Humor is our strongest saber against life’s most formidable challenges. As digital comedy royalty, Anania knows the potency of a hearty chuckle. “I have the most fun in my life when I find the humor in whatever I’m doing or whatever situation I’m in,” she says. “It’s gotten me through a lot, especially now, because it feels like the world’s on fire. It’s been feeling like that ever since I was cognizant. But I think the ability to laugh and the ability to find joy despite it all really helps with perseverance and resilience.”
She welcomes everyone in her audience with open arms. Hers is an atmosphere to gleefully twirl around in even when everything else is collapsing. “I lead by example. I have an open digital door policy. First of all, I make content for the people at my intersection, for Black and trans people, but then it also liberates other queer people to feel welcome too. It’s not an exclusionary tactic. Everyone should understand that the people I’m advocating for the most are the most marginalized that I see in my day to day. Everyone else coming along for the ride is very much welcome. There’s a level of respect in the anania00 bubble. It’s really nice to be able to curate a space for people to let go and be goofy and have fun and laugh about things that are going on. I do my best to have a good mixture of, ‘Hey, we need to talk about something that’s political that’s happening now and it’s an infringement, and we also need to be able to do it in a way that’s smart, funny, and relatable.”
Stopping to prioritize the sanctity of her selfhood allowed her to finally notice some readily apparent truths. “I had a huge problem growing up where I never had a lot of time to think about myself. Often, it was always about what my parents might need or how I could blend in, or change myself, rather than take the time to actually authentically get to the root of who I want and who I am. When I realized I was gender queer, I was in college and I was like, ‘I’m not fitting.’ I went to theater acting school, and the thing in theater is it’s relatively on the binary. You’re either doing a male role or you’re doing a female role, you’re either leading man or you’re doing the best friend. There’s all these archetypes in theater to fill. I found myself having a hard time filling the male ones and fitting the standards for men. That started the whole pronoun pipeline, if you will.”
Thankfully, gender is a smorgasbord for the psyche! “I started thinking, ‘If I’m not having fun being a man, what are my other options? Through meeting queer people and talking to them and hearing their experiences, I realized it was time for me to admit some things about myself. When the pandemic hit, I had so much time to myself in a way that I’ve never had before in my life. So it was a matter of just being honest with myself and admitting I am queer, I’m probably trans, and all these things just fell into place afterwards. I started doing drag after that and I knew the prescription of man wasn’t going to work when I felt such release when getting in full drag. It felt like I never wanted to take it off, or if I were to take it off, it would be on a smaller scale. I grew into my transness by just playing around with femininity and what that means to me.”
The process has been an enriching unfurling. “I’m honored that my experiences online in transitioning have been really subtle, but also really positive. Obviously there’s a small percentage of people who take time to be rude and bully and bash, but overall, it’s been a nice process to just let myself explore and show that process and the ugly and the nitty gritty. People are still signed on. They’re rooting for me and not rooting for my transition or what I could look like. They’re rooting for me and not what I could do in the next couple of years. They want to see what I’m thinking and how I’m getting there. I’m really blessed to have that.”
The key to content creation is preserving your personal aura. “You need to find a way to brand yourself authentically, but also protect yourself at the same time. There’s a healthy distance that I have between the things that I share online and the things that I keep to my IRL sphere.”
She’s immensely proud of her projects. “Right now, I’m in a musical called Saturday Church. It’s off Broadway. That’s going to be taking me until November and that’s my biggest time commitment right now. I’m still working on Gaydar very diligently. I’m very excited to see what happens for the show. It’s doing really, really well. I also just want to keep up with comedy and my acting endeavors and try to show the process of doing that on my channels.” Anania lives to spread delight and benevolent chaos in equal measure!
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Uncovering the Ecstasy of Authenticity with Anania. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Anania.
