DAN CLAY SHARES HIS THREE RULES TO INTERNET FAME

DAN CLAY SHARES HIS THREE RULES TO INTERNET FAME

On a cloudy Friday in March we met up with writer and internet personality Dan Clay (aka Carrie Dragshaw) at Cafe Cluny in the West Village to discuss his new book, the joys and struggles of internet fame, and how he found himself through drag. Since rising to internet fame when his Carrie Bradshaw Halloween costume went viral, Dan has used his platform to spread love and positivity. His writing as Carrie has been featured in hundreds of magazines, newspapers, and television shows–from Cosmo to People to Watch What Happens Live–and his TED Talk on being your “whole self” details his first-hand experience with the healing power of drag.

Dan graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in philosophy and went on to get an MBA from Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. When he’s not writing, he works for a climate change nonprofit and a New York-based branding agency. He lives in New York.

Bryce Ray: Okay--to start, I just wanted to hear a little bit about how you started as Carrie Dragshaw. I know you blew up on Instagram after posting on Halloween. Tell me a little bit about that.

Dan Clay: It was totally serendipitous in a way that I still don’t understand. I came to Sex and the City kind of late in life. When it was on TV, I was a frat boy. [Laughs.]

BR: I love that. 

DC: Literally the first episode I watched was the series finale because the girls from Kappa Kappa Gamma didn’t have HBO, and I had HBO in my frat room because [deepens voice] I was a big Sopranos fan. And they came over to watch the series finale because, you know, this is historic. We had to watch it, and we had to watch it all together. 

BR: Of course, of course. 

DC: So they were in my room and I was in there pretending to be like [deepens voice again] “Oh this silly, feminine show.” But inside I was like--

BR: Squealing!

DC: Oh my god! That mint tulle skirt was really doing something to me! So that was whatever year that aired, and then it was a long time. I moved to New York. Moved to Perry Street. And my friend was like, “Oh my god. You live on Carrie Bradshaw’s street.” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve actually never seen that show.” To which he replied: “Okay, this is an egregious oversight that we need to correct.” I started watching it, and then I just got obsessed with Carrie Bradshaw. And I just have a lot  in common with her--the good and the bad--and we have the same passions. I had always wanted to dress up like her for Halloween, and one year I finally got enough courage to be like “Fuck masculinity!”

BR: Yes! Full tutu. Heels. 

DC: Totally! I got home the next morning and looked at my phone and was like, “Wait…huh?” It had just exploded in the most magical, crazy way, and I was just scrolling through in total disbelief. Seeing comments in Japanese and then seeing people repost. Sarah Jessica Parker commented! I was like “WHAT!?!” So I called my friend and we just sat on my floor like “What just happened?” And we had kind of lived our full fish fantasy on Halloween. Just because it was so fun to be Carrie Bradshaw and be in the West Village. We had gone to Magnolia. And gone to her stoop. So I had all of these tutus pictures. [Under his breath.] And I had some R-rated tutus pictures that the world still has not seen.

BR: [Laughs] Oh tell me more!

DC: So the next day I just posted another. Something like: “Oh remember what a bizarre day yesterday was?” And with that one I added a little more Carrie pizazz, a little more “Was Halloween any different than a regular night out in New York? We’re all wearing costumes” kind of thing. And then that one blew up! It was October 2016. The internet was just an intense place. I thought maybe this was an opportunity to trust the algorithm gods, and just sprinkle a little bit of joy in the world. And then what happened happened, and I was like “Okay, fuck this” [Getures wildly.] Let me just send rainbows and hearts all over this fucking world. Like I’m going to just be the most joyful corner of the internet ever.

BR: Oh, totally.

DC: It was such a lightening. People would send me messages about like “this part of the caption helped me get through such and such thing in my life.” And I thought, “Oh my god, really?” Like it was so meaningful to me, more so than anything I’d ever done. 

BR: Right. Because now you have this responsibility now.

