Media Notes / Drag Queen

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Drag queens are performers who dress as oft-exaggerated caricatures of gender to entertain. While the archetypal drag queen is a cisgender man dressing as a woman, they can just as easily be transgender, non-binary, cisgender women (in male or female drag), etc. Unlike Transgender women and Crossdressers, men who are drag queens wear women's clothing only on special occasions. They are usually Camp Gay men who sometimes like to get that little bit more flamboyant by dressing up as a tornado that's just rushed through a mountain of candyfloss and glitter. They can get dolled up for a variety of reasons: paid entertainers, runway models, cosplayers, etc. Many a Gay Bar features drag queens as regular performers, and a select few have gone on to mainstream success as well.

Drag queens on TV are usually sharp-tongued and witty, matching the stage personas of real-life professional stage performers. When they're not the main character themselves, they may provide the hero with world-weary advice or help put forward a "just be yourself" Aesop.

Many cultures around the globe have a theatre tradition of crossdressing, such as the UK's pantomime dames, Japan's onnagata, and comedians with a female persona like Barry Humphries (Dame Edna) and Tyler Perry (Madea). However, these are usually heterosexual men performing for general audiences, whereas drag is specific to LGBTQ culture. Drag artists primarily perform at gay bars, Pride festivals, and other queer-centric events, and may take part in community activism outside of performing.

Note that it's not universal for a drag queen to be campy and larger than life. In general, they can be divided into at least three broad categories:

• Camp Queens are your stereotypical caricatures of female fashion. This is where you get the Uncanny Valley Makeup, outrageous costumes, etc. Their performances tend to be more comedic. Cisgender women who perform as drag queens tend to fall under this category.
• Fishy Queens, also known as "Female Illusionists," are much more subdued in presentation and tend to be more serious, and are so named because of their artform involves attempting to pass as a beautiful cisgender woman (aka "serving up fish"). Fishy queens often compete in drag pageants, model high fashion, and/or work as celebrity impersonators. The fish metaphor, while decades-old slang in ball culture, is somewhat polarizing these days due to its vulgarity, so "Femme Queen" is seen as an acceptable substitute.
• Genderfuck Queens blend masculine and feminine elements to completely fuck what we know as gender. Beards, body hair, baldness, toplessness, masculine attire with feminine makeup, and so on. Avant-garde fashion and androgyny are their game.

In some quarters, drag queens are subject to controversy; for example, conservative Moral Guardians frequently dislike the emerging phenomenon of Drag Queen Story Hour, events at which drag queens entertain small children. Other criticisms come from feminists, who sometimes believe men performing as drag queens is demeaning to women — that what it means is for male entertainers to "put on dresses, make up and high heels and act out every offensive stereotype of women (bitchy, catty, dumb, slutty, etc.)," to quote lesbian activist Mary Cheney. The counterargument is that drag queens really subvert and deconstruct gender norms by making fun of traditional femininity, thus helping to free both men and women from stereotypical expectations. RuPaul, for instance, has said that he should not be assumed to be trying to emulate an actual woman, as scant few actual women routinely dress like drag queens (i.e. huge wigs, garish makeup, outrageous outfits, impractically high heels, etc.).

The Distaff (ahem) Counterpart is the Drag King — most often a woman or transgender man performing masculinity with levels of exaggeration similar to a Drag Queen. They'll bind their breasts (if necessary), pencil in or glue on a beard, and either keep their hair short or cover it under a hat. And then stuff a sock in their pants. Kings tend go for a dapper, thuggish, cowboy, or rocker persona.

Some drag performers also happen to be transgender, but one doesn't indicate the other. Those who are will still ham it up in their performances. As RuPaul's Drag Race contestant Monica Beverly Hillz put it, "Trans is who I am, drag is what I do."