Drag Queens In LGBT Culture

The movie “Paris Is Burning” is a documentary film exploring race, gender, and sexuality within the African-American and Latino gay and transgender communities of the ball culture of New York in the mid-to-late 1980’s. Ball culture is a term used to describe the underground sub-culture of LGBT people who “walk” or compete for trophies in events known as balls. The film chronicles the ostentatiously-arranged competitions in which participants, within a very specific theme, must walk while being judged on criteria such as the authenticity and beauty of their apparel and their dancing ability. Much of the film shows footage of actual balls interspersed with interviews of prominent members of this drag scene. The film shows people of different gender identities and their varied methods of expressing themselves while also exploring how they cope with racism, AIDS, poverty, and homophobia.

Intro: Like various art forms such as film, television, and literature allows artists to express their own sense of identity, that being nationality, race, class, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. In this case, Queen uses music to illustrate the themes of gender and sexuality through their music video I Want to Break Free (1983). This essay will attempt to discuss how Queen’s music video, I Want to Break Free, explores queerness in relation to queer theory. Firstly, I will introduce the ideas and arguments of queer theory through Gilbert Herdt article Same Sex Different Cultures (1997). I will then discuss Queen’s portrayal of drag within the music video and how it can be seen as queer rather than heterosexual. Lastly, I will argue that

However, this show has recently taken over social media and has changed the way society views drag as well as what it stands for. Being able to get a first hand look at these men’s personal stories as well as being able to see their identity and what it means to them has given society a clearer and deeper understanding as to what drag really is.

Women’s music came from radical, grassroots origins in the 1970s thanks to contributions by brave women, mostly lesbians (Mosbacher, 2002). These women used non-violent, peaceful force to forge their own way into the music industry. It was a peaceful yet political revolution of togetherness and liberation. It brought together women of different backgrounds who produced easy-listening, mellow harmonies played with lyrics filled with tumultuous

In recent years, historians and scholars, specifically Susannah Walker, Noliwe Rooks, and Amoaba Gooden, have begun to assiduously examine African American beauty culture from a racial and gender perspective. Accordingly, these historians and scholars now suggest that African American beauty culture was profoundly influenced by the racial and gender politics of the early twentieth-century time period. For example, in her book titled Style & Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975, historian Susannah Walker asserts that African American beauty culture was distinctly unique from other forms of beauty culture because it “explicitly reflected and articulated twentieth-century racial politics in the United States.” Similarly, Amoaba Gooden, a pan-African studies professor at Kent State University, surmises that racialized notions of feminine

In this paper, I will examine how women of color who deal with the lack of acceptance growing up because of their lesbianism help shape and/or will shape them to be future role models for LGBT people around the world. I will be using the coming of age drama, Pariah, directed and written by Dee Rees, as a primary source in order to argue how the cinematography in this film portrays Alike being the epitome of embracing one 's sexuality. I chose this film because it reminded me of a similar story that touched me in the form of a book written by Audre Lorde called Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Standing up in what Alike believed in and taking a stand by fighting back against so many in the community deal with on a everyday basis is the driving force I will use to show how she took a big giant step

Within her collection of essays, Roxane Gay uses personal anecdotes that appeal to reader’s pathos, constructing her argument that women are misrepresented and generalized in popular culture by providing an emotional tether upon which readers can latch on. For example, Gay writes of her experiences as a struggling adolescent

Raunch culture, the over-sexualiation of woman, is on the rise as we so vividly see both in the movie “Mean Girls” and Ariel Levy’s, a well-known journalist and author’s, article titled Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture”. The movie “Mean Girls” tells the story of a highschool girl, Cady Heron, who moves to the country and to her first public school. She discovers that the best way to survive is to try to blend in with the norms that society provides. In her case, she befriends a group of girls who only focus on their sexual appearances, and belittling the others around them to feel more powerful and feminine in their own eyes. This theme closely relates to Ariel Levy’s article where she awes at the change of our society with statements such as, “Its stars who kept talking about “strong women” and “empowerment,” who were dressed in alternating soft-porn styles-- as massage parlor geishas, dominatrixes, yodeling Heidis in alpine bustiers”.

