absolutely. We have some friends in common, and we both live in the same stomping grounds of the LA area, although that's not where I am right now, but you are, and it's good to have some mutual friends, so I'm excited to kind of dive into your story. And what we'd like to do is [singing] start at the very beginning.

Kassia Binkowski
Oh, keep going. Keep going!

Sabrina Merage Naim
[Laughter] No, I'll spare you. So you were born into an Iranian, Jewish family in England, although your accent does not suggest such, I have to say. Tell us: what was your family life like? What did your parents do? What was it like living in England in your kind of earlier years?

Matthew Nouriel
So it was very interesting. So I don't have the accent because I left when I was 14-years-old and came to Los Angeles. So my experience growing up Jewish and Iranian and queer, as a little queer kid in the UK, was quite challenging one because my parents literally just moved there from Iran maybe six months before I was born. And so they were pretty, you know, they were very Iranian. And their idea of, you know, maintaining my Jewish identity was to put me into an Orthodox, Ashkenazi, Jewish school. So, needless to say, I stuck out like a sore thumb, and I was one of maybe five brown kids.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, so I just want to clarify, though, for the people who are listening because there's so much already to unpack there, which is that you went to an orthodox Ashkenazi school. You were not orthodox in your upbringing. You are also not Ashkenazi. Even though you are Jewish, it was, you know, putting you into a whole other community of individuals who in many other ways you maybe didn't relate to as closely—and queer.

Matthew Nouriel
Correct, very well stated. Yes.

Kassia Binkowski
That’s like a perfect environment for any child to thrive.

All
[laughter]

Matthew Nouriel
Yeah! Yeah. And then add to that the fact that I was very queer, and when you're a little kid, you don't even know what that is; you just know that you're being yourself, and people don't like it. So my parents didn't really know how to handle that. So there was already like, from jump, there was like a lot of things that really sort of set me apart from everybody in my environment. So it was difficult. You know, I was put in therapy from the time I was six-years-old, three times a week, until I was 11-years-old. So all of these kinds of things were very challenging.

Kassia Binkowski
What triggered that, if you don't mind my asking? What was your parents’ impetus for that?

Matthew Nouriel
My mom had discovered therapy, and it sort of became her religion, and, you know—no shade to her—I mean this was her thinking. She thought that this was the answer to everything. So when I was coming home from school being bullied or from being bullied from the neighborhood kids or getting beat up or, you know, crying and not understanding why I couldn't play with a Barbie doll or whatever, the answer to that was, ‘Well, we need to put him in therapy.’ You also have to understand, in the Iranian mindset in the 80s, like, if your kid is gay or if somebody is queer, that's a mental problem, like, that's not normal.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So I want to paint that picture a little bit more because what you what you said about how your parents had come to the UK just a few months before you were born...That in itself was a huge shift in your family because they're immigrants in a new country, a Western civilization that maybe they hadn't had so much exposure to—I'm making some assumptions, but this is kind of the Iranian, Jewish story that a lot of us have experienced in our families—Maybe had to flee during unrest, you know, uproot their entire lives, come to a country that they didn't understand so well, that they maybe didn't speak the language so well. And then this kind of deep seated fear that something is wrong with your son—god forbid—and to put you in therapy, at a young age, with the intention and the hope that, ‘Okay, now things are going to go in the better direction.’ But really, what the end result of that was—for you—was much more damaging than if they had just kind of left you alone and let you be who you are.

Matthew Nouriel
Yeah, and beyond just leaving me alone on... Listen, therapy is great, but nothing can replace basic love of a parent to their child, right? I would have been fine with being bullied. I would have been fine with being, you know, I remember being punched in the face when I was like 11-years-old and being called a ‘poof’ and all of this stuff. It was traumatizing. But I think I would have been okay had my parents, when I went home crying, just hugged me and told me, ‘I love you. There's nothing wrong with you. You're good. We love you. You're going to face these challenges, but it's gonna be okay.’ I never got that. So that was a problem. And I'm not blaming them for anything. They didn't know any better. They genuinely didn't know. They were dumbfounded

Kassia Binkowski
We talk about that a lot. I mean, we talked about, you know, how influential–sometimes for better, sometimes for worse—parents can be, but how it's, you know, almost always well-intended, right? Everybody wants the best for their child, and everybody's doing the best that they can with what they've got and what they know.

