Drag (clothing)
Encyclopedia
Drag is used for any clothing carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the clothing associated with one gender role
when worn by a person of another gender. The origin of the term "drag" is unknown, but it may have originated in Polari
, a gay street argot
in England in the early part of the 20th century. Unlike "threads" and "rags", "drag" never simply meant "clothes."
"Drag queen
" appeared in print in 1941. The verb is to "do drag." A folk etymology whose acronym basis reveals the late 20th-century bias, would make "drag" an abbreviation of "dressed as girl" in description of male transvestism
. The opposite, "drab" for "dressed as boy," is unrecorded. Drag is practiced by people of all sexual orientation
s and gender identities
.
Drag in the theatre arts manifests two kinds of phenomenon. One is cross-dressing in the performance, which is part of the social history
of theatre. The other is cross-dressing within the theatrical fiction (i.e. the character is a cross-dresser), which is part of literary history.
Drag is usually played for comic effect. Whether the Monty Python
Women or as a character such as Joe and Jerry (Curtis and Lemmon) in Some Like It Hot
.
s in Shakespearean plays
, and indeed in all Elizabethan theatre, tragedy as well as comedy, were all male; female parts were played by young men in drag. During the practices and performances, notations were frequently made on the manuscripts when a male was to play a female part dressed as a female. Shakespeare used the conventions to enrich the gender confusions of As You Like It
, and Ben Jonson
manipulated the same conventions in Epicœne, or The Silent Woman, (1609). The plot device of the film Shakespeare in Love
(1998) turns upon this Elizabethan convention. During the reign of Charles II the rules were relaxed to allow women to play female roles on the London stage, reflecting the French fashion, and the convention of men routinely playing female roles consequently disappeared.
Within the dramatic fiction, a double standard
historically affected the uses of drag. In male-dominated societies where active roles were reserved to men, a woman might dress as a man under the pressures of her dramatic predicament. A man's position was above a woman's, causing a rising action that suited itself to tragedy, sentimental melodrama and comedies of manners that involved confused identities. A man dressed as a woman was thought to be a falling action only suited to broad low comedy and burlesque. These conventions were unbroken before the 20th century, when rigid gender roles were undermined and begun to dissolve. This evolving changed drag in the last decades of the 20th century, now unfolding. With the theatrical drag queen presented not as a "female impersonator" but as a drag queen (as, for example, RuPaul
), drag changed conventions, meaning and audience.
, which were traditionally always performed by men, include Besom Bet(ty); numerous variations on Bessy or Betsy; Bucksome Nell; Mrs Clagdarse; Dame Dolly; Dame Dorothy; Mrs Finney; Mrs Frail and many others. The variant performed around Plough Monday
in Eastern England is known as the Plough Play (also Wooing Play or Bridal Play) and usually involves two female characters, the young "Lady Bright and Gay" and "Old Dame Jane" and a dispute about a bastard child.
A character called Bessy also accompanied the Plough Jags (aka Plough Jacks, Plough Stots, Plough Bullocks, etc) even in places where no play was performed: "she" was a man dressed in women's clothes, who carried a collecting box for money and other largesse.
"Maid Marian" of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance
is played by a man, and the Maid Marians referred to in old documents as having taken part in May Games and other festivals with Morris dance
rs would most probably also have been men. The "consort" of the Castleton Garland King
was traditionally a man (until 1956, when a woman took over the role) and was originally simply referred to as "The Woman".
, Handel
's heroine Bradamante, in the opera Alcina
, disguises herself as a man to save her lover, played by a male soprano: contemporary audiences were not the least confused. In Romantic opera
, certain roles of young boys were written for alto and soprano voices and acted by women en travestie (in English, in "trouser roles".) The most familiar trouser role in pre-Romantic opera is Cherubino in Mozart
's Marriage of Figaro (1786). Romantic opera continued the convention: there are trouser roles for women in drag in Rossini's Semiramide (Arsace), Donizetti's Rosamonda d'Inghilterra and Anna Bolena, Berlioz
's Benvenuto Cellini, even a page in Verdi's Don Carlo. The convention was beginning to die out with Siebel, the ingenuous youth in Charles Gounod
's Faust (1859) and the gypsy boy Beppe in Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz, so that Offenbach gave the role of Cupid to a real boy in Orphée aux Enfers. But Sarah Bernhardt
played Hamlet in tights, giving French audiences a glimpse of Leg (the other in fact being a prosthesis) and Prince Orlovsky, who gives the ball in Die Fledermaus
, is a mezzo-soprano
, to somewhat androgynous effect. The use of travesti in Richard Strauss
's Rosenkavalier (1912) is a special case, unusually subtle and evocative of its 18th century setting, and should be discussed in detail at Der Rosenkavalier
.
