Drag performer Marti Gould Cummings went viral last week with a short video of them lip-syncing to the ubiquitous children’s song “Baby Shark.”
A staple of the New York drag scene for more than a decade, Cummings performed the song at a 2-year-old boy’s request during brunch on March 16 at Talde in Jersey City, New Jersey. The queen posted footage of the performance for posterity on Twitter and Instagram, where it has been viewed more than 787,000 times between the two platforms.
But Cummings ― a Maryland native who prefers the pronouns “they/them/theirs” ― told HuffPost the video was quite polarizing among viewers, with some questioning whether a drag performance was appropriate for children. With that in mind, they went a step further by releasing a colorful, full-length music video of “Baby Shark” Thursday.
The video, above, shows Cummings dancing amid an animated underwater scene before joining local drag personalities Desmond is Amazing and Jan Sport and others for a spin on the famous Seaglass Carousel in Manhattan’s Battery Park.
The new clip concludes with links to the Ali Forney Center for Homeless LGBTQ Youth and the Hetrick-Martin Institute, another LGBTQ youth advocacy organization. By doing so, Cummings said, they hope to “educate the grown-ups” who may have disapproved of the initial clip.
Shortly after the new “Baby Shark” video was posted, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) offered her praise on Twitter.
Calling “Baby Shark” the “ultimate bop,” Cummings said the two videos prove “drag is for everyone.”
“Anyone who thinks drag isn’t for children is wrong,” the queen told NBC News last week. “Drag is expression, and children are such judgment-free beings; they don’t really care what you’re wearing, just what you’re performing.”