Oooh, GIrl!

 Gina and I have a new obsession. It is drag. As in queens, not loud cars that drive too fast.  Now, I am no expert on the world of drag. I will admit that most of my knowledge about this sub-culture within a sub-culture comes largely from the internet and a smattering of documentaries, and that it only metastasized from an idle curiosity into a full blown love with the delightful discovery of RuPaul’s Drag Race, a television show that I like to imagine is a sort of a Project Runway meets a Gay Pride parade Float and they have a love child after getting drunk on too many Absolut Vodka cocktails. (I say this like I have ever watched Project Runway. I’m getting off topic, but this reminds me of a time I was checking into a hotel in North Dakota. The woman asked me where I was from. I told her Boston. She said, “Oh. I’ve never been to your coast. But I must say, I prefer the other one.  Similarly, I prefer RuPaul’s Drag Race. Okay, now back to our regularly scheduled program). I will even admit that two years ago, I knew pretty much next to nothing about drag queens. So for me to pretend that I am any sort of expert on the culture of male drag is a bit like claiming to be an expert on DaVinci after a brief stroll through the Uffizi and its gift shop. But good heavens, if I let a silly little thing like ignorance stop me from opining, I would have stopped talking back in kindergarten.

            So what is it, exactly? What is it about the display of glamour, high fashion, and exaggerated femininity from male performers that can fascinate, charm and inspire adoration in even the most rumpled of lil’ ol’ lesbian like yours truly, and her mild mannered wife?  

Pandora Boxx sporting Chevrolet chic

                                                   

Certainly, someone who can create haute couture out of licorice whips and caution tape, or fashion headpieces from automotive accessories is more than deserving of my admiration, but it is more than that. And yes, anytime a spotlight shines on some particular group who can camp out under that big sprawling tent of we call “queer,” I get a little heart sparkle of kinship love, but it is more than that too. Watching RuPaul’s Drag Race makes me want to chase rainbows in the wind and smile kindly upon my fellow neighbors of the world, and dandle children upon my knee and save kittens from danger, and write weird blog posts when I ought to be working on my novel. So what is it? Well, after more exhaustive thought and analysis on the matter than I would ever grant truly pressing concerns, and after picking through Gina’s brilliant mind in an effort to understand and articulate our fawning love for fierce female impersonators, I have come up with a few possible reasons. If you are still with me this far, bless your heart. And then buckle your seatbelt because it’s going to get craze (as the kids these days will soon be saying, just you wait). 

           

Part I. Drag Queens and Gender.

            Like I said, I have put way too much thought into this. This is part one of a three-part foray into the world of drag queens. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

   So, growing up, I was a tomboy. But sometimes, even being a tomboy was not enough. I felt lost in a chasm between my masculinity and femininity. I yearned to shed every last trace of my femininity but no matter how hard I tried, in the end I was inescapably a girl. My sex that I couldn’t shed, the female-ness that marked me under all that tomboy bravado was a source of shame for me. It’s about here that I sort of wish I hadn’t entirely blown off the only women’s studies course I ever took, because I might have some more academic analysis to back up my argument, but on the other hand, I am good at nothing, if not reinventing the wheel over and over again without a manual.  So what did my prepubescent angst mean? Did it mean that I was a gender-confused, even “trans-gendered” little kid? Well yes, I was. And that was because I didn’t yet know how to parse sex from gender, or indeed that they could be separated at all. The whole concept of gender is a complex and sometimes pretty bewildering notion on its own, and then we go and link it inextricably to sex. Males are “supposed” to be masculine, and females are “supposed” to be feminine. But what does it even mean to be masculine or feminine? Being the overly sensitive little kid that I was, by the time I was starting nursery school, I had reduced my observations of gender down to this: masculine (and therefore boy) meant strength, and feminine (and therefore girl) meant weakness; masculine/boy meant confidence and feminine/girl meant vulnerability. A little gender slop across the sexes was permissible, but girls who wanted to be masculine was more permissible than boys who wanted to be feminine. This (I reasoned) was because it was better to be strong than to be weak, and it was better to be confident than to be vulnerable. Thus: it was better to be a boy than a girl. Being the empiricist I was, I found evidence to back up my conclusion. This was the reason why I was allowed to wear pants and act like a “tomboy”, but why the boys in my classes never showed up in dresses. It was the reason why my coed classmates and I could be collectively called ‘guys’ but not ‘girls.’ It was the reason why to cry like a girl or to throw like a girl was a put down. It was the reason why boys were not supposed to act or be effeminate in any way. In a nutshell, to be feminine was to be a girl, and to be a girl was to be weak and vulnerable on account of being feminine. Who on earth would settle for that lot, if given the choice? But of course I wasn’t given a choice. I was a girl.

            But the thing that they don’t tell you when you are three to eighteen and moping around feeling sorry for yourself because of your sex=gender=inferiority complex, is that everybody embodies both genders to some extent, so being of one sex or the other doesn’t really have anything to do with your gender. To be sure, I still don’t really know what ‘masculine’ means and what ‘feminine’ means, but I know we all embody some swirly muddy mixture of both feminine traits and masculine traits. But also to be fair to my younger self, my conclusions might have been simplistic, but even today, even now, even despite the great strides we have made in women’s rights and gay rights and all that, I would still argue that femininity is not esteemed as highly as masculinity. It is still more okay for women to be masculine than for men to be feminine. When you say of a woman, ‘she had the balls to do X’, we understand that to mean she acted with courage, but you can’t really praise a man by calling him effeminate. You still don’t call a coed group of people ‘girls’, but “guys” is almost always fine. “Guys” in this context has become gender neutral, but “girls” in that same context is still too inextricably linked to femininity, and femininity still squicks people out. I’m not saying that in an equal world the sexes would be perfectly interchangeable copies of each other, or that each sex would be a precise balance of masculine and feminine because I don’t think that at all. I’m saying that in an equal world, both (or all, if you want to go that route) sexes could express whatever masculinity and whatever femininity they have as fully and freely as they choose and it’s all acceptable and no eyebrows will be raised or shame induced.

            Which brings me back to drag queens. Sorry for the off-roading, but I wanted to delve into gender because one reason drag instills in me all those bubbly happy feelings, is that the performers embrace and empower both their masculinity and femininity equally. They don’t hide behind one or the other. They don’t try to shed one in favor of the other. They don’t apologize for their femininity nor do they try to erase their masculinity. Rather, they let both shine together in one heightened and harmonious display. It is vulnerability but it is also confidence. The result is pure, sexy, strong, glamorous power. It is literally breathtaking at times. In some ways, drag is the art of creating a separate third gender. The performers are male, the outward appearance is feminine. The appearance is not just femininity, it is femininity on steroids. Heightened and exaggerated and pushed to the realm of extreme. It is larger than life femininity. It is femininity on masculine proportions. It is femininity masculinized, and masculinity feminized. It is feminine heart with masculine soul; feminine kit with masculine caboodle. 

Raven. A Fierce Queen

            The power of drag queens is their ability to transcend both genders while fully embodying each. To find strength in their femininity and glamour in their masculinity. And it is that, I think is what warms the little cockles of my tender heart. For though I have since come to not just tolerate but celebrate both my sex and my femininity, drag still speaks to that little girl I used to be, the one who felt lost in the chasm between her masculinity and femininity. Drag shows that little girl how to embrace both and not apologize for either. It shows her how to shed the shame and find the love. It tells her that she is fine and good the way she is.

            At least, I think that explains part why I love drag so much. Next time, I will explore how being a drag queen is not altogether different from being a writer.  But now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel a peculiar need to go out and rescue a kitty or dandle some child upon my knee.