Matthew Nouriel
Yeah. I think-

Sabrina Merage Naim
-Yeah, but we also talk about how sometimes the best intentions of the parents can be the most damaging results for their kids and how challenging that is, and also, I have to say, Matthew, something that we've spoken about with other things is how sometimes not knowing better isn't enough of an excuse. Right? It's tough to sit with that, but in some cases, that's just true.

Matthew Nouriel
I would say in every case that that's true.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Okay.

Matthew Nouriel
Because for me, when I say they didn't know any better, I'm kind of making excuses for them. My mom's passed away since then, and my dad is an amazing man. He lives in London still, and he's leaps and bounds from what he was when I was a little kid, like he completely accepts me. But the truth of the matter is when I see friends who now have little children who are three-, four-, five-, six-years-old, and I see how they interact with them, I can't really understand being any other way with your infant child, other than purely loving.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It's beautiful, and also I know that for a lot of parents, it's really difficult because we were raised with this social construct that boys act this way, and girls act that way, and we dress this way, and we play with these kinds of toys and whatever, and when your child does not fit into that exact social construct, for you to deconstruct that very damaging mental frame of mind that so many of us have been drilled into for our entire lives is not easy, and yet, it is—I believe—very much our responsibility as parents to do that work for ourselves, so that our negative social constructs that have been drilled in us do not get passed on to our children; so that feeling of ‘I do not love’ or ‘Something's wrong with you’ or whatever would never pass on to our children.

Kassia Binkowski
Well, and this is something that we've talked about: this idea of gender boxes that we put or place our children in, either as parents or as society. Matthew, you've said before that, as a child, you were often attracted to and interested in things that society traditionally associated with women or girls. You just mentioned playing with Barbie. What are some of the other examples? When did that sort of gender construct start to rear its head for you?

Matthew Nouriel
It's so interesting. Listen, when you're a little kid, a toddler, you don't know anything about gender constructs; you just know what you like and what you don't like. I straight up thought I was a girl—physical traits or not, I just thought I was a girl. I related to girls. I liked girl things. I remember throwing the biggest tantrum in a department store because I wanted a Barbie doll, and my parents wouldn't buy me one. And eventually they did. But then a couple years later, they took them away. I liked to play dress-up in girls' clothes. I wanted to be like the Disney Princess. I was obsessed with Miss Peggy and Madonna because those were the people or entities that I deemed feminine, and that's what I was attracted to. So yeah, it was stuff like that. And of course, as I started to get a little bit older, I started to get crushes. I remember having a crush on my neighbor's older brothers when I was like eight-years-old. So it was stuff like that. And then after so many years of being bullied at school and mocked, you start to kind of hide yourself and lose yourself inside these constructs that are created for us. I do also want to name that I think that while these constructs are there, that I think being Iranian, there's an added thing to it, which is that I'm... Sabrina, are you Iranian?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yes.

Matthew Nouriel
So you know the concept of âberu, which is kind of like this mixture of family reputation, your reputation, community reputation, and it's very much intertwined with shame.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, this idea that people will put how they are perceived outwardly so far in front of everything else—that is the highest priority—that you will bankrupt yourself to be perceived as wealthy, as a perfect family, as a perfect individual—that kind of thing.

Matthew Nouriel
Yeah, so I think there was very much an element of that, especially once I was fourteen and I moved to the US with my mom—to Los Angeles and that was a whole other culture shock that happened, but I digress. I think that there was definitely this added pressure of this âberu, this notion that is so steeped into Iranian culture, and I think even more so in Jewish-Iranian culture, because it wasn’t until maybe the Revolution that Iranian Jews were even considered maybe respectable. Prior to that. We're talking about intergenerational trauma of being treated like you're nothing.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So I want to talk about gender for a second and non-binary, and for you non-binary means that your pronouns are ‘they’ and ‘them’ and this is something that, as we're saying, has become more prevalent in society. We are more aware of looking beyond the binary labels that we have constructed, that are kind of arbitrary—she/her, he/him, whatever. Growing up, not having that language, not having something that was more societally understood, when did you decide that these pronouns felt right for you, and what did it feel like growing up without those pronouns?