DC: You know we’ve all--at least I know I have--wasted so much energy on unproductive thoughts. [Laughs]. You know, wanting to change parts of myself that, one, couldn't be changed, and two, shouldn’t be changed. So it started to feel like an opportunity to help some people skip over those

unproductive thoughts or, you know, get through them faster than I did. It just felt like this is it. This is what you’re here for. Then after three or four years it was like “okay, you have to this in a way that’s--”

BR: More sustainable. 

DC: Right, like I almost had the thought, “So you’re going to dress up like Carrie Bradshaw for the rest of your life, so how do you do this in a way that isn’t, like, literally every waking hour you’re at

Mood Fabrics being like ‘the dots aren’t big enough!’” In the beginning, my favorite thing about it was having something that had no ambition. Because my whole life was five year plan! I gotta do this. I gotta get this degree and gotta get this job, this promotion. I was just so structured, so it was so fun having something where people would ask “what do you wanna do with it next?” And I’d say, “nothing.” Like this is what it is. It has no agenda. It has no ambition. It just is. 

BR: I’m sure that’s so liberating. 

DC: It was so liberating. And still--Carrie needs to do nothing other than exactly what she’s doing. But then there was a moment where I was like--especially with the writing--”Okay, this tapping into something in you that’s super duper fulfilling. So why don’t you explore.” That’s when I started writing classes and exploring the writing aspect a little more earnestly. 

BR: So, you said you were in a fraternity, were you out while you were in this fraternity?

DC: No, but I heard this phrase like “I was in the closet, but the doors were glass.” 

BR: So like everyone else knew. 

DC: I mean, I was making out with guys at parties. And the next morning, my friends would be like, “Sooo do you have anything that you’d like to share?” And I’d just be like “ What do you mean?” I was like the David Bowie of the frat.

BR: You were sexually liberated, okay?

DC: Right. Like sorry for partying.

BR: You didn’t know you were gay at this time though?

DC: Honestly, that is a great way of putting it because I didn’t know. It wasn’t even like I was in the closet thinking that I was keeping this, like, big secret from the world. In many ways, I was kind of the

last to find out, like I just thought maybe I was--not even in our least favorite moment in the show--you, pitstop to gaytown about bisexuality. 

BR: Yeah, right next to Ricky Martinville. 

DC: [Laughs.] Yeah, I didn’t know. And it was at a time of a lot of change. I still remember describing to one of my absolute best friends my vision for my future, and I was like, “You know, I think I’ll probably marry a woman, but like everybody cheats, so I’ll just cheat on her with men instead of women. Like is that really that different?” The delusion was so deep. And he just looked at me and was like “I don’t know man. I think you deserve more.” And it just hit me. Like I’ve been thinking about how to life hack my way out of homosexuality versus just fucking being gay. And it took a straight man on a roadtrip to the University of Wisconsin to--

BR: Make you see yourself.

DC: Yeah. So I was in the closet, but it didn’t feel that way to me. 

BR: Was that the moment that you were like, “Okay, maybe I am gay”?

DC: It was definitely the moment that kind of, like, made me look backward at the evidence like “wait

a minute…I have exclusively been hooking up with men for some time now that you mention it…I’m much more passionate about Bernadette Peters than the average man…” Like I just thought that I was nuanced. But it turns out I was just gay. [Laughs.] So, yeah, it was a bit of a journey for me. But then when I did come out it was greeted with like “Uh yeah. Glad you're with us now. Thank you for joining us.”

BR: How has Carrie Dragshaw influenced you being out?

DC: It’s in many ways forced, in a good way, a consistent authenticity into my life. Because obviously it’s the most public thing I’ve ever done. I was big on a first date about wearing a backwards baseball cap and maybe talking in a little bit of a deeper voice. You know, restrain enthusiasm for Stephen Sondheim.

BR: This was before Carrie?