Strong support with the black community might have been affected by the connotation between African American women athletes and “mannish” lesbianism. Factually, European American ethnic thought categorized African American women as violent, rough, zealous, and physical which are the same qualities assigned to masculinity and sport. The image of the manly lesbian athlete had an unswerving effect on women competitors, strategies of athletic organizations, and the overall fame of women’s sport.

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.

Transgender characters in scripted television can seem like a phenomenon. The very fact that there are shows on air that feature transgender characters in reoccurring or starring roles is a huge step for the transgender community. Visibility in the media is the first step in the long journey of erasing the bias and hate that the transgender population faces. However, these steps are only productive if the depictions are positive. Television helps inform and shape the public opinion of the transgender community, and has a strong effect on the formation of self-identity when watched by transgender individuals. Using examples from The Golden Girls, Matlock, Orange is the New Black, The L Word, and Transparent, this paper shows common tropes and characters of transgender representation. Although scripted television shows have become more inclusive in regards to transgender visibility, the onscreen depiction of transgender individuals is still misguided.

In Lucille Clifton’s poem “Homage to my Hips,” the female speaker explores, praises, and celebrates her own sexuality despite living in a confined society where people thought that having dark skin was not beautiful. Literary critic K. Anthony Appiah notes in his essay titled Race that, “we cannot deny that having one set of heritable characteristics—dark skin…can have profound psychological and social consequences…in societies…”(285) Despite the society in which the speaker of the poem lives, she to some degree turns the tables on the statement that Appiah makes in one of his essays. Clifton masters this through form, meter and precise word choice and the speaker is able to feel comfortable with her body and blackness in a society that rejects these “heritable characteristics.”

On 3 October 2015, feminist and celebrity entrepreneur, Amber Rose, hosted the Amber Rose SlutWalk in Los Angeles. The event was highly successful in its “cause against sexual injustice, victim blaming, derogatory labelling, and gender inequality” with activism not only taking place in the streets of Los Angeles but through extensive online projects to push the movement throughout the online sphere (Amber Rose SlutWalk 2015). Respectively, Johnston and Longhurst (2009, 159-160) emphasise that “sexed bodies are constructed through different social and cultural entanglements and through different spaces and places” and that the internet acts as an important source of material on sex and sexuality, reflecting and reinforcing social trends and conversations that are happening in ‘real’ space. Johnston and Longhurst’s (2009) notions of sexed bodies and spaces, theoretical ideas surrounding third-wave feminism and postfeminism, as well as arguments encompassing the contemporary SlutWalk movement itself, allow for a detailed analysis of the role of the internet in modern activism and, in particular, in the recent Amber Rose SlutWalk. Ultimately, the Amber Rose SlutWalk illustrates how online space can be used in challenging the complex power relations that surround sexuality and in furthering the inclusion of diverse sexual bodies.

Hollywood and the American entertainment industry are filled with talented, attractive, and eligible celebrity lesbians. Many of these women are an inspiration to the gay and lesbian community throughout the United States and the world who still struggle to feel comfortable with their sexuality and their place in society. Yet many of these celebrity lesbians are among the most beautiful and popular people in Hollywood and they are contributing to the growth and acceptance of the LGBT community as they openly declare their sexuality.

Now this is where I destroy the idea that only queer men do drag. Drag is extremely inclusive and anyone can join in on the fun. For example we have drag kings, bio queens, even young aspiring queens like 8 year old Lactacia are welcome. Drag kings can be defined as women and dressed as men for performance and entertainment. Performers like Landon Cider, Robin Heartz, and Spikey Van Dykey. Bio queens on the other hand are women dressed as an exaggerated idea of being female. Women such as Tayla Macdonald, the girls of Drag Coven Aka Courtney Conquer and Ja’mie Queen West, and Lucy Garland are well known in the community. As for Lactacia, the 8 year old drag queen the young queen have recently blown up in the media and the world of drag. Lactacia and their mother recently did an interview with Elle Magazine where they were asked how the 8 year old got into drag, like many others including myself it all started with a little show called Rupaul’s Drag Race. Drag Race is a reality competition show where they find the next drag superstar. Much like Americas Next Top Model, but with much more charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent. Through the growing popularity of the show it is spreading the art of drag and the magic behind it. Not only has casted a spell on Lactacia and I, but millions of others as well.