![]() ![]() While large cities and college towns have produced most of the more sizeable drag king scenes, drag kings also perform on stages and at bars in rural settings, making it clear that the phenomenon has infiltrated queer culture at large and has produced encompassing and supportive networks for kings, lesbian performance artists, and gender-benders. In their many manifestations, drag kings occupy a significant and sometimes activist role in gay, lesbian, and queer cultural spaces, organizing and participating in drag king contests and shows, creating drag king troupes, and hosting gender workshops. However many critics call attention to the disparate implications of performing masculinity as opposed to femininity in a patriarchal culture and cite the different cultural origins and histories of drag kings and queens.Īlthough the term drag queen dates back to an earlier century, the term drag king arose in the mid-1990s in conjunction with these distinctly lesbian sub-cultural practices and with the proliferation of queer genders that stand in opposition to the normative gender dichotomy. By literally performing genders, the drag king and queen expose the construction and fluidity, rather than the nature or truth, of gender. In this sense, drag kings have more in common with their queer counterpart, the drag queen. However, these music hall performances catered to straight audiences and bear little resemblance to drag king acts. HISTORY OF KINGINGįemale male impersonators date back to the 1800s and share a history that includes such performers as Vesta Tilley, British music hall's most famous male impersonator. ![]() Such activity illustrates one way in which drag king culture often interrogates notions of what constitutes drag, thus, pushing the boundaries of performance, theater, and gender. Some drag kings dress and perform in female drag to participate in ensemble acts or even to emcee events. Accordingly drag kings may identify as women, as butch, as transsexuals, as transgendered, as genderqueer, or they may regard their performances as quite removed from their gendered or sexual identities. Others view their drag king personas as direct political and activist action, while still others find their way to drag king culture through performance art or involvement in a local queer community. Some drag kings explain that their performances allow for the expression of an inner part of them-selves-their own embodied, expressive masculinity-or describe their involvement with drag king culture as a starting point for a transgendered identity. Well-wrought performances have a variety of different effects: they incite the crowd with a seductive drag king earnestly displaying his own masculinity they entertain with a choreographed song-and-dance number or they provide a playful or unswerving critique of, for example, the binary (male/female) gender system or hetero-normativity. Other acts consist of the impersonation of celebrities or stock character types and may contain brief skits. Performances can be solo or ensemble acts and usually are comprised of lip-syncing and dancing. Drag kings usually prefer the use of male pronouns when they are performing or dressed in drag. Some drag kings also pack, or put socks, dildos, or home-made packages in their underwear to give the appearance of a penis. The most common method of applying facial hair is to affix clippings of real hair to the face with spirit gum or other liquid adhesives. It can be drawn on with eyeliner, and accentuated with dark eye shadow for an unshaven look. Drag kings have also made an art of the crafting of facial hair. DRAG KING STYLE AND MASCULINE EMBODIMENTįor their performances, most drag kings dress in male attire and bind their breasts with bandages or tight-fitting sports bras. Drag kings are artists, activists, queer people, and others that dress in constantly-evolving styles of drag for theatrical performances (and occasionally other artistic mediums, such as photography) which aim for a masculine realness, a parodied presentation of masculinity, and/or a political intervention or critique.
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