(London, 1892) were still viable theatre material in La Cage aux Folles
1978, (remade, as The Birdcage
, as late as 1996). In the 1890s the slapstick drag traditions of undergraduate productions (notably Hasty Pudding Theatricals
at Harvard College
, annually since 1891 and at other Ivy League
schools like Princeton University
's Triangle Club or the University of Pennsylvania
's Mask and Wig
Club) were permissible fare to the same middle-class American audiences that were scandalized to hear that in New York
, rouged young men in skirts were standing on tables to dance the Can-Can
in Bowery
dives like The Slide
. Drag shows were popular night club entertainment in New York in the 20s, then were forced underground, until the "Jewel Box Revue" played Harlem's Apollo Theater in the 1950s: "49 men and a girl." The girl received a roar of applause, when she was revealed as the same smart young man in dinner clothes who had been introducing each of the evening's acts. Drag as a last-resort tactic in situational farce (its only permissible format at the time) made a big Hollywood splash in Some Like It Hot
(1959).
For the San Francisco drag troupe, The Cockettes
(1970–72), who performed with glitter eyeshadow and gilded mustaches and beards, the term "genderfuck
" was coined. Drag broke out from underground theatre in the persona of "Divine" in John Waters
' Pink Flamingos
(1972): see also Charles Pierce. The crowd surrounding Andy Warhol
's Factory
scene of the '60s-'80s also included some drag queens who achieved a certain amount of fame, such as Candy Darling
and Holly Woodlawn
, both immortalized in the Lou Reed
song "Walk on the Wild Side". The cult hit movie musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show
has inspired several generations of young people to attend performances in drag, although many of these fans would deny that they are actually transvestites.
On American network television, only the broadest slapstick drag tradition was generally represented. Few American TV comedians consistently used drag as a comedy device, among them Milton Berle
, Flip Wilson
and Martin Lawrence
, although drag characters have occasionally been popular on sketch TV shows like In Living Color
(with Jim Carrey
's grotesque female bodybuilder) and Saturday Night Live
(with the Gap Girls, among others). On the popular 1960s military sitcom, McHale's Navy
, Ensign Parker (Tim Conway
) sometimes had to dress in drag (often with hilarious results) whenever McHale and/or his crew had to disguise themselves in order to carry out their elaborate schemes. The popular Canadian comedy group The Kids in the Hall
also used drag in many of their skits. Dame Edna
, the drag persona of Australian actor Barry Humphries
, is the host of several specials, including the Dame Edna Experience. Dame Edna also tours internationally, playing to sell-out crowds, and has appeared on TV's Ally McBeal
.
Dame Edna represents an anomalous example of the drag concept. Her earliest incarnation was unmistakably a man dressed (badly) as a suburban housewife. Edna's manner and appearance became so feminised and glamorised that even some of her TV show guests appear not to see that the Edna character is played by a man. The furor surrounding Dame Edna's 'advice' column in Vanity Fair
magazine suggests that one of her harshest critics, actress Salma Hayek
, was unaware Dame Edna was a female character played by a man.
In England
, drag has been more common in comedy: Benny Hill
portrayed several female characters, and the Monty Python
troupe and The League of Gentlemen
often played female parts in their skits. Alastair Sim
plays the head mistress in St Trinian's.
These characters are played straight(ish). Within the conceit of the sketch/film they are women, it is we that are in on the joke. Monty Python women are random middle aged working/lower middle class typically wearing long brown coats that were common in the 1960s. When the Pythons wanted a "proper" woman they used Carol Cleveland
. They speak with falsetto voices.
The joke is reversed in Life of Brian where "they" are pretending to be men, including obviously false beards, so that they can go to the stoning. When someone throws the first stone too early the Pharisee asks "who threw that", and they answer "she did, she did,..." in high voices. "Are there any women here today?" he says, "No no no" they say in gruff voices.