DC: Yeah--and then after Carrie, that stuff didn’t work because they’d be like, “Who are you fooling, I’ve seen your Instagram.” And it was amazing because all of that--the backwards cap, the lower voice--was stupid and pointless and completely unnecessary. For me, coming out definitely has been all of these different stages. I wasn’t like “I’m out and I love myself!” This, where I am now, is like AP Coming Out. [Laughs.] There’s such a lightness to just being like, “Yes, I’m feminine and silly.” You know, my backwards baseball cap just isn’t going to fool anyone anymore. At first it was like a loss, even in the beginning of Carrie Dragshaw, there would be guys that I would go on dates with, and I could see in the text chain the unspoken discovery of Carrie Dragshaw. The conversation would be sexy, sexy, sexy and then taper off. But these are the sorts of people that you shouldn’t be with anyway.

BR: Totally!

DC: So it’s just caused this lightness and consistency in my authenticity in a really amazing way. There was a moment after--it’s bizarre to think that this even happened in real life--but there was a

moment after being on Watch What Happens Live! Where I was like, “Wait a minute. You were just celebrated for the things that you used to hate about yourself. And these are the things that are now good? You were just on television in the most feminine version of yourself.”

BR: In front of your icon no less!

DC: Right, in front of SJP! Who would even think to dream that? I sometimes think of Carrie Dragshaw as this very long, drawn out public therapy session where I learn to love myself. Sometimes I wish that it didn’t take so much public validation for me to have gotten to it, but it did and now we’re here. 

BR: Everyone has their own journey!

DC: Right, some people need thousands of internet strangers to tell them that they rocked that smokey eye. 

BR: How has it been navigating Dan vs Carrie? How much of yourself is in Carrie and vice versa?

DC: It’s an existential thing for me. There was a moment when everything was taking off where people were telling me to change my Instagram name to Carrie Dragshaw, and I even went to change

it and thought, no, she is more me than I have ever been. I can look at the captions and the things that I say are me, like, one thousand percent me. And I would never say them if I weren’t in the drag

of Carrie’s voice.

BR: She gives you the freedom to express yourself without people fully knowing what’s going on in your life. 

DC: If I were losing sleep over a guy, I would never tell someone. But then in the Carrie captions, I’m by far the most authentically me that I’ve ever been. There really is no difference between us. The best parts have been her coming into me more and getting rid of  the defenses and things that we don’t actually need but think we need. 

BR: With it being on social media, how has it been navigating the idea that you’re putting so much of your validation into your phone? 

DC: The best thing I did at the very, very beginning--like the night that I decided to keep doing it--I made myself three rules that I have really stuck by. One was that it’s not about likes. All of this is a fucking magical, serendipitous thing--you are not allowed to put your self worth in the rules of this platform that is engineered to make us--

BR: Want more, want more, want more.

DC: So that has been really helpful in reminding myself of those rules that I set. I had an eye towards, yes, I want to continue this creative self expression and continue sharing the love, but I do not want to become that person whose identity is wrapped up in it. You know, we’ve seen it parodied in movies and tv shows. I’ve been very tough with myself, being like, “Don’t refresh it, girl, that’s not what it’s about!”

BR: Literally! You’ve gotta post, turn it off. Post, turn it off. 

DC: And for me, on an individual level, the gratification of it is humongous on the one-on-one. Like that Russian teenager who is having a tough time and literally can’t come out. Or that single mom who wants to wear heels to the grocery store, but thinks people will think she looks ridiculous. She just wants to look pretty! That’s where social media is amazing because you could never connect with these people otherwise. So finding the parts of it that feed me, and being super diligent with the rest. Because it just wants more. There have been times when I slip up and I just tell myself to go send a message to a single human being and just focus on that. Don’t focus on what the algorithm is doing. 

BR: What are the other two rules?

DC: The second was, “it’s all about love.” This one has really shaped how I interact with--you know, because I’m a man dressing up like a woman on the internet, there are going to be thoughts--but I kind of had this thought experiment with myself about what would happen if I only acknowledged and distributed love. Like exclusively. Even if I’m in the deepest, darkest depression, Carrie has to find a way out of it. She has to end with love, and I can only respond with love. Even if there's a current event that I care deeply about, what is the path to express what I care about that is love? 

