If you’ve ever been out on Oxford Street, you will have seen a drag queen.

You might also have seen RuPaul’s Drag Race, a reality TV show that’s like a cross between Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model, except with drag queens. Whether it’s Dame Edna, Courtney Act, Tootsie or Mrs. Doubtfire, drag queens (men dressing as women for parody/performance) have entered our popular psyche.

Drag kings haven’t been so lucky.

I’ve had countless discussions about this, and they usually involve someone asking, “What’s a drag king?”

“Do you know what a drag queen is?” I reply.

“Of course,” they say.

“Well, I’m pretty sure you can guess what a drag king is then.”

With just the briefest pause for thought, most people can imagine what a drag king is. If you are not one of ‘most people’, a drag king is a woman dressing as a man for parody/performance, just like a drag queen is a man who dresses as a woman.

So why aren’t drag kings as popular or successful as drag queens? I have a few theories.

The home of drag is on the stage. And the stage has always been a place for exaggeration, excess and performance, but particularly camp performance. Drag is about exaggerating too: the exaggeration of gender performance, the parodying of excessive femininity or excessive masculinity. Excessive stereotypical femininity works onstage, because that’s where it’s been for so long – floor-length glittery gowns, hours-long updos and choreographed routines are all aspects of extreme femininity we see performed on a regular basis, whether it’s at the Oscars, the strip club or the theatre.

Excessive masculinity, on the other hand, is much more at home on a construction site than a stage: ball-scratching, VB-swilling, legs spread wide, muscles and hair on full show. This all sounds stereotypical, but that’s what drag is about: taking the piss out of the gender stereotypes we’ve held dearly for so long. And taking the piss out of femininity is easier to understand onstage than masculinity.

But this also speaks to a more pronounced problem, and that is femininity is more worthy of parody. Elaborate hair and make-up and ball gowns? Hilarious! Excessive! Beards and VB? Just a fact of life mate.

This seems over-simplistic, and it is a generalisation, but it’s a real problem that has deep-seated sexism at its heart. Femininity is worthy of parody, because it’s laughable. Masculinity isn’t laughable, it’s desirable. Because men are strong, providers, protectors. Women have always been subordinate, so it’s easier to laugh at them.

Women have been wearing ‘men’s clothes’ for decades now, because the clothes made for men were made with comfort and practicality in mind, while women’s clothes were about beauty. When women cottoned on to the fact they could wear comfortable, practical clothes, jeans became not just a fashion of the working class, but a practical element of everyone’s wardrobes. So while a man in a dress is funny because we don’t often see it, a woman in jeans and a T-shirt is ordinary.

Indeed, some of the drag kings I’ve spoken to have talked about how the clothes they wear onstage are very similar to those they wear in real life. (And of course, this isn’t always the case – a lot of the best drag kings I’ve seen parody a kind of camp, chivalrous masculinity, and it’s hilarious.) This also speaks to the fact that drag queens are part of gay culture, while drag kings live in lesbian culture. And lesbian culture has never enjoyed the same levels of visibility that gay culture has had.

Good drag kinging is possible, and very funny. But we don’t see it as often, because femininity is much easier to parody. Drag kings are not as popularly well known as drag queens, for the same reasons trans women are regularly oppressed in our communities: femininity is simply seen as something to laugh at, rather than desire.

This is not to say that drag queens are bad. I think we should be taking the piss out of the ridiculous gender stereotypes we’ve routinely prescribed our society, and this will certainly help to break the stigma of gender transgression. But let us take the piss out of masculinity too. For equality.

[Above:Lee VaLone photo by Elisabeth Fuchsia]

This Week:

On Friday December 11, head along to the Christmas edition of Girlthing at 90 Liverpool Street. It’ll feature all the regulars, including Fuzzy from Melbourne, and Astrix Little back from overseas adventures.

Then on Saturday December 12 in Camperdown Memorial Rest Park is Reclaim The Streets. This is an event that celebrates all-night parties over lockouts, public transport over hideous highway plans (*cough* WestConnex *cough*), and “late nights over lattes”. Meeting in the park at 2pm, it’ll soon after do as its name suggests and take over the streets.

Also on Saturday December 12, The Shift Club is getting down and dirty with Extra Dirty, kicking off the summer party season with a headline set from Paris’ Leomeo [below]and support from Feisty and Chip.

And don’t forget Ho Ho Homosocial next week on Friday December 18, also at 90 Liverpool Street.

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