Alastair Sim
plays the head mistress straight in St Trinian's. No direct joke to the actor's true gender is made. However she is quite non-feminine in her pursuits of betting, drinking and smoking. Her school sends out girls into a merciless world where it is the world that need beware.
Kenny Everett
dragged up in his TV show as an OTT
screen star called Cupid Stunt. Kenny was particularly unconvincing as a woman because he had a beard to which a lot of flesh-tone makeup was applied. However she says "all in the best possible taste" as she exposed her knickers as she re-crossed her legs. She is in more of the Dame Edna genre.
David Walliams and (especially) Matt Lucas often play female roles in the British television comedy Little Britain
. Walliams also notably plays the part of Emily Howard - a "rubbish transvestite," who makes an unconvincing woman.
Maximilliana and RuPaul co-star together in the TV show Nash Bridges starring Don Johnson and Cheech during the 2 part episode of "Cuda Grace". Maximilliana looking passable, leads one of the investigators to believe she is "real" and sexually advances only to learn there is something extra down there, greatly to his dismay.
has a venerable history of drag. Marlene Dietrich
was a popular actress and singer who sometimes performed dressed as a man, such as in the films Blue Angel
and Morocco
. In the glam rock
era many male performers (such as David Bowie
and The New York Dolls) donned partial or full drag. This tradition waned somewhat in the late '70s but was revived in the New Wave
era of the '80s, as pop singers Boy George
(of Culture Club
), Pete Burns
(of Dead or Alive
), and Philip Oakey
(of The Human League
), frequently appeared in a sort of semi-drag, while female musicians of the era dabbled in their own form of androgyny
, with performers like Annie Lennox
, Phranc and The Bloods sometimes performing as drag kings. The male grunge
musicians of the '90s sometimes performed wearing deliberately ugly drag - that is, wearing dresses but making no attempt to look feminine, not wearing makeup and often not even shaving their beards. (Nirvana
did this several times, notably in the In Bloom
video.) However, possibly the most famous drag artist in music in the 90s was RuPaul
. In Japan there are several popular singers, such as Mana
(Moi dix Mois
and Malice Mizer
), Kaya
(Schwarz Stein
), Hizaki
and Jasmine You
(both Versailles
), who always or usually appear in full or semi-drag. Maximilliana worked with RuPual in the Nash Bridges episode "Cuda Grace" and was a regular at the now defunct Queen Mary Show Lounge in Studio City, California until the very end. Max (short for Maximilliana) is most well known for her performance as Charlie/Claire in Ringmaster: the Jerry Springer Movie. Max has also appeared in other movies including Shoot or Be Shot and 10 Attitudes as well as on television shows including: Nash Bridges, Clueless, Gilmore Girls, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Mas Vale Tarde with Alex Cambert, MadTV, The Tyra Banks Show, The Tom Joyner Show, America's Got Talent and much more. As of November 11, 2011 Maximilliana released her first album of all original, fun, dance music for the LGBT community and is available on iTunes, Amazon and CdBaby.
Drag queen
s (first use in print, 1941) are stereotypically viewed to be gay
men that dress in drag, either as part of a performance or for personal fulfillment. Though a good portion who wear women's clothing are straight men, the term drag queen distinguishes them from transvestites, transsexuals or transgender
people. Doing drag here often includes wearing dramatically heavy makeup, wigs and prosthetic devices as part of the costume.
Females (many of whom do not identify as women) are called drag king
s; however, drag king also has a much wider range of meanings. It is currently most often used to describe entertainment (singing or lip-synching) in which there is no necessarily firm correlation between a performer's deliberately-macho onstage persona and offstage gender identity or sexual orientation, just as biological males who do female drag for the stage may or may not identify as being either gay or female in personal identity. A faux queen is usually a woman doing traditional female drag in the same spirit as men have done.
Gender role
Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
when worn by a person of another gender. The origin of the term "drag" is unknown, but it may have originated in Polari
Polari
Polari is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, criminals, prostitutes, and by the gay subculture. It was popularised in the 1960s by camp characters Julian and Sandy in the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne...