BR: It’s your own little corner of the internet that is all positive. 

DC: It’s only love. And if there is somebody--because obviously people have said things--I just send the energy that I might send to a mean comment to someone who commented that my legs look good or something. 

BR: Of course. There is a certain grace to that.

DC: My third thing, which has been really rewarding, is no drag without writing. I am not the world’s greatest drag queen. There was a moment at the very beginning where someone tagged this

amazing, epic drag queen--like an icon--who had made a Carrie Bradshaw outfit one time, saying “Oh, you have to let Dan Clay borrow this outfit!” And the drag queen, who is like a hero of mine, responded like “I’ll let her borrow it if she gets a better wig.” I was like, was that a read? Is the library open? It was an honor. But I wanted it to be about the captions. I wanted to trick people into reading long captions with the drag--that I wasn’t just doing #TutuTuesday or something. I wanted there to be something to say.

BR: And you can totally see that! The writing is my favorite part of it because it’s almost better than the writing in the series. Sorry Michael Patrick King. I think the funniest thing about Carrie is that she isn’t really the greatest writer in the world.

DC: Right. But she has these unbelievable ways. She just gets us to lean in. The questions!? My favorite is this episode where she’s sitting there as the camera zooms in and her voiceover goes, “I

got to thinking about time.” Like, girl, think about time. [Laughs]. And just the questions and the way it’s spoofable, but it’s brilliant. As writers, you can look at the craft of it. Like the fact that she always starts with “maybe.” She never says, like “girls aren’t meant to be tamed.”

BR: It’s always her questioning something. It’s always like “maybe I’m a ‘Katie Girl.’”

DC: And it causes you to finish the thought, to lean in. It’s not declarative. 

BR: You know, obviously, we watch the show for the costumes and all the women look fabulous, look gorgeous, but it’s the relationships that people come to the show for. It’s the back-and-forth between Big and Carrie. It's seeing yourself in Carrie or in Miranda or whichever character. 

DC: And seeing these archetypes evolve and become way deeper than just Miranda cares about work, Carrie cares about fashion, Samantha cares about blowjobs. They’re so dimensionalized by the

end. It’s been the honor of my life. I was nervous in the beginning that people would think--because drag is exaggeration and it is “the library is open”--I was like spoofing. 

BR: No, it’s fully earnest. So you wrote a book! It’s called “Becoming a Queen,” can you tell me about it?

DC: It’s about a young kid who goes through some tough stuff and heals himself through drag. My kind of mission with it--because in my experience, drag has been a solution to so many of my problems--so often the narrative is that drag is the problem. You know, you wear the dress and the father comes in screaming about wearing a dress. I wanted to write something where drag wasn’t the problem, it’s what got him out of the problem. This kid has real problems, and his becoming a queen and discovering drag is what gets him out of them. And the problems have nothing to do with his sexuality. They’re just life problems that we all deal with. I’ve found in my experience that embracing your sexuality then solves problems that have nothing to do with your sexuality. 

BR: Problems you probably didn’t even realize you had. 

DC: Living an authentic life just starts to evaporate all sorts of hang ups that even the straightest person has. It’s a story about a kid realizing that. It’s good. I’ve loved the process and, I mean, the Carrie of it all is baffling to me. Because there are all these pictures of her when she came out with her book. It feels like life imitating art imitating life. 

BR: It just keeps going. Now you just need the whole book release party with all the cosmos and that gorgeous flapper dress. 

DC: Yes! And there will be these crazy sentences that I get to say that sound made up in my head. I was talking to my mom before coming here and she asked how my morning has been and I was like “Oh, good. I just talked to my publicist about my book launch event.” Like what!? All from methodically sticking to a Halloween costume. 

BR: How long has the book been in the works?

DC: Oh, forever. Since the very beginning of Carrie Dragshaw. From the first time that someone, and this would’ve been the third or fourth post, someone screenshotted the caption and not the outfit. The outfit wasn’t even in it. No tutu to be seen. And it made me so indescribably happy and fulfilled. 

