amfAR Award of Courage (Honoring with Pride)

Lady Bunny

2009 Honoring With Pride Honoree

Multi-talented drag artiste Lady Bunny always turns heads. But she isn’t just another man in a dress: Bunny is a successful comedienne, singer, songwriter, actress, and—most famously—the founder, organizer, and emcee of Wigstock, the outrageous drag festival that has delighted New Yorkers every Labor Day for 20 years.

Bunny has lent her energy, creativity, and personality to the fight against AIDS as an emcee and supporter of numerous events, including amfAR’s TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art, amfAR Rocks, and Gift for Life. As a performer and media personality, she has helped keep the discussion of HIV/AIDS front and center among the LGBT community, its allies, and even its adversaries.

Bunny DJs at fashion events around the globe. As in-house DJ for Visionaire and V magazine, Bunny has spun in such glamorous locations as the Eiffel Tower, Harvey Nichols in London, the Fendi showroom in Milan, and Le Paquebot in Paris.

Bunny tours constantly, bringing down the house from Cincinnati to Tel Aviv with her bawdy mix of potty-mouthed humor, Southern charm, zany Laugh-In-style joke routines, and hilarious pop song parodies. Bunny has shared the stage with many performers, including Cyndi Lauper, Moby, the B-52s, K.D. Lang, Margaret Cho, and Patti Labelle.

She’s made the leap to television and the movies, with cameo appearances on HBO’s Sex and the City, Britney Spears’s MTV special “In the Zone and Up All Night,” and “The Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson.” Bunny has also appeared in the feature films Dragtime, Party Girl, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, and can currently be seen in Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild with RuPaul and Perez Hilton.

Bunny also keeps a high profile in print media through her role as fashion commentator for Star magazine’s popular Worst of the Week column, and as a contributor to Visionaire, Paper, Interview, and Out magazines (she has served as DJ for the Out 100 party for the past five years). She also maintains an award-winning blog, which combines humor and surprisingly incisive political commentary.