Matthew Nouriel
I'm learning so much now at an older age than I ever did before. It's so strange. You know, I discovered what gayness was, and I came out as gay when I was like fifteen, and I just ran with it. And even then, I was dabbling in drag and stuff, and then I kind of stopped. And I never thought I would have to think about it again. But it's interesting. When I think back, when I was fifteen, I thought I was transgender as well, and I even told my mom, and my mom was more accepting of that than being gay, which really speaks to the binary. I think in Iranian culture, it's just such a strict binary; it’s like they cannot understand anything other than you’re a man or you’re a woman.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right, as long as you're a woman attracted to men, that makes more sense to me.

Matthew Nouriel
Exactly. Exactly. And then that didn't feel right either, so I kind of pulled out of that. Then it's just in these more recent years when I started learning about the terminology—non-binary, gender queer, gender fluid—which is so much of it. A lot of it's even over my own head, but I feel seen.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I mean, I think you were starting to answer it, which is that you were seeking different labels that may have fit you growing up, like you thought maybe you were trans because that was available for you to grasp onto, but that's not what it was, right? Now you feel seen. I guess the question is: When in your life were you like, ‘Yes, that is me.

Matthew Nouriel
Like, within the last year.

Sabrina Merage Naim
That's crazy.

Kassia Binkowski
So this notion of giving words and labels to something that has always existed, that you have always known about yourself but you didn't otherwise have the right language for... Do you in any way feel boxed in by a new label that has become available and is being normalized? Or does that feel liberating?

Matthew Nouriel
It feels a little bit of both, and here's why. It feels liberating. There's no question about that. I feel this language and this understanding makes me, as an individual, feel seen—and so many others. The reason it is a little limiting is because it's still a label at the end of the day, and when people put this label on you...Like, I understand language is important. And I understand recognizing who you are is important and that having the correct language can facilitate that. But with that said—and I can't speak for other people; I can only speak for myself—I just came out to my closest friends as being non-binary maybe a couple of months ago in an email, and I told them, ‘My pronouns are they/them. I'm not a stickler for pronouns. If you call me he/him, I understand. You've known me for so many years; I don't expect that to change. I understand that I present as male most of the time. So I understand that. I'm never going to be that person that's like, ‘You called me by the wrong pronouns!’ That's an example. Again, that's for me though. A transgender person who's still within the binary, I could understand would be very upset if you're presenting as a woman and somebody keeps intentionally misgendering you. That's an act of aggression. Also in terms of all the terminology that's out there...Listen, I don't always know exactly where I fit into that. Sometimes I'm like, ‘Oh, yeah, I'm gender queer,’ then I'm like, ‘Oh, I’m gender fluid or non-gender.’ It's a lot. I'm fine with just being under the umbrella of ‘non-binary.’ Again, that's my personal thing. I don't expect that to be for everybody. But there is this intense need for people to know exactly what it is that you identify as, and just out of sheer rebelliousness, sometimes I'm just like, ‘I don't care. You can refer to me as whatever you want.’

Sabrina Merage Naim
I do think part of the need comes from a desire to be as respectful as possible for the fluidity of how the language is changing so dramatically. And I'll tell you, from my perspective, that it takes intentionality in my brain for me to say ‘they/them’ of a singular individual, but I will do it until I'm blue in the face if that's how you feel comfortable and identify, right? It just takes practice. It's like a new thing. We're all kind of-

Kassia Binkowski
-Yeah, we're all part of a generation that that language didn't exist for us, and so it's retraining all of our brains to verbalize that and to normalize that.

Kassia Binkowski
Let's fast forward. So at 15, you move from England—from London—to Los Angeles with your mother. Is that right? After your parents separated?

Matthew Nouriel
Yeah. 14.

Kassia Binkowski
Yeah, did anything change for you then? I mean, both are huge international cities, but obviously different cultures. What shifted?

