Drag queen Miss Moço had her time to shine on Canada’s Drag Race as she "lip synced for her life," but despite being booted from the Canadian drag competition last week, the Cambridge native says the opportunity was a dream come true.
“The moment I saw Canada's Drag Race was a thing, there was this overwhelmingly exciting moment of, 'Oh, my God, I could be on that show,'” Moço says. “Now, three seasons later, here I am. And I'm really proud to be part of that.”
Born and raised in Cambridge, Miss Moço, or Adam Moco as she is known out of drag, spent her childhood growing up in Galt and says it wasn’t until she got to high school that the "small town prejudice" started popping up in the form of bullying.
“High school was not my favourite thing, especially going to Catholic high school and definitely showing more femme than masculine, if you will. So that was recognized and being called names and things. I just knew I had to get out of Cambridge, as soon as possible,” Moço recalls.
Luckily, Moço had a best friend who was also queer, and they were able to bond and share their experiences together in a town that, at the time, didn’t reflect their community.
After high school, Moço turned to the world of male modelling and had the opportunity to travel around the world to places like Tokyo and Singapore.
When she arrived back in Canada, Moço knew she needed to go to a place where the community reflected what she saw in herself. So, she did what she believes most members of the LGBTQS+ community do when they leave Cambridge, move to Toronto, Moço says.
After attending school for fashion business and then for photography, at George Brown and Humber respectively. Moço went on to have a successful career as a photographer; an experience she describes as life-changing.
She worked for companies like Holt Renfrew, helping start their blog in 2012, and shooting her own series called BARE. Moço says she ran the gambit of photography and travelled the world doing so.
Her series, BARE, explores diversity in the male form through photography and gives a insight to the uniqueness of different body types and expressions in the LGBTQ2S+ community.
In 2015, Moço decided she wanted to find an outlet to break her out of her shy introverted shell. Having watched Ru Paul's Drag Race since it's first season in 2009, she thought this could be a way to finally let her true self loose. In May 2015, she performed her first show and Miss Moço was born.
After doing Drag for only seven months, Moço decided she needed to slow things down a bit and focus on photography. She boarded a plane and headed off to Portugal, to be immersed in the culture where her family is from.
“I went to Portugal to work on my photography, not realizing that I would also be working on drag at that point,” Moço says. “When I was there I said, there's no drag happening here. I'm just going to do my own thing and try to make some space for people and an income for myself.”
Without a bustling drag community in Lisbon, she created the annual pageant known as Miss Drag Lisboa in 2017. Stemming from her own desire to perform, she wanted to build a space for her and other drag queens in the city.
Her pageant would go on to become one of the most renown drag events in the entire country and have her return every year to produce and host.
Despite having her own pageant and later becoming known as the drag brunch queen of Toronto, Canada's Drag Race is a different animal, Moço says.
“We walk into the Werk Room and I'm in full drag, so I'm feeling pretty good. Then in the first challenge I was still in drag the whole time, so I still felt that like, powerful mode,” said Moço. “I was quite confident up until having to take my drag off. Then I realized how uncomfortable I was out of drag in that environment.”
Drag allows Moço to feel like she can be that confident, sexy person that walks into a room and can just be her extroverted self.
“I think drag probably came to me for that exact reason of needing an outlet to explore that extroverted side of myself. I can be that person, out of drag as well, but normally around close friends, where I feel comfortable,” Moço says.
One of the things Moço says she struggled with in the competition, and something she admits was ultimately her downfall, was comedy writing.
“Because I host my drag brunch every single Sunday, I get a lot of feedback from people. I often hear how funny I am, naturally funny,” Moço says. “But, I am good at being funny in the moment. When it comes to writing a script with jokes, well you see what happened.”
All of the queens watch the show along with viewers at home, so they are quite literally watching their performances back for the first time when it airs.
During her viewing party, she had to watch her final lip sync through her hands as she knew she was the queen being voted off.
Now that she’s off the show, she’s turning her full attention towards her drag pageant in Portugal that’s less than two months away.
A spinoff of Ru Paul’s Drag Race is called Drag Race All-Stars, when asked if Moço would join she said without a question.
“I mean, I'd consider,” Moço adds, sarcastically. “Everyone loves a redemption and I have a lot to redeem.”