, a gay street argot
Argot
An Argot is a secret language used by various groups—including, but not limited to, thieves and other criminals—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job,...
in England in the early part of the 20th century. Unlike "threads" and "rags", "drag" never simply meant "clothes."
"Drag queen
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...
" appeared in print in 1941. The verb is to "do drag." A folk etymology whose acronym basis reveals the late 20th-century bias, would make "drag" an abbreviation of "dressed as girl" in description of male transvestism
Transvestism
Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing, which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transvestite refers to a person who cross-dresses; however, the word often has additional connotations. -History:Although the word transvestism was coined as late as the 1910s,...
. The opposite, "drab" for "dressed as boy," is unrecorded. Drag is practiced by people of all sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
s and gender identities
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
.
Drag in the performing arts
There is a long history of drag in the performing arts, spanning a wide range of cultural as well as artistic traditions.Drag in the theatre arts manifests two kinds of phenomenon. One is cross-dressing in the performance, which is part of the social history
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
of theatre. The other is cross-dressing within the theatrical fiction (i.e. the character is a cross-dresser), which is part of literary history.
Drag is usually played for comic effect. Whether the Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...
Women or as a character such as Joe and Jerry (Curtis and Lemmon) in Some Like It Hot
Some Like It Hot
Some Like It Hot is an American comedy film, made in 1958 and released in 1959, which was directed by Billy Wilder and starred Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and George Raft. The supporting cast includes Joe E. Brown, Pat O'Brien and Nehemiah Persoff. The film is a remake by Wilder and I....
.
Theatre
Cross-dressing elements of performance traditions are widespread cultural phenomena. In England, actorActor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
s in Shakespearean plays
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
, and indeed in all Elizabethan theatre, tragedy as well as comedy, were all male; female parts were played by young men in drag. During the practices and performances, notations were frequently made on the manuscripts when a male was to play a female part dressed as a female. Shakespeare used the conventions to enrich the gender confusions of As You Like It
As You Like It
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
, and Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
manipulated the same conventions in Epicœne, or The Silent Woman, (1609). The plot device of the film Shakespeare in Love
Shakespeare in Love
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard....
(1998) turns upon this Elizabethan convention. During the reign of Charles II the rules were relaxed to allow women to play female roles on the London stage, reflecting the French fashion, and the convention of men routinely playing female roles consequently disappeared.
Within the dramatic fiction, a double standard
Double standard
A double standard is the unjust application of different sets of principles for similar situations. The concept implies that a single set of principles encompassing all situations is the desirable ideal. The term has been used in print since at least 1895...
historically affected the uses of drag. In male-dominated societies where active roles were reserved to men, a woman might dress as a man under the pressures of her dramatic predicament. A man's position was above a woman's, causing a rising action that suited itself to tragedy, sentimental melodrama and comedies of manners that involved confused identities. A man dressed as a woman was thought to be a falling action only suited to broad low comedy and burlesque. These conventions were unbroken before the 20th century, when rigid gender roles were undermined and begun to dissolve. This evolving changed drag in the last decades of the 20th century, now unfolding. With the theatrical drag queen presented not as a "female impersonator" but as a drag queen (as, for example, RuPaul
RuPaul
RuPaul Andre Charles , best known as simply RuPaul, is an American actor, drag queen, model, author, and singer-songwriter, who first became widely known in the 1990s when he appeared in a wide variety of television programs, films, and musical albums. Previously, he was a fixture on the Atlanta...
), drag changed conventions, meaning and audience.
In folk custom
Men dressed or disguised as women have featured in traditional customs and rituals for centuries. For example, the characters of some regional variants of the traditional mummers playMummers Play
Mummers Plays are seasonal folk plays performed by troupes of actors known as mummers or guisers , originally from England , but later in other parts of the world...
, which were traditionally always performed by men, include Besom Bet(ty); numerous variations on Bessy or Betsy; Bucksome Nell; Mrs Clagdarse; Dame Dolly; Dame Dorothy; Mrs Finney; Mrs Frail and many others. The variant performed around Plough Monday
Plough Monday
Plough Monday is the traditional start of the English agricultural year. While local practices may vary, Plough Monday is generally the first Monday after Twelfth Day , 6 January. References to Plough Monday date back to the late 15th century...
in Eastern England is known as the Plough Play (also Wooing Play or Bridal Play) and usually involves two female characters, the young "Lady Bright and Gay" and "Old Dame Jane" and a dispute about a bastard child.
