Thoughts on Camp

What I don't think is that exaggerated camp behaviour is innate. I'm not saying men shouldn't do it if they really enjoy making lots of hand gestures etc but head tilt, hand waving, posing & dainty walking etc are not how anyone naturally behaves.

I do think part of it may be that there's pressure to conform within the gay community in some areas? I know some lesbians who naturally dress feminine etc but speak about feeling pressure to have short hair etc when they came out bc they thought that was what you did, and also wanted to be read as gay to make getting dates easier.

Otoh there is this article that was much-cited when it came out in 2017 bc it talked from the inside about the way many gay men treat each other badly.

One man quoted (Grant) said he became self-conscious of how he stood, 'hands on hips, one leg slightly cocked like a Rockette'. There's nothing wrong with that & he shouldn't have felt pressured to change it. Otoh I don't know any women who habitually stand like that, feminine ones included.

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gay-loneliness/

I think it's unquestionable and not a bad thing that many gay men are a bit more drawn than the average man to more feminine stuff. That goes from the little boy who likes dolls & dresses etc (obvs that DOENSN'T mean a boy will be gay, but many gay men have such tales) to the disproportionate number of gay men in creative industries, dance, fashion etc, as well as being more likely to be in caring professions.

There's discussion of the so-called gay voice (higher than average) which I think is probably true for some gay men naturally & that's fine. Just as apparently more lesbians than average have a bit lower voices, though I don't think that's a huge thing.

gosh that's awful
I feel like I should apologise on behalf of straight women everywhere
but wrt to 'camp' and gay men, I've recently come across 2 gay men who you could describe as camp in manner and speech but not at all feminine in looks or dress. And then there are accounts of gay men being teased or worse for 'feminine' (=camp?) speech/gait/gesture which they describe as involuntary, which makes me wonder where it all comes from

Julian and my-friend-Sandy😁
It was also many people's introduction to Polari, wasn't it?

There has always been a gay/lesbian underground culture where men dressed up as women and referred to each other as 'she', but how it became national policy is one for future social scientists!

and there have always been very butch lesbians who tried to pass as men - they probably felt that the only way to attract women was to be as much like a man as possible. I think there's something very sad about that, and one of the improvements in lesbian culture is that you don't have to deny your woman-ness to attract other women.
I think that might be the influence of feminism - another one for the social scientists, but in my own case, discovering feminism was really important as I learnt to value and respect the women I was attracted to, and value and respect myself as a woman instead of a failed man.

This process was hastened by overhearing my [and soon to be ex] first girlfriend saying to a friend of hers that I was fun to be with, but only until a man came along...
Believe me, that caused some very rapid and very far-reaching thoughts about my sexuality and identity, I was never again going to be any non-lesbian's next best thing until Mr Right came along😠

I do find it odd. Gay men are often naturally a bit more feminine than the average man, which is fine. But no woman or man for that matter naturally behaves like that. Butch lesbians in contrast generally behave how they want to. There are some who act in a stylised way but that's a minority

Exactly. Susan Sontag said some worthwhile things in her essays and it's no self-complimemt to dismiss her so sniffily
I'd also recommend the recent bio.

yes, I remember hearing some of those shows, usually with my parents and tbh I'm sure a LOT of it was going right over our heads

@MarieDeGournay- it occurred to to me that for those of us of a certain age, our first exposure to ‘camp’ was via the classic radio comedy shows, broadcast at prime time and full of double entendres etc. These were from a time when male homosexual acts were illegal in the U.K., so they were properly subversive - men pushing back against a repressive society, nothing to do with women at all. I’m not sure if ‘camp’ is very much related to drag at all.

Maybe the difference between different men dressing up as women is that some men seem to be getting off on it? In public? And some seem to just want to be nasty to women?

I agree with this

Why is it that Chris has to dance in character? Or is that his choice?

Why Does Alex Kingston not appear as Dr Elizabeth Corday or River Song? Why does she appear as herself?

Surely the whole point is that one takes a variety of people... if they're a politician we get to see a different side to them; if they're an entertainer we get to see the real them?

It makes no sense that a certain type of entertainer has to perform on Strictly in character, almost as if the BBC is unwilling to allow anyone misogynistic on the BBC unless they are in full on misogyny mode.

I too would like to see Chris dance as Chris some weeks. I think the novelty of the drag sex clown look is going to wear off as the series progresses, and will look particularly clunky with some dances.

It would be nice to see more camp men and butch women on telly generally.

