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Gayest & Greatest 2019: Entertainment & Nightlife

Alexis Nicole Whitney uses drag to collect cash for LGBTQ Houston charities.

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Alexis Nicole Whitney, Leading Trans Female Fundraiser

Houston’s favorite trans female fundraiser is a popular entertainer who was just named this year’s Girl of Montrose.

With her new title, Alexis Nicole Whitney will be onstage at 4 p.m. October 13 raising funds for PWA Holiday Charities in a Halloween benefit at Michael’s Outpost. Joining her will be other members of the gayborhood’s “First Family” contest winners.

It was on Halloween of Whitney’s senior year of high school in San Antonio that she discovered how “sickening” she looks in an evening gown. “I never went back,” she said, finding an audience for her beauty and talent at drag shows, where she met transgender woman Maya Douglas, who was Miss Gay USofA 1995.

“A lot of people mentored me, but Maya Douglas was one of the girls who inspired me,” said Whitney, who began competing in the Miss Gay USofA pageant system in 1996 and started taking hormones in 2001.

On October 7, 2008, Whitney was diagnosed with brain and spinal meningitis, which left her vision-impaired. She’s often aided and accompanied at her performances by her “drag son,” singer Mykey Whitney. Also, he’s the deejay for her weekly “Wepa Wednesdays” shows at Tony’s Corner Pocket. The best way to translate “wepa” for gringos might be “Hurray!”

Last year, Whitney performed in some 25 benefits for PWA Holiday Charities, to which the LGBTQ community contributed almost $90,000 at drag shows. The Whitney crowd craves callbacks for her renditions of tunes by Gloria Estefan, Selena, and Celine Dion, whose thunderous power-ballad “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” is a guaranteed moneymaker. —Don Maines