Matthew Nouriel
A lot shifted because while there were Iranian Jews in the UK—my dad's family were there—it was coming to LA... It's like on another level. Los Angeles is... I believe it's the largest community of Iranians outside of Iran and the largest community of Jewish Iranians outside of probably Israel, I believe. So it's a very insular community. Because of the sheer number, you're able to facilitate that insular-ness, you know? You don't have to go outside of your community for anything because there's so many of us. So there's a culture to that that I was not used to and that I was very angry at. I didn't understand it. I didn't want to be part of it. That âberu, it was like times 100 here. It was just next level when I came here. All of a sudden, everybody's in the Mercedes. And everybody has had, you know.... It's like totally keeping up with the Joneses. And I wanted to pierce my face and dye my hair pink and shave off my eyebrows. I just didn't fit into it at all, so that was a culture shock for me as a teenager—and also cause for a lot more anger because I'm like... Well, I don't know. As an adult, now I have the words to say ‘I don't understand.’ When somebody is a pubescent and a teenager, they're discovering who they are. Again, I will never understand a parent not allowing that. Like when I hear about a parent not letting their kid dye their hair blue, I'm like, ‘Why not? When do you want them to do it? When they're 25?’ Let them do it. It’s the time for them to do it. And by the way, if you want to do it when you're 25, do it when you're 25. Whatever. But that created a lot of animosity for me. And it wasn't just because my mom's strict, or my mom's not letting me do what I want to do because I did it anyway, but it was everything that came with it. It was this need to put the community and the family's reputation and what the community thinks of us and our family above or beyond my personal needs. So that was very problematic for me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And I'm sure that was even intensified coming from a different place, but can you tell us your coming out story?

Matthew Nouriel
Sure. Part of the culture shock also that was a positive element of moving here was for the first time I was in public school, and I was in a non-Jewish school, a secular school. So I was surrounded by a much larger pool of diversity than when I was in private Jewish schools in London. So I started to make friends. I would say for the first time in my life, I think, I really started to make real friends, like a group of friends. And of course, there were the artists and the punk rockers and the, you know, hashers. And I don’t remember all the crazy terminology, but they were the quote, unquote, bad kids or the wild kids or whatever, and I found acceptance with the artists and the punk rockers and specifically with women, females. We were teenagers, but female artists and punk rockers were the ones who accepted me. So once I had been given that slight acceptance from like three people, I felt very empowered and emboldened. And I remember at 15, I started going with some of my girlfriends to an all-ages gay club that was happening every Friday night in Hollywood, and I would go after Shabbat dinner. A group of us would go, and I remember one day, my mom saying, ‘Why are you going to this place?’ And I was kind of like... I was very rebellious and provocative as well. I remember just saying, ‘Well, they have drag shows, and it's a gay bar.’ And she just didn't understand. I'm sure deep down she really did understand, and that's probably what scared her. So one day on the way to Shabbat dinner, she asked me again why I'm going to that place, and I said—and keep in mind, up into this point, I'd come out to my friends as bisexual; I never came out as gay—and my mother was the first person I said the words ‘I'm gay’ to because I didn't want her to think there was any kind of wiggle room. So we're on our way to Shabbat dinner and I told her, and I said, ‘That's why I'm going,’ and I was naive because I underestimated... You know, I thought, ‘Well, when my parents divorced and we were still in London, she went to hair school. She loved her gay hair instructor.’ She would talk about him, and she thought he was really funny. So I thought, ‘Oh, she's going to be okay with it.’ But she wasn't okay. It was a lot of screaming and crying and threats and ‘I'm sending you to the kibbutz. I’m sending you to the IDF. We're going to the best doctors. We're going to have the best psychiatrists.’ And I didn't go to a kibbutz or to the IDF, but I did go to psychiatrists and therapists and doctors. And, again, I didn't need any of it. None of it was necessary in any way, but it was this idea that ‘we can change him’ or ‘you can medically intervene with somebody’s queerness’ and you just can't.

Kassia Binkowski
When were you free of that—of that influence and those constraints? Was it so long as you were living in her house? Was it so long as, you know, she was alive and you felt the pressure to fulfill her expectations in some regard as her son? When did that shift for you?

Matthew Nouriel
You know, this is really hard to say and really harsh to say, but the truth of the matter is: Yes, that major level of the doctors and so on and so forth did die down. But I never had the opportunity to fully delve into who I am and explore my gender identity and my queerness and find self-acceptance until my mother passed away. And that sucks. And that's harsh. And again, it's not that I don't think that she didn't love me. I just think that she thought she was doing what was best.

