The Art Of Drag And Female Impersonation

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.

“At the beginning of the twentieth century, a homosexual subculture, uniquely Afro-American in substance, began to take shape in New York’s Harlem. Throughout the so- called Harlem Renaissance period, roughly 1920 to 1935, black lesbians and gay men were meeting each other [on] street corners, socializing in cabarets and rent parties, and worshiping in church on Sundays, creating a language, a social structure, and a complex network of institutions.” Richard Bruce Nugent, who was considered the “perfumed orchid of the New Negro Movement” said, “You did what you wanted to. Nobody was in the closet. There wasn’t any closet.”

As previously stated, drag has been present in history since the 1500’s when men would portray women in theater. But as the

While the riot grew over a span of 45 minutes, it lasted for six days. “A multiracial lot of poor gay teens, many living on the streets because they had been tossed out of homes or ran away from abuse, taunted the cops with abandon. Transvestites who camped and mocked the cops while striking blows with spiked heels showed that defiance and humor could be complementary.” (Wolf). Drag queens strutted down streets, kicking in chorus lines to mock the police. (Eilperin). The crowd erupted,

As was standard procedure, the police began roughly arresting drag queens under the three-piece clothing law and leading trans women to the bathroom to check their sex (History). In addition, they also sexually harassed and assaulted the lesbians present as they frisked them (Schlaffer). Those who were cis or straight “passing” were let go (Eastmond). A crowd of around 200 people gathered outside to protest as police violently dragged queer individuals into police cars (Schlaffer). An officer hit a lesbian over the head for voicing her discomfort as he handcuffed her, an outcry erupted, and the riot began (Schlaffer). “As the policemen pushed and hurried them to the paddy wagon, one of the drag queens elbowed a pursuing policeman in the midsection and ran in the opposite direction. Another threw a shoe, which struck another policeman,” (Eastmond). It had gotten to the point that, “They could no longer stand silently and watch members of their community be assaulted and unjustly imprisoned,” for their sexuality and gender

This article from The Huffington Post was written by a man who participated in the Stonewall Riots. The article was about his experiences at the riots and included information about how the police specifically targeted drag queens and what they did to fight back.

The lives and careers of gays and lesbians from the era of the Harlem Renaissance have been discussed at length. Numerous works have been published on the lives and careers of Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Langston Hughes, Alaine Locke, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Countee Cullen. Eric Garber’s 1989 article “A Spectacle in Color,” explores the gay and lesbian subculture during the Harlem Renaissance. He underscores the ways in which black gays and lesbians created social and intellectual spaces not only in private but public places as well. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. describes the Harlem Renaissance as being “as gay as it was black, not that it was exclusively either of these.” Most of the work produced on this era has focused on the

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.

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.

One work is “The Mythic Being” series, and a fascinating collection of pieces that Piper created. She started it in 1973, where she addressed 1970 stereotypes of a Black Male. She dressed herself in an Afro wig and mustache, and performed in public, where she demonstrated a “third world, working class, overly hostile, black male” (Bowles 5). There are ten pieces in which she uses black and white photographs, ink, tempera, and felt-tip pens. She is the performer or character in the pieces dressed as a man. She usually includes a thought bubble, in which she writes sentences such as, “I insist that from the fact of my appearance you jumped to the wrong conclusion, as you always do. You instinctively perceive me as the enemy, and nothing I say or do is sufficient to change that. You punish me for how I look, when that is both irrelevant and out of control” (Bowles 2). Another piece says, “I embody everything you most hate and fear” (Bowles 6). She depicts a stereotypical figure who “whites [fear] meeting and whom middle-class blacks did not want to be compared with” and states that it's an “unspoken racist ideology that casts blackness as masculine, heterosexual, and menial” (Bowles 6). Piper’s work uses what she

RuPaul claims in the above quote that everybody is performing, they are projecting an image in order to build a perceived persona about themselves within society. But in order to be accepted in society one most perform in a way that fits societies gender constructions. This can be explained using Butler’s explanation of Gender performativity, the idea that we learn how to perform our gender. The effect this has on individuals that do not fit these “gender norms” can be seen in the 1990 documentary film Paris is Burning (Paunparia: Paris is burning. 2012).

The Guerilla Girls are a women’s activist art group. They are masked women who came together to make change in the world of art and women’s involvement in society. GG emerged in 1985 and still are active today in New York after 30 years of the emergence of the group. The Guerilla Girls used posters with real statistics to show awareness of sexism in the art world and the discrimination of women in politics as well as in the mass media. The Guerrilla Girls spread awareness of sexism in art, discrimination in politics and the mass media through their workshops, performances, and posters.

The world of drag is fascinating in that the performers bend and blend the concepts of sex, gender, and sex category. Drag kings and queens dress up and perform using physical cues such as the clothing, accessories, and body language that are typically associated with the opposite gender and often the opposite sex, as those two ideas can be mutually exclusive. People’s drag personas sometimes directly mirror their day to day gender presentation, and sometimes subvert it. Those who identify and present as androgynous or genderqueer in “real life” still often very much enjoy embodying a much more “gendered” persona onstage as a separate means of expression. An important thing to note is that although the vast majority of “dragons” are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community, straight, cisgender kings and queens also exist. It's important to eradicate the stigma that drag kings and queens are confused or repressed in their everyday gender identity. Drag is moreso a way for performers to express themselves in an art form based in both comedy and drama - just like any other form of entertainment. This past weekend on February 15th, I performed in Syracuse University’s Pride Union Drag Show. I’m a big fan of drag shows, so for me performing was a fun way to further connect myself to the drag community. By watching and speaking to the other performers, I was able to better understand the reasons

This paper will be discussing the cosplay, or costume play, subculture. In this paper, it will also go over who makes up this particular subculture, what it takes to be a cosplayer, what this subculture does for society, how society sees those who participate in it, how and when it came to be, most famous cosplay costumes, and what this subculture provides for those who take part in it.

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.