Alaska's real name is Justin Andrew Honard. Alaska chose the name (Alaska Thunderfuck) because she explains she was very stoned during college and heard her friends talking about a strain of marijuana they smoked while in Amsterdam named “Alaskan thunderfuck” and she liked how it sounded so she wrote it down and thats how it became her drag name. Alaska was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. When she was young she would dress up in her grandmother's tennis dresses and fur coats and would model in the living room, and her father would call her Justina.
Justin studied Theater in University of Pittsburgh. After graduation he moved to LA to get more acting jobs, and there she started doing drag professionally. He met Sharon Needles during a holiday break he went back to Pittsburgh, and shortly after they met he moved back there.