I notice most of the discussion has been around drag, whereas the OP was about camp.

There was a time when portraying gay men as mincing, limp-wristed 'fairies' was considered deeply offensive, homophobic stereotyping. Which of course it was.
The counter argument was that gay men are just ordinary men, they come in all shapes and sizes and styles.

I've noticed a resurgence of campness amongst gay men in the media - the head tilt, the exaggerated pronunciation, the hand-waving, the posing, the dainty walking...
What's different now is that the performer of all this campness may well be wearing 'standard' men's clothes, and even a beard, so the campness is all in the gestures and behaviour.

It has just occurred to me that Jack in Will&Grace exemplified that, he looked like any bloke, until he started speaking and moving. [An absolutely brilliant acting performance, whatever you think of him or the programme!]
I wonder was he a leader, or was he expressing a trend already in existence amongst gay men in the US?

I saw something on TV recently that illustrated this: a gay man presenting a home makeover programme - very standard male attire+ beard, combined with incongruous camp gestures and speech. He came over all 'girly' when it came to using power tools, and very camply said he was too frightened of them so he'd leave them to the expert. Who happened to be a woman.

So he was too 'girly' to use power tools, but a woman isn't too 'girly'..

I'd say she meant his drag act tbh. There wouldn't have been much elegance in his Ugly Sister or Old Mother Riley!

Part of his brilliance was the unsettling contrast between his dress / make up / bouffant hair and his deep voice . And cockney accent . Although he was born in Cork he grew up in London. He remained a practicing Catholic though. There's no way Danny would have done drag for an audience of children.

Same with Paul O Grady ? He quietly retired Lily Savage . You might say he got ahead of the story.

So men who pretend to be women, but claim not to be pretending, instead claiming to literally be women, want to enter a competition for men who pretend to be women? Have I got that right?

I agree it is the mockery that is the joke and specifically the mockery of the less privileged or powerful in society, no longer acceptable in relation to ethnic minorities but fine if it’s women. There is another level which is the nature of the feminine behaviour and characteristics being mocked. These are based on the strategies women adopt to be accepted by men or attain social advantage i.e. sexualised dressing, big pouty lips, boobs, giggling, simpering, flirtatious behaviour - all grossly exaggerated in drag but nevertheless based in reality. So we have the more powerful class, men, mocking the behaviours women use to curry favour with men. It’s uncomfortable how much they despise us for it and how women go along with the “joke”.

I don’t watch strictly or any of the Ru Paul type of things…
In my mind, ‘camp’ is the realm of ‘effeminate’, mostly gay men who don’t parody women. I don’t know if there are many in mainstream media now - in my era the example would be Julian Clary. Afaik his spectacularly garbed pantomime characters aren’t traditional ‘dames’, they’re more ‘the spirit of…’ entities.

Maybe the males who parody women don’t have his talent?

French & Saunders Fat Old Men series has a certain (disturbing) charm ... https://

Certainly, at my secondary school, the staff panto put several into Dick Whittington 🫣 - that was the actresses though. I can't speak for family pantos since that's the only one I've been to..

Panto is innocent and child oriented.
The dames I've seen have been all about smuggling in smutty jokes over the kids' heads.

The reason why men dressing up as women is funny and women dressing as men isn’t (and why TIMs are considered vulnerable whilst TIFs aren’t) is that males are the more powerful class. Women as men are levelling up (makes sense/ aspirational) whilst men pretending to be women is ridiculous / humiliating for them.
Masculine apparel and mannerisms are not funny and not good comedy fodder, frivolous and silly women’s apparel and mannerisms = bloody hilarious.
Tgis is why I hate drag!

I'm also bored with camp. Everything having to be playful, subversive, self-aware, frivolous: so tedious. I'm more interested in things being intelligent and serious these days. Parody has lost its point, if we must have something, let it be satire. But better still, create new things out of the best that we have, not simply badly imitate in a knowingly trashy way.

Drag is boring. It’s no longer funny, it’s no longer boundary-breaking. When every show has a drag performer it’s no longer got the cachet of being alternative. It’s dull and predictable. I’d be happy for a total moratorium on drag for at least ten years. It can go underground in gay clubs if gay men still want it.

What people don't realise that RuPaul has also faced accusations of "transphobia" the early seasons of his show had an email section called "shemale", no way would that pass today. He also didn't want trans people to partake in his show has he basically felt that actual surgery was cheating.

He had to relent and then let trans people take part, like a female-to-male drag queen and even an actual woman being a drag queen in the UK series.