Drag Ethnographic Study

This piece has a woman looking at her reflection in a shattered mirror, the bold text reads, ‘You Are Not Yourself.’ I chose to discuss this piece first because of its relevance to our most recent reading, The Last Time I Wore A Dress, by Daphne Scholinski. It encapsulates the stereotype that society has created for what is considered appropriate and inappropriate for someone to identify as a female. Throughout the book, Daphne struggles with her gender identity, she writes, “It was the doctors who came up with the idea that I was “an inappropriate female” – that my mouthy ways were a sign of deep unease in my female nature and that if I learned tips about eyeliner and foundation, I’d be a lot better off” (Scholinski 6). In our lecture about

In today’s society we have created this sense of identity that we can either reveal and or hide behind that can include either a computer screen, our skin, or even who we want people to think we are. In John Berger’s essay Ways of Seeing, he breaks down the misogynistic view we have on woman by comparing what it is to be naked versus being simply nude. In Neal Gabler’s essay Our Celebrities, Ourselves, the idealized celebrity is brought down to human level and formed into a never ending narrative that categorizes them into the people they are seen as versus the people they actually are. Berger criticizes the disguise a woman must wear as being surveyed by men in the form of art yet Gabblers idea of a disguise is more like a role a celebrity

In the words of RuPaul, one of the most well known drag queens in todays times, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love someone else.” Since the 1500s, men can be seen dressing up as women for entertainment and comedic effect, but since then drag has evolved from just grand performances to a symbol for acceptance and individuality. Recently, drag has been dissected and looked at under a microscope by those who only see what is on the sparkly surface. What has been found is that drag culture is much more that its initial appearance, but that there is an entire set of values that define what drag truly is, one of which, and probably the most popular, is being confident in ones identity. Being able to take on an alter

In the essay “Don’t Look Now: The Male Pin-Up” by Richard Dyer, the author analyzes how male and female models look at the spectator. His argument is that men are always photographed in an active manner, and the women are just there sitting passively. Men do this because they cannot be feminine in any manner or otherwise they face a backlash from society. His goal in this essay is to reveal this cultural phenomenon to the reader by stating what the model’s look represents and the activity of models in images. Throughout this essay I will be analyzing how Dyer explains these concepts to inform the reader.

While the speaker has succeeded in providing an enhanced image of the performer, the act of assigning meaning to the performance and the representation used holds the capacity to limit the experience. As the speaker continues to reconfigure her strip tease into a “[graceful] and calm” artistic dance, he makes a simultaneous attempt to distance himself from the crowd, making no mention of his gender or race directly (5). However, the speaker’s attempt to portray the dancer from objective eyes falters as his

`Nevertheless Stephanie’s whole article gets masked by expert claims which consist of topics that are not connected to the main idea of the article at hand. Stephanie leans on controversial claims from experts who have PhD’s to make up her whole entire paper. Through her use of various references she tries to support her argument mainly through text. The article leads into sections such as “SOCCER HEADING MAKES A BAD HAIR DAY” (Hanes484) and “SEXY’S NOT ABOUT SEX, ITS ABOUT SHOPPING’’ (Hanes487). She uses those sections to create different aspects of sexualization and cause the reader to reflect on the given information. With that being said these sections do state things about how the media plays on hyper sexualized images and girls becoming women too fast. However the main purpose of the article gets lost upon topic such as pornography, sexy clothing and sexting. If the organizational use of research and personal experiences had tied into Stephanie’s original claim against the Disney Princesses Empire her article would have been more put together.

Clare Croft’s article talks about the physical responses to prompts, as she removes the word “girl” from rehearsals and gives them words such as “bossy” or “scarred.” With this she achieves a less hetero-normative performance as it removed the idea’s of femineity and gender. She also talks of the loudness of the male actors in comparison to the females, and how it draws the eye away. This is one way in which IF THERE’S NOT DANCING AT THE REVOLUTION, I’M NOT COMING… achieves feminist goals. By removing the male from the stage, directing the focus to the Julia Croft and paying attention to her representations of gender.

