“Drag is womanface,” someone said to me recently. It’s a product of patriarchy and the male gaze, she explained. I get it. I’m not here to talk anyone out of that position. I don’t want to defend drag as objectively justifiable in relation to some moral system. Could I? I’m not sure. The issues are murky.
I could argue, as some do, that drag queens mock femininity—a structure that deserves critique—not womanhood. I could argue that women’s clothes don’t represent women, so I don’t care who wears them.
Or I could just speak from my heart. I’m all for consultations with the heart in the midst of modernity’s attack on humor and joy.
“The only place for high heels is in bed,” Cybill Shepherd once said. Or at least, I recall her saying it, though I can’t find proof on the web right now. I think it’s an incredibly feminist statement. Not because I agree with the malingerers who often pass for feminists these days, the ones whose social media rants distract them from vital work (like protecting Roe versus Wade), and who reduce “activism” to the dispatch of easy statements on the “empowering” nature of dark lipstick or pole dancing. Quite the contrary.
Shepherd knows that high heels aren’t for walking comfortably in. High heels are for titillating. She’s removing the veil of denial and normalization surrounding the everyday way we sexualize women.
What do men’s clothes provide that women’s don’t? Utility. They fit well, increase mobility, and provide storage for keys. What do women’s clothes provide that men’s don’t? Ribbons. Ruffles. Polka dots. Tightness, shortness, plunging necklines, peekaboo cutouts, slits, darts. These don’t facilitate the doing of things that women need to do. These inhibit the doing of things. Women’s clothes have one purpose: decoration.
Drag is defined as “the performance of gender, especially femininity, through clothing.”
Women’s clothes are drag, even on women. There is never any reason to don them except to make a “feminine” display of oneself, to some degree or other. A rare exception is the sports bra, which provides comfort during exercise.
Thus, drag queens may be the only people making appropriate use of women’s clothing.
Having spent a great portion of my youth hanging out in gay bars and assisting drag shows behind the scenes, I know a few drag queens.
They love glamour. They love movie stars. They are interested in theater, and costume design, and the artistry of stage makeup. They’re great at thrift store shopping, crafting, and sewing, and they know how to repair that moth-eaten floor-length sequined gown they found for $5 at the Salvation Army.
They are young and gay and waifish with perfect skin, and that gown looks pretty good on them. They feel good in it, too. It flatters their little hips in a way cargo pants never could. They never felt right in ball caps and sneakers. They no longer want to do what doesn’t feel right.
They can flawlessly impersonate Cher or Bette Midler or Madonna, down to that hair flip, that lip tremor, that runway walk. They are performers.
To my friend’s point, their view of femininity is socially constructed. It’s informed by the male gaze. It’s blissfully unaware of the ugly societal expectations that burden women. Maybe these men are a touch clueless. Maybe they’re a touch sexist. At best, they have a blind spot.
But they aren’t trying to marry me, so I don’t have to care. What gay men do to entertain other men, or to feel sexual, or pretty, or talented, is none of my business.
Cultural criticism has become a soulless slippery slope of knee-jerk condemnation that sucks the beauty and color out of life. It’s a conjectural journey inward, away from the complexity and the humanity of the real people who surround us. It’s part and parcel of of the ironic hipster attitude that has come to detest sincerity, of cancel culture, of the progressively inappropriate elevation of the theoretical and the esoteric over the sublime real.
Beauty, humor, culture, fashion, language, desire. These are all problematic. We can’t tear them all down, and we don’t want to.
Interesting analysis.
I knew a female drag queen once. She had her hair cut short and wore a wig to perform. She said she had gender dysphoria but didn't plan to transition. What she said made it sound like she had autohomoerotic gender dysphoria - i.e. specifically wanting to be a gay male.