A character called Bessy also accompanied the Plough Jags (aka Plough Jacks, Plough Stots, Plough Bullocks, etc) even in places where no play was performed: "she" was a man dressed in women's clothes, who carried a collecting box for money and other largesse.
"Maid Marian" of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance
Abbots Bromley Horn Dance
The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is an English folk dance involving reindeer antlers and a hobby horse that takes place each year in Abbots Bromley, a small village in Staffordshire, England.-Origins:...
is played by a man, and the Maid Marians referred to in old documents as having taken part in May Games and other festivals with Morris dance
Morris dance
Morris dance is a form of English folk dance usually accompanied by music. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers. Implements such as sticks, swords, handkerchiefs and bells may also be wielded by the dancers...
rs would most probably also have been men. The "consort" of the Castleton Garland King
Castleton Garland Day
Castleton Garland Day or Garland King Day is held on 29 May in the town of Castleton in the Derbyshire Peak District...
was traditionally a man (until 1956, when a woman took over the role) and was originally simply referred to as "The Woman".
Opera
In Baroque opera, where soprano roles for men were sung by castratiCastrato
A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...
, Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
's heroine Bradamante, in the opera Alcina
Alcina
Alcina is an opera seria by George Frideric Handel. Handel used the libretto of L'isola di Alcina, an opera that was set in 1728 in Rome by Riccardo Broschi, which he acquired the year after, during his travels in Italy...
, disguises herself as a man to save her lover, played by a male soprano: contemporary audiences were not the least confused. In Romantic opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, certain roles of young boys were written for alto and soprano voices and acted by women en travestie (in English, in "trouser roles".) The most familiar trouser role in pre-Romantic opera is Cherubino in Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
's Marriage of Figaro (1786). Romantic opera continued the convention: there are trouser roles for women in drag in Rossini's Semiramide (Arsace), Donizetti's Rosamonda d'Inghilterra and Anna Bolena, Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's Benvenuto Cellini, even a page in Verdi's Don Carlo. The convention was beginning to die out with Siebel, the ingenuous youth in Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
's Faust (1859) and the gypsy boy Beppe in Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz, so that Offenbach gave the role of Cupid to a real boy in Orphée aux Enfers. But Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage and early film actress, and has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known". Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas...
played Hamlet in tights, giving French audiences a glimpse of Leg (the other in fact being a prosthesis) and Prince Orlovsky, who gives the ball in Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
, is a mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
, to somewhat androgynous effect. The use of travesti in Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
's Rosenkavalier (1912) is a special case, unusually subtle and evocative of its 18th century setting, and should be discussed in detail at Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
.
Film and television
The self-consciously risqué bourgeois high jinks of Brandon Thomas' Charley's AuntCharley's Aunt
Charley's Aunt is a farce in three acts written by Brandon Thomas. It broke all historic records for plays of any kind, with an original London run of 1,466 performances....
(London, 1892) were still viable theatre material in La Cage aux Folles
La Cage aux Folles (film)
La Cage aux Folles is a 1978 French-Italian film adaptation of the 1973 play La Cage aux Folle by Jean Poiret. It is co-written and directed by Édouard Molinaro and stars Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault.-Plot:...
1978, (remade, as The Birdcage
The Birdcage
The Birdcage is a 1996 American comedy film directed by Mike Nichols, and stars Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, Dan Futterman, Calista Flockhart, Hank Azaria, and Christine Baranski. The script was written by Elaine May...
, as late as 1996). In the 1890s the slapstick drag traditions of undergraduate productions (notably Hasty Pudding Theatricals
Hasty Pudding Theatricals
The Hasty Pudding Theatricals, known informally simply as The Pudding, is a theatrical student society at Harvard University, known for its burlesque musicals and for its status as the oldest collegiate theatrical organization in the United States...
at Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
, annually since 1891 and at other Ivy League
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
schools like Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
's Triangle Club or the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
's Mask and Wig
Mask and Wig
The Mask and Wig Club, founded in 1889 by Clayton Fotterall McMichael, is the oldest all-male collegiate musical comedy troupe in the United States...
