Feminism and Drag Queens

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I was just wondering if anyone else shared the same opinion as me and this article;

www.feministcurrent.com/2014/04/25/why-has-drag-escaped-critique-from-feminists-and-the-lgbtq-community/

I've always been uncomfortable with drag, but it's got worse recently as shows like RuPaul's drag race have started gaining widespread acclaim. I'll add as a disclaimer that this is nothing to do with homophobia.

Thoughts?

"No, I don't think women are involved at all. I don't think drag is a celebration of women at all - I think it's a celebration of sparkles and makeup, and probably stereotypical femininity - but that it's entirely divorced from women as a sex"

But those sparkles/makeup/dresses are a misogynistic cultural signifier of "woman" as both the gender and the sex. So the men are performing a pisstake version of woman as a sex, by aping a grotesque caricature. That is at best a bit rude.

I guess what you are saying is pick your battles, and that there are more directly harmful versions of misogynistic behaviour.

My POV is that this stuff being allowed and celebrated, contributes to the position of women in society. We can be ridiculed and mocked as a form of performance. As I said, the same scenario where race rather than sex was being lampooned would be, correctly, met with horror.

I see what you mean Bird, I guess I feel an extra disconnect because the type of 'woman' they're dressing up as is not a natural thing for anyone - any woman dressed like would also be performing - the amount of effort it takes to look like that is phenomenal - TBH I think it's only a difference in style of makeup between them and the Kardashians (ie drag is heavy stage makeup, the Kardashians wear heavy 'natural' makeup - but watching either do their face spookily similar)

The difference between the drag I see on drag race, and pantomime dames (who I absolutely hate with a passion - see also Mrs Browns boys) is that dames are taking the mick out of women as concept - a normal woman, I feel like they're laughing at women as a whole package rather than the queens on drag race who feel more like they'd be laughing with me at what they have to go through to look like that.

Dunno. I went into watching drag race expecting to hate it, and the whole concept, and came out thinking it just didn't seem at all as I expected.

Agree with every point Spaghetti

Hi spaghetti what's all this weird "drag" approach to beauty all about? You mention the Kardashians, all over Instagram/YouTube etc there are women and girls layering on the foundation etc to create an appearance of hyper feminine and sexual features. Obviously drag isn't the root, but what is? What's going on that both the male drag community and women want to create or ape this hyper female personality?? That's why I find it difficult to think of drag as something separate to notions of "women".

I love a bit of makeup and am a trained dab hand with a brush, so my questions are not about makeup itself.

Why is it that drag artists choose to replicate and exaggerate female features, rather than anything else they might do with paint? If it's a celebration of their own personality and glitter etc?

Mrs Brown/Dame etc are gross, and we are invited to enjoy them as a ridiculous. But when the makeup and clothes are beautiful, it seems easier to stomach.

Look at the Trans community, people who "pass" are more easily accepted. Such as the rest of life, you often can get an easier ride for your actions if you are "beautiful".

At one end of the spectrum is Mrs Brown - which offends me, but I find it hard to articulate why.

Drag, at the other end of the spectrum, does not. It's not men telling me how to be a woman. If anything I think it empowers men to step beyond masculine gender norms and express themselves more freely. They then take it to extremes, because extremes are entertaining.

Somewhere in the middle is the pantomime dame.

I don't like drag or pantomime dames. I agree it's womanface.

I quite enjoy Mrs Brown's Boys although I realise this is inconsistent and I can't quite say why. Maybe because Mrs Brown is based on a very ordinary female character, not hypersexualised or OTT? I think I'd enjoy it just as much if Mrs Brown was played by a woman.

I find Mrs Brown really offensive although I have to admit I've never seen more than a couple of minutes and the odd trailer. It seems to me only to exist to mock older women.

I expect I am just very shallow but I find the stereotype that older women are dowdy,lumpy, becardiganed, bobble-permed frumps far more misogynistic than RuPaul's exotic birds of paradise.

I suppose it might be because urban tribal dressing fascinates me anyway. Punks, Goths, Mods, New Romantics, even skin heads in their boots and Crombie coats had a strange elegance about them. (And if This is England is to believed not originally or necessarily racist before someone pulls me up on that last one )

lassi agree, visually drag can be glorious, and like you I love a bit of what you describe as tribal dressing. It makes this whole thing very difficult to look beyond. Also, I bet a lot of folk involved don't really think about the context. I don't imagine for a minute that everyone involved with or who watched the "black and white minstrel show" etc, were thinking about the effect of positioning and lampooning black people.

And agree, Mrs Brown is beyond the pale.

I'm trying to analyse why I rather like a lot of drag (as long as it's not specifically denigrating women) and am always on for a cross-dressing party.

I think it's because it's about play, and joy, and performing, and experimenting, rather than the ghastly self-righteous entitlement that characterises a certain type of trans activist. As someone said above, it's like being a mediaeval Fool - the day everyone dresses up as their opposite and the peasant gets to play the king. Everyone involved knows what the real situation is, but enjoys subverting it occasionally with maximum silliness.

Basically, it's Grayson Perry rather than Daniel(le) Muscato.

I am in a marriage with a cross dresser, and in my solo experience, cross dressing is all about a misogynistic view of women. Dressing as a role play of subservience and sexiness. A stress relief/sexy thing where the man feels free of the pressures of being a man. This probably informs (clouds) my view!

I'm very conflicted about drag. I recently spoke to a woman who performs in drag as a man. Unfortunately we were at a work thing so it wasn't appropriate for me to grill her about it (she made a throw away remark that I couldn't resist following up). I sat through one episode of Drag Race but couldn't deal with the self absorption (I don't think I like any reality TV).

