One of the many eye-catching acts that this year’s Eurovision Song Contest (this time in Copenhagen, Denmark) was winner Conchita Wurst—the bearded drag-queen alter ego of 25-year-old Austrian Thomas Neuwirth, according to Yahoo! News.
Performing in a skintight dress with long hair and a full beard, Wurst scored 290 points to become Austria’s first Eurovision winner since 1966, CNN noted.
“For me, my dream came true,” Wurst told reporters after the contest. “But for society it showed me that people want to move on, to look to the future. We said something, we made a statement.”
Wurst got audiences’ attention by challenging stereotypes of masculine and feminine beauty with the song “Rise like a Phoenix.” Russian legislator Vitaly Milonov accused the Austrian performer of “blatant propaganda of homosexuality and spiritual decay.”
Although Wurst identifies strictly as a drag queen, there had previously been trans performers in the contest, including Israel’s 1998 winner Dana International, who had male-to-female gender-reassignment surgery several years before competing.