to talk me off the ledge regarding 'female impersonators'

[Morphene]

before I give a friend on facebook both barrels?

Seriously can someone explain to me how being a 'female impersonator' is a career when it seems like being an 'ethnic minority impersonator' went out of fashion about a century ago? I also don't see any 'gay impersonators' or for that matter 'male impersonators' out there either.

Why is this a thing and how can I untwist my knickers before I lose a friend who continuously posts rupaul drag race BS all over facebook?

Dresses and wigs and lashes are pretty. Society has told us this is what women should look like

And yet they're not impersonating women?

It's offensive. Woman-face is as unacceptable as the black and white minstrel show.

Gender bending feels offensive because they're messing with something we've been told to aspire to

I'm not offended by it! I actually have to do some laundry but I will say that from rupaul alone you have several million fanc (inc women!) so there's quite a lot of convincing us to be done :)

We should resume our custody battle of Priscilla another time though

I'm so tired today I can't get my head around some of the finer discussion. I can't categorise drag in the same way I find black face abhorrent.

I'm a boring, heterosexual woman who doesn't even wear make up. I don't know if it's because I spent my teens and twenties on the goth and gay scene but drag doesn't make me bat an eyelid as being anything less than another version of 'normal'.

And I'm keeping Priscilla.

Morphene -going back a couple of pages now- isn't the problem that rather than just being exaggerated caricatures of femininity that they are exaggerated caricatures of what are or are considered to be derogatory aspects of femininity? Do we really care if a woman 'butches' up and does a John Wayne walk? Nope, and why would we when it's considered positive masculinity. Being superficial, vain, dim and hypersexualised and considered shameful, that these are not innate to females makes it worse imo.

Re: origins of blackface and it being so different, males playing both male and female roles was normal at one point in time also.

And gay men and many women are every bit as mysogynistic as straight men are

whitemanc yes...there is definitely an element of that in it for me. It feels like piss take and parody because it is aspiring to a concept that women have been trying to ditch for the last n years.

It feels like they are forcing that stereotype back on us. All the 'wow she looks better than any born woman could' stuff is just so toxic.

But if the performers are called she how is it not about women?
Any other performer is just themselves when out of the role. Nobody refers to an actor as their characters name when they are just going about it ordinary life.