[Music break]

Sabrina Merage Naim
So this is where I want to switch the conversation. We're going to introduce a new character. Take us back to the moment you first experienced drag culture. And then when did you make that leap from being a participant to actually joining the community?

Kassia Binkowski
Yeah, from seeing to participating?

Matthew Nouriel
So sorry if any of this is long winded; it's just there are no short answers.

Kassia Binkowski
That means we're asking the right questions. That’s good.

Matthew Nouriel
So when I started going to that club—it was a club called Arena in Hollywood, when I was 15, and this is like the mid 90s—they had a drag show every Friday, and I was 15, and I started doing it then. I only did it for about a year because it drove my mother and her family over the edge, and when I say ‘over the edge,’ I mean it was like sheer panic. Bad enough that he's gay, but now he's dressing like a girl and going out to these places, and it was just... It was terrible. And I was sat down—and this is veering off a little bit, but it's important to say—I was sat down by like the head honcho of the family and explicitly told that if I want to be gay, that that's fine, but I have to do it in private, and I have to do it secretly. I can't wear women's clothes. I have to marry a woman. I have to go to school and become a doctor or a lawyer or something reputable and have children, and I can do the gay stuff in secret. And that was a bit of a turning point for me because that was like ‘Wow, this is really serious. The family is really fucked up over this’—excuse my French. It was almost more trouble than it was worth. So I was like, ‘I'm just not gonna do the drag anymore. I'm not gonna do it. I'm wiling out too much anyway. I'm drinking at 16-years-old. I’m having too much fun. Let me put that away, and I'll just be myself, but I won't be the drag-myself,’ like, just put an end to that. So then I never really did it again. That was when I was 16, and I didn't do it again until 20 years later… Yeah, more than 20 years later. It just happened organically, by mistake, I guess. I was in the field of gay stand-up comedy, and I created a video with a group of comedian friends that was a spoof on the Real Housewives and the Shahs of Sunset called The Real Housewives of the Shahs of Sunset, the joke being: ‘How can you have the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills without having any Persians on it?

Sabrina Merage Naim
[Laughter] True.

Matthew Nouriel
I still don't get it since it’s not realistic. But I put on a wig, and I don't think I even shaved, and I put on lipstick, and I played this absurd character, and my friend who I did the video spoof with did a weekly show at a gay bar and said, ‘I want to do one night: Comedy is a Drag. Will you bring this character?’ And I said, ‘Okay,’ and I thought to myself, ‘I'm never going to do this again, so I want to do it right.’ That was my conscious thinking; I think my subconscious thinking was probably thinking, ‘This is fabulous. Please do it.’ So, I hired a makeup artist. I bought a nice wig. I put a whole outfit together, and I did it. And something happened that night that was a reaction that in the whole four or five years that I did stand up comedy, I never received. The character was hilarious, and it was almost like a full circle moment because I got to like play this character that was essentially mocking these Iranian women that I grew up with that were so critical of me and turning into this hilarious person. Anyway, so I did that, and then he did the same show a few months later, and I did it again. And then we did another web series. And I think this was like 2016 or 2017 when I was like, ‘Okay, let's be real with yourself like. This isn't...’ I had to have this conversation with myself where I was basically telling myself like, ‘You're not doing this for laughs. You're doing this because you enjoy being pretty.’ And that's when it kind of veered from being an actor or comedian playing a character into ‘I want to be a drag queen.’

Sabrina Merage Naim
I was gonna ask because you talk about how the response you got from the audience was crazier than you've ever gotten from anything else. How much of your connection to this character and your desire to be part of this character was because of the audience response and how much of it came from within you?