BR: Because this person gets it. 

DC: So that was like, “Okay listen to what this is saying to you. You want to write. This is doing something to you.” At first, I didn’t know what it was going to be. I was just like, write stuff. You know, just write and see what you’re connecting to. 

BR: Okay, so I'm curious, what are your thoughts on the reboot?

DC: I would listen to these ladies read the dictionary. I just love seeing them in new scenarios. It was really interesting--without spoilers--but Carrie’s grief journey connects to specific things in my book. I just thought that narrative arc was so beautiful, and obviously love SJP. She’s such an amazing actress. It was such a beautiful reflection on grief. And it was so beautiful seeing this character that we love go through life experiences that we’ve all had. And it’s funny because I watch Sex and the City differently now that I’m a drag queen. So when each episode of And Just Like That… came out, I’d be watching it and loving it, but in the pack of my head I’d be screaming, “give me a drag-able outfit, girl. I know you’re grieving, but I can’t wear pants. Give me something!” I’m so excited for the second. 

BR: Girl, me, too. I feel like it’s going to be more of a return to form than the first season was. 

DC: And the end when she was like, “I’m Carrie Bradshaw, and this is Sex and the City.” 

BR: Chills!

DC: Just hearing her voice. It’s just so good. I get so excited. And the Che Diaz of it all. I think what was underappreciated was Sara Ramirez. Like unbelievable talent. You remember Spamalot! My secret wish for the Che Diaz plotline is that they have this successful TV show and then they come back to NY and are in like a non-binary Sunset Boulevard or something. And we get full camp. I feel like we could have a real redemption arc for Che Diaz. You know, people really love Steve [Miranda’s husband], so I think seeing Che Diaz in Sunset Boulevard would be just what the doctor ordered. And I’m excited about all the new characters and to see them get fleshed out a little bit more. 

BR: So much about this zine is about the queer community’s relationship to the show and why we love this show that is so problematic at times. How do you as a queer person--and you’re reveling in the show in such a queer way--how do you reconcile all the bad parts?

DC: Some parts of the exercise has been recognizing that I don’t have to be comprehensive in my

Carrie. Like Carrie Dragshaw can be the Carrie that I want her to be. She can be season two

“I-Don’t-Want-No-Man-Carrie.” My captions always get through the things that sometimes the actual Carrie got stuck in. That’s what makes her an interesting TV character. 

BR: Right. She’s an anti heroine. 

DC: The thing that I love about the show, even when you watch it with modern eyes, is there’s always four people in the debate. Usually, somebody in the four has a modern perspective. 

BR: And it’s usually Samantha. Maybe Miranda. 

DC: I think it’s such an interesting question: do the voices of our TV characters have to reflect our virtues or can they be emblematic of the flaws? Because the character is embodying a perspective that certain people have. And hopefully there will be a voice in the show to counter that. I can’t help but be queer, so I obviously have a different idea about certain things that they talk about. The other amazing thing for me personally about being more in the drag world now is meeting other drag queens and having my own world be expanded. It has nothing to do with the show aside from my own

association with it. I’m now meeting underground Bushwick queens that I wouldn’t have before because we have our own scenes and our own careers. I’m a management consultant. A Bushwick drag queen does not want to hang out with me. But then it just opens up your life. It’s been really rewarding for me to meet more people and to meet people who have a more nuanced view of gender than I do. I’ve learned more from the people I’ve met through Carrie Dragshaw than I would’ve ever learned in my entire life. I remember there was one person who sent me a message saying that I was reinforcing gender norms by exemplifying “high femme.” I didn’t fully understand what they were saying, so I just asked questions. And I had this amazing conversation and I learned a ton about how having femininity reinforced in such a traditional way could hurt someone. I mean, I’m still going to wear pretty, pretty princess dresses. But I’ve learned a ton. And I just love how expanded my world has become as the result of dressing up as this $400 shoe wearing, finance bro dating person. 

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and your viewing pleasure. 

Lensed by Dainique Jones (@dainiquesphotos)