Club) were permissible fare to the same middle-class American audiences that were scandalized to hear that in New York
History of New York City
The history of New York, New York begins with the first European documentation of the area by Giovanni da Verrazzano, in command of the French ship, La Dauphine, when he visited the region in 1524. It is believed he sailed in Upper New York Bay where he encountered native Lenape, returned through...
, rouged young men in skirts were standing on tables to dance the Can-Can
Can-Can
The Can-can is a dance. It may also refer to:* Popularly, the Galop Infernal movement of Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, commonly associated with the dance* Can Can , a 2007 fragrance by Paris Hilton...
in Bowery
Bowery, Manhattan
Bowery , commonly called "the Bowery," is a street and a small neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan...
dives like The Slide
The Slide
The Slide is a sci-fi radio serial in seven parts by Victor Pemberton. It starred Roger Delgado, Maurice Denham David Spenser and Miriam Margolyes.It inspired the Doctor Who story Fury from the Deep.-External links:*...
. Drag shows were popular night club entertainment in New York in the 20s, then were forced underground, until the "Jewel Box Revue" played Harlem's Apollo Theater in the 1950s: "49 men and a girl." The girl received a roar of applause, when she was revealed as the same smart young man in dinner clothes who had been introducing each of the evening's acts. Drag as a last-resort tactic in situational farce (its only permissible format at the time) made a big Hollywood splash in Some Like It Hot
Some Like It Hot
Some Like It Hot is an American comedy film, made in 1958 and released in 1959, which was directed by Billy Wilder and starred Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and George Raft. The supporting cast includes Joe E. Brown, Pat O'Brien and Nehemiah Persoff. The film is a remake by Wilder and I....
(1959).
For the San Francisco drag troupe, The Cockettes
The Cockettes
The Cockettes were a psychedelic drag queen troupe founded by Hibiscus in the late 1960s in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. The troupe performed outrageous parodies of show tunes and gained an underground cult following that led to mainstream exposure.In 1971, over differences in...
(1970–72), who performed with glitter eyeshadow and gilded mustaches and beards, the term "genderfuck
Genderfuck
Genderfuck refers to the conscious effort to mock or "fuck with" traditional notions of gender identity, gender roles, and gender presentation. It falls under the umbrella of the transgender spectrum.-Genderfucking:...
" was coined. Drag broke out from underground theatre in the persona of "Divine" in John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
' Pink Flamingos
Pink Flamingos
Pink Flamingos is a 1972 transgressive black comedy film written, produced, composed, shot, edited, and directed by John Waters. When the film was initially released, it caused a huge degree of controversy and thus became one of the most notorious cult films ever made. It made an underground star...
(1972): see also Charles Pierce. The crowd surrounding Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
's Factory
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
scene of the '60s-'80s also included some drag queens who achieved a certain amount of fame, such as Candy Darling
Candy Darling
Candy Darling was an American actress, best known as a Warhol Superstar. A male-to-female transsexual, she starred in Andy Warhol's films Flesh and Women in Revolt , and was a muse of the protopunk band The Velvet Underground.-Early life:Candy Darling was born James Lawrence Slattery in Forest...
and Holly Woodlawn
Holly Woodlawn
Holly Woodlawn is a Puerto Rican-born transgendered actress and former Warhol superstar, who appeared in his movies Trash and Women in Revolt .-Early life:...
, both immortalized in the Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
song "Walk on the Wild Side". The cult hit movie musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the 1975 film adaptation of the British rock musical stageplay, The Rocky Horror Show, written by Richard O'Brien. The film is a parody of B-movie, science fiction and horror films of the late 1940s through early 1970s. Director Jim Sharman collaborated on the...
has inspired several generations of young people to attend performances in drag, although many of these fans would deny that they are actually transvestites.
On American network television, only the broadest slapstick drag tradition was generally represented. Few American TV comedians consistently used drag as a comedy device, among them Milton Berle
Milton Berle
Milton Berlinger , better known as Milton Berle, was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater , in 1948 he was the first major star of U.S. television and as such became known as Uncle Miltie and Mr...
, Flip Wilson
Flip Wilson
Clerow Wilson, Jr. , known professionally as Flip Wilson, was an American comedian and actor. In the early 1970s, Wilson hosted his own weekly variety series, The Flip Wilson Show...
and