Matthew Nouriel
I think the desire to play the character came from the audience response, and the desire to play the character but pretty came from within me. If you watch, there are two seasons of this web series we did called Persian-ality. The first one, while I’m made-up fully, I look like a funny character. The second one, I'm funny, but you can see a marked difference in how I presented myself. I wanted to be glamorous and beautiful. And you know, life is evolutionary, I don't think it ever stops. And that's one thing I'm learning throughout this whole process is not to be too married to these sort of labels are boxes that you put yourself in, because now I'm at this place—literally at this junction in my life—where I'm like, ‘Am I a drag queen? Because I don't think I'm a drag queen. I think I'm a non-binary individual who likes to present themselves a certain way. I like fashion. I like beauty. I like glamour.’ And I don't necessarily want to perform. I don't want to go do lip syncs. There was so much pressure to do Drag Race, and I auditioned like two or three times. And now I'm like, ‘I don't want to. I just don't want to. That's not what I'm doing here. No.’

Kassia Binkowski
I like that. But you still want to be pretty. You still want the makeup. You still want the glam. You still... Like, that’s still fulfilling to you. Or it still feels like you.

Matthew Nouriel
Yes, but I'm at a place where I'm realizing... This was something that I wanted at some point earlier in our discussion to bring up as well, if you don't mind me bringing this up: the idea that the concept of gender dysphoria, which is very real, and now that within the last six months I've been sort of going through this surge of self-discovery and growth again, I'm able to pinpoint times in my life where gender dysphoria hit really hard. And I'm able to recognize what it is for me because it's different for everybody. Some people who identify as non-binary might want to have top surgery because their breasts trigger gender dysphoria. For me, it's in my face. My whole life, people would tell me I'm handsome, and my wiring would tweak out, you know? And I learned throughout the years to just say ‘thank you,’ but it was never comfortable. And I had to realize and really look at myself and go, ‘Well why is it when I'm in drag and somebody tells me I'm beautiful, I take that and run with it?’ Like, I'm great. Like, the most genuine, heartfelt ‘thank you’ will come out of me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I do think though that what you're saying about the evolution of all of us, it's such an important piece of this because you maybe wanted something or you felt comfortable with something earlier on in your life and it has evolved into something else and you shouldn't feel like you're not stamping it in concrete forever. And I think that's a really good reminder for all of us, especially in a conversation like this where there are topics of labels and this and that, where we feel like our brains are hardwired to kind of put certain categories or labels or boxes around things, that those also evolve. Those are fluid. All of that. This whole category of the conversation cannot, even for the purposes of this podcast, which will be recorded and kept forever... Maybe in 20 years, someone's listening to this and being like, ‘That is some old-fashioned bullshit.’ Maybe. Right?

Matthew Nouriel
Very possible

Kassia Binkowski
Anything is possible.

Matthew Nouriel
In fact, it's very likely right?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Very likely. So tell us when The Empress Mizrahi was born and became part of you.

Matthew Nouriel
So that was around 2017 when I was like, ‘No, I'm not playing this funny character; I want to feel empowered in my drag.’ At the time, it was drag and who I am. I liked the name The Empress just because I liked the idea of being Persian royalty, and it was about empowerment, right? And it was about this community that I come from that looks down on me. Well, how can I combat that, better than saying... You know, this whole reputation and âberu and everything, well, who has a higher reputation amongst that community than somebody that's royalty? So I became the Empress, and then less than a year ago was when I was like, ‘Well, I want to add Mizrahi to it’ because I wanted my name to encompass who I am. I wanted people to know who I am by seeing my name. I became more and more vocal in my Jewish identity and in advocating for the things that I believe are just and right within the world of Judaism. So that's why I added Mizrahi to it.

Kassia Binkowski
Has that layer of your identity and the work that you've done as of recently unpacking that, has that helped you find your voice? Or were you always an outspoken activist? Because you certainly now are using your platform to engage on a number of social and political issues, and I'm curious how that has unfolded in parallel or as a product of your relationship to the drag community and your unpacking of how that fits into your larger identity.

Matthew Nouriel
Well, firstly, I want to name that I don't know what my relationship is to the drag community. I don't know if I necessarily have one. I have some friends who are drag queens. But I mean, I'm not really plugged into the drag scene, and I had a resistance to it, and I think now I understand why. I think that I was always an outspoken person. Again, my idol growing up in the 80s and 90s was Madonna, who was very outspoken and who definitely pushed every envelope known to society and still does, and I think that that influenced me a lot. But I also think that through being lost and through feeling rejected and through all of those years of running for myself and then having to rediscover myself, I think it took a turn of being rebellious, like I was a Rebel Without a Cause, whereas now, maybe it's rebellious. But I feel like I have something to say, and I have a point to make and that there's people that are affected by things that I care about and that I believe in, and I feel like it's my responsibility to talk about. And I also feel like being queer and being a gender non-binary, gender nonconformist drag queen—whatever you want to call it—and being Jewish and being a Zionist, is… These are supposed to be juxtaposing ideals, right? So I feel like it's my responsibility to be open about them and talking about it.

