Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan will not be afraid to make a daring assertion on stage. And on the Welcome to Rockville Pageant on Sunday night time (Might 21) in Daytona Seashore, Florida, the singer who typically dons elaborate costumes throughout his band’s units slipped into one thing that appeared geared toward making Florida Gov. and certain Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis really feel uncomfortable.
Throughout Software’s first present of 2023, Keenan took the stage in a blonde wig, smeared crimson lipstick and a body-hugging shirt that confirmed off his faux breasts. The outfit seemed to be a response to a controversial bill signed by DeSantis final week, one among which bars minors from attending drag exhibits, in addition to measures that severely limit dialogue of private pronouns in faculties and ban gender-affirming look after minors.
As famous in Consequence — which posted a sequence of images of Keenan — as a result of Welcome to Rockville was an all-ages pageant, the singer was, technically, in violation of the brand new legislation.
Keenan isn’t the primary artist to mount a public protest in opposition to the most recent invoice from a conservative lawmaker seeking to make headlines with laws primarily based on hot-button tradition warfare points. Husband-and-wife staff Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick danced around the living room to Taylor Swift’s “Karma” final month whereas carrying shirts that learn “drag is an artwork and drag is a proper” over the picture of a drag performer in protest in opposition to a Tennessee anti-drag legislation.
Reba McEntire has additionally spoken out in opposition to the Tennessee legislation, whereas Cyndi Lauper and the B-52s made statements in March in opposition to what the group referred to as had been payments that promote “transphobia and discrimination in opposition to transgender people and drag artists.”
Try photos of Keenan under.