Chilli Pepper, Chicago performance artist and LGBTQ+ advocate, dies
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Chilli Pepper, a celebrated performance artist who was one of Chicago's most famous drag performers for more than 40 years and a staunch advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and causes, died this week.
The Baton Show Lounge announced on its Facebook page that Chilli Pepper died Wednesday. Her age has not been reported.
As noted in the Windy City Times, Chilli Pepper was crowned Miss Gay Chicago in 1974, and was the first Miss Continental in 1980. In a 2017 Chicago Magazine interview, she told the late writer Bill Zehme she preferred the term "female impersonator" to "drag queen"—but as noted by the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame, she gained a great deal of media exposure when few were speaking of drag or drag queens.
After being approached by Jim Flint, owner of the Baton Show Lounge in River North and later Uptown, Chilli became one of the drag club's most popular performers for decades, the Windy City Times reported.
Chilli was also one of the first local celebrities to bring attention to AIDS awareness in the 1980s, the Hall of Fame noted. She addressed the subject during the 80s and 90s on numerous nationally syndicated talk shows, including those of Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey, and Jerry Springer—all of whom taped from Chicago for at least part of their television runs.
"You were seeing people who were dying, and a lot of people weren't doing anything because people didn't understand what was happening. People were dying all around you. They were dying very quickly," Chilli told Emmanuel Garcia in a Windy City Times video interview in 2013. "So I was blessed by having lots of media exposure, and because of that—the media has such a big, big power; people don't believe it that the media can do, make or break anyone—and when you go on a show like 'Donahue,' which is a very legitimate show, and then Oprah, and then Joan Rivers and people like that, who don't understand our way of living, and maybe they never will—but they allowed me to speak for people who could not speak."
Chilli was also a visible Chicago celebrity about town, with name-checks in Irv Kupcinet's Chicago Sun-Times column and the "Tower Ticker" and "Inc." in the Chicago Tribune, the Hall of Fame noted.
Chilli also famously performed as a living mannequin for the opening of the old Barneys New York store on Oak Street, and performed at the premiere of the movie "Hair" in Chicago in 1979—in front of an audience that was not familiar with drag, the hall of fame noted.
Oprah Winfrey became a close personal friend of Chilli's. Just this past March, Chilli presented Winfrey with a GLAAD Media Vanguard Award—which the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation presents each year to an ally who does not identify as LGBTQ+, but who has shown dedication to promoting LGBTQ+ people and issues.
The Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame wrote, "Chilli Pepper has used her dynamic and formidable presence to advance awareness and understanding of the notion that diversity is both healthy and American." The hall of fame also called her "a Chicago institution, much like the Water Tower, only with better jewelry."