Kimberly Reicks: Iowa mom dresses like drag performer to school board meeting to protest drag show
ANKENY, IOWA: A furious mother wore a drag queen costume as she blasted school board members for not heeding parents' concerns following a drag show held at a local high school.
Kimberly Ricks, 40, founder of parent rights group Iowa Mama Bears, demanded answers at an October 3 school board meeting regarding the outcome of an investigation into the drag show that the Gay Straight Alliance club at Ankeny High School had sponsored as part of the group's end-of-year meeting in May. The activist said her stunt was meant to raise awareness about inappropriate sexualized content in schools.
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“Does this outfit make you turn your head? Does this outfit seem appropriate for anybody here to see? This is what the man dressed like in front of our kids,” Reicks said at the school board meeting. “So if this makes your head spin, if this pisses you off in any way, shape, or form — it should. Because I’m embarrassed to stand here in the outfit that I am in today, but I have a point to prove — that this outfit should not be ever accepted in our schools anywhere.”
A high school in Ankeny, Iowa held an after-school drag performance for students.
— 1776 Project Pac (@1776ProjectPac) October 4, 2022
In response, a mother in the district named Kimberly Reicks showed up to a school board meeting dressed in the outfit that the drag performer wore in front of students. pic.twitter.com/VK4OaM7jQl
The parent rights firebrand said she deliberately violated school dress code policies with the outfit in order to get the school board's attention. “It has been over 131 days since I made our school board first aware of this event,” Reicks told Daily Wire. “We are now 32 days into the new school year, and we still have no answers on what the outcome of the investigation was. Nor do we have any new policies to ensure things like this do not happen again.” Conservative Twitter account Libs of TikTok shared images of the drag show, showing one performer wearing the outfit Reicks duplicated for the school board meeting.
.@Ankeny_Hawks brought in drag queens to perform for students during school. The drag queens also spoke to students about gender identity and expression. pic.twitter.com/6PFv4QcIgx
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 24, 2022
According to The Epoch Times, the performers discussed gender identity and expression. “Sometimes because of who I am, I don’t really feel like I’m a man,” one performer said. “I feel like sometimes I do identify as a male. I feel like sometimes I’m more in the middle of the spectrum — not one or the other. That’s where I am right now. I still have a lot to think about on my journey, but I know that if you guys need anyone to talk to about things such as gender identity or you want to get into drag and see what this art form can mean to you, please [contact us] and we’ll all be ready to help you.”
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Reicks explained that her demonstration was designed to garner an emotional response from the school board. She said equipment failures were a fixture of previous board meetings where parents wanted to raise concerns about the drag show. “I wanted them to feel a certain way because I found the tendency to be like: people go on emotions rather than fact,” she told The Epoch Times. “And that definitely is the reaction I got, and that’s what I wanted. I wanted them to feel like that’s wrong, that’s disgusting, ‘Why is she in here like that?’ Because if they felt [like] that as adults, just imagine what a minor child felt like watching that man, dressed like that, performing the way he did in front of our children.”