Within popular culture today, objectified female bodies can be represented everywhere from advertising images to magazine covers, television, music and many more. Through these media institutions, we allow them to construct social identities in ways that allow us to understand what it means to be black, white, Asian, male or female etc. Within many popular culture mediums such as music, stereotypical representations of racially marked female bodies are often formed. Thus, these representations also have the ability to create stories about a certain culture. In music videos, it does not go unnoticed that women are portrayed as objects whose objectives are to pleasure men. In this paper, I will argue how racially marked female bodies are represented. This paper will mainly focus on how these racially marked women are depicted in the hip hop culture. To demonstrate this, I will draw examples by using award winning music videos by Nicki Minaj, R.Kelly, 50 cent to exemplify representations of the female body and how they are objectified as sex objects. In conclusion, we will be able to see how the female bodies are used in mainstream hip hop videos to convey seductively.

Consider it: A naked bald figure shouts, “To be, or not to be” (3.1.56) / “I eject all the sperm I have received” (Müller 214), in a hyperfeminine body with a still intact penis. In August 2014, Canadian transgender performance artist Nina Arsenault performed selections of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine at the Palais des Papes in I AM, directed by Lemi Ponifasio. Arsenault is a multi-disciplinary artist who has had more than sixty cosmetic procedures to feminize and beautify her formerly male body; yet she decided to retain her penis. The corporeality of Arsenault’s body records the surgical modifications she has made to her own body, including silicone injections, facelifts and other procedures. This transformation was driven by the virtuosic intent of becoming her own ideal version of

In their study, “Exploring Masquerade Dress at Trinidad Carnival: Bikinis, Beads and Feathers and the Emergence of the Popular Pretty Mas”, Raedene Copeland and Nancy Hodges employ an ethnographic methodology to understand dress in contemporary Carnival. The authors collected research in Trinidad during the Carnival season through participant observation, interviews and photographic documentation. The interviews were conducted with nine participants aged 25-60 (five females and four males, both local and foreign-based) who were involved in planning and engaging in Carnival activities (including costume design, masquerade group directors or “mas band managers” and masqueraders). Many participants noted that traditional Carnival costuming is losing popularity as generations get older and skills such as wire-bending and costume-making are not passed on (Copeland and

For queer theorists, identity has been constructed through performativity, which is based on the opinion of Judith Butler. Butler (1990, p.25) believed that “ there is no gender identity behind the expression of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.” In other words, there is not any factor to produce the identity, but identity creates itself through performativity. One should imitate and repeat the gender expression again and again according to norms, then the identity will be constituted, which also shows that identity is fluid and constructed. Moreover, Jenkins (2000,2004) stated that a dynamic social process generates identity, so identity is not static but fluid and dynamic.

Ever since its national appearance little girls are coiffed, heavily made-up, sprayed with tanning lotion, lathered in sequins and poured into showgirl outfits. They prance about the stage, with music telling them to “Work it, own it”. The film exposes how cruel and unreasonable the process actually is. Prepubescent girls are trained to compete as sex dolls. Who knows how will this affect these children in the long run and what does it say about the society that invents and promotes such psychologically damaging

“He starts a rumor going round to the effect that he has become a eunuch; …wives, he trusts, will be intrigued” (2288). Horner’s conclusion is logical and clever, considering the fact that masks “were a widespread item of Restoration fashion[;]…they were worn both by ‘virtuous’ women and by prostitutes, with the tantalizing effect of rendering those two human categories not quite distinguishable from one another” (2288). From this social climate, he discerns that if he wears a metaphorical mask, or a unique social label, this mask might have a similar “tantalizing effect” on women; it might make discerning female wits want to discover whether the man behind the mask is truly asexual or erotic.

In music videos the dancing or portrayal of the people within these videos is often of a very sexual driven nature. This re-inforces the idea that women are sexual objects and the purpose of their being is to provide the male population with sexual satisfaction. Women portrayed are very thin and pretty, wearing heavy layers of make-up which portrays the idea that women need materialistic items such as mascara and lipstick

Cosplay promotes practice in which gender diversity is practiced resulting in a display of crossplays and genderbend cosplays. This dissertation also intends to analyse the phenomenon of cosplay that helped in sustaining diversity of gender expression and the social stereotype faced by cosplayers in the society. This study explores cosplay as a community and cosplay practiced around the world. As the costume play is relatively current and still evolving, online sources provide prompt information about cosplay therefore the influence of media on cosplay will also be studied during the