Sabrina Merage Naim
One thing I really respect about your social media presence—so for people who are interested in finding Matthew on Instagram, it's @theempressmizrahi—and one of the things that I found really compelling is not just that you're an activist, but you're an activist that shares a ton of information and historical context to bring your point home versus ‘I'm gonna yell and scream and be angry, and you better accept my opinion,’ whereas, in this case, you are sharing a lot more of the backstory of certain issues from, I think, from a much more informational and educated perspective. And I'm curious, kind of going back to Kassia’s question: How much of your activism is folded into The Empress?

Matthew Nouriel
Well, thank you first of all. And how much of the activism is folded into The Empress? I mean, all of it is folded into The Empress. The Empress and Matthew Nouriel are one in the same. And it's interesting because it’s taken like two personas are now unifying into one. So everything coming from my perspective and from my knowledge and from the things that I've learned, and I am The Empress Mizrahi. There's no separation with my activism or my advocacy and who I am.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So this is something that I kind of want to double down because I think it's important. For people who are outside of this picture, we see Matthew, and we see The Empress Mizrahi. These two individuals dress differently. They maybe act differently. Maybe they even speak differently. I'm not sure. But for for the outsiders, we see two people, right? But what you're saying is these two people not only coexist within you, they are the same person right inside of you. And they are one in the same. And I think what I want to understand more for our audiences is when do you feel like now's the time that I'm gonna, like, put on my makeup and put on a sexy dress and like, take pictures for Instagram, and now's the time that I'm Matthew and I don't have any of that stuff? And is there a moment that you switch it on or off? What I'm trying to get at is these characters are kind of living in you together. They are one in the same. But they look different, and they talk differently, and they act differently. So how is it coexisting inside of your body?

Matthew Nouriel
So they used to talk differently. They used to act differently. Now they just look different. And one is very glamorous and very made up and very, you know, sexy, and one is just this guy with the scruff that you're seeing sitting in front of you right now. This is a very recent revelation for me, which is this idea of merging these two people because... It's interesting. The first time I did that first show, my friend who put on the show—his name's Teddy. He's a great comedian. Teddy Marcus—said to me, ‘Oh, my God, I feel like you're more you when you're playing this character.’ And I was like, ‘No, you're crazy. I'm just playing a character.’ But it's true. I feel more comfortable when I'm in drag, for lack of a better term, than when I’m not in drag. And I think that has caused a lot of self-reflection over the last year or so for me to try and understand why. Because getting in drag is exhausting. It's literally a four-hour process. It's an exhausting thing. And I had to ask myself, like, ‘Well, why do you need to do all of this just to feel comfortable?’ And I thought for a long time that I had some kind of, I don't know, complex or body dysmorphia or something. And I'm realizing that I don't. What I had was gender dysphoria and a general unease and discomfort with what I look like and who I feel like I am. So my newest direction that I'm heading in and that I'm taking steps towards is how to unify these two people without having to take four hours to get myself into a state to look how I want to look, and for me, being in drag is not a performance. For me being in drag is an opportunity to express my gender and feel comfortable within that.

Kassia Binkowski
Matthew, what would you wish for another child navigating this tension between their own gender identity and the social expectations and the boxes that we put around them? What do you wish you would have heard 20, 30 years ago?

Matthew Nouriel
What do I wish I would have heard myself? ‘There's nothing wrong with you. I love you. You're brilliant. You're smart. You're intelligent. You're beautiful. You can be anything that you want to be. There are no limits.’

Sabrina Merage Naim
Breaking Glass is a production of Evoke Media. Evoke is a nonprofit organization that exists in order to elevate the people and stories that are working to make the world a more unified and equitable place. Learn more at weareevokemedia.com.