I feel very uncomfortable with Mrs Brown's Boys. However, when it started as a 5 minute radio slot 25ish years ago, I remember it being very different. Maybe it was because it was something new, or good scripting, or because I was a teen, but it was genuinely funny. Now, on TV? Not so much.

I expect I am just very shallow but I find the stereotype that older women are dowdy,lumpy, becardiganed, bobble-permed frumps far more misogynistic than RuPaul's exotic birds of paradise.

But loads of older women do dress like this and there's nothing wrong with it. We don't use words like 'dowdy' and 'frumpy' for men. They are allowed to drift off into comfortable cardigan-land without criticism.

Women shouldn't have to be visually glorious or sartorially fabulous to have worth. We shouldn't have to obsessively perform femininity til the day we die (or ever, really). Men aren't doing this shit.

The first image here is of the WI annual conference, the year they gave Blair a slow hand clap. Women can be 'frumpy', 'dowdy' and 'lumpy' and still rock.

I suppose that's why I find the more glamorous forms of drag more offensive. They equate womanhood with the performance - with making oneself a beautiful object to be looked at. It's the glorification of the gendered bullshit itself that I find so unpleasant, when this same gendered bullshit is used to oppress women.

I've asked on here before about why it's not ok for a white man to dress up as a black man, but it IS ok for a man to dress up as a parody of a woman.
I was told I was being ridiculous, and it's not the same thing.
I still don't get it though.

Hi spaghetti what's all this weird "drag" approach to beauty all about?

I really don't know - I saw a video where a girl put layer after layer of foundation on (as an experiment, until the bottle ran out) and her face slowly lost all semblance of life - it was very weird.

Young people have always spent an inordinate amount of time on their appearance - I remember spending ages in front of the mirror with comb and gel trying to get my hair 'just so' - as did so many other kids - male and female. I think that this highly contoured and stylised makeup is another incarnation of 80s crimped massive hair - I think that the similarity to drag is just that they're both very extreme - drag is that level more still though - stage makeup rather than even the really heavy day to day that some women and girls wear.

Pencils I still think Mrs Brown is a mocking caricature of older woman. It is a pantomime dame.

Pencils why not cast a real life older actress in the part? There are plenty of them looking for parts.

Why is it supposed to be funny because Mrs Brown is really a man? If the lines are funny surely they would stand up if spoken by a real women?

That's the odd thing, Lass. The humour is not really centred on the fact it's a man dressed as a woman at all, it's just a daft family sitcom. As I said above I'd probably enjoy it as much if Mrs Brown was played by a woman

I'm not trying to claim it's the greatest show on TV or the funniest thing I've ever seen. It's a naff sitcom that makes me laugh occasionally and somehow fails to offend me even though I agree overall that drag is offensive womanface.

Drag queens mock masculinity, not femininity. Masculinity is policed just as much as femininity is, and men who behave femininely and therefore thought to be "gay" suffer. Growing up they're bullied, ostracised, physically attacked - making themselves as outrageously glamazonian as they can by dragging themselves up becomes a big "fuck you" to people who say you can't wear dresses, heels and sparkles as a man.

And I don't know about you, but heels, hair, makeup - these things have NOTHING to do with being a woman for me. I love drag partly because it takes the trappings of femininity and makes it something that anyone can choose to partake in if they enjoy it - whereas in our society at the moment it's something that feels forced on women, and if we don't do it we have to justify why not. We have to make an active choice not to partake, and having to be non-conformist in this way affects how we navigate the world. Imagine a world where you could choose to do these things or not, based purely on whether you enjoyed doing them or not, NOT because it was expected of your entire gender.

*and are therefore thought...

I feel very uncomfortable with the Lady Boys of Bangkok. They seem to be very popular with certain types of all female nights out. I can't get over the fact that they are young men who have taken lots of chemicals in order to look female, and for some, though not all, it may be the only way they feel they can escape poverty.

For me it's about fetishisation of women in all aspects of their life in order to control it. Too curvy? I'll love you anyway. Too tall, I'm really into tall women and big feet are my thing. 'wow you're intelligent, but not as intelligent as me, I really love intelligent women.

Most drag queens only mimic older females who are seen as hilarious/sad in their attempt to retain femininity. The jokes, the dress, the act is just smutty and disrespectful.

I note the universal condemnation of Rachel Dolezal and her attempt to explore what she felt were the black elements of her personality and compare that to the silence around drag etc. I don't get it.

I don't like drag. It feels like fetishisation at best and misogyny at worst.

I really don't think you can use Rachel dozeal as a comparison. She profited off her blackface: her career was as the head of a black civil rights organisation! She lied about her identity, every single day, and she betrayed a lot of people that put their trust in her.

Whereas drag queens don't lie. They're men in dresses and heels and OTT makeup, and they're FABULOUS doing it. They only get dressed up every now and then and when they do, everyone is in on it. Looking like a woman is not the point. It's about looking other-worldly and stage-y, while wearing clothes that society says is not appropriate for their gender.

It is also not true that drag queens "mostly mimic older women". I have never seen a drag queen try to imitate a woman, full stop. Let alone an older woman. Are you confusing drag queens with mrs brown's boys? B/c they're NOT the same thing. Drag queens are acting within their own queer scene, with its own markers, references and language. Drag queens are not interested in going on stage and acting like a woman: they sing, they act, they monologue, they have comedy and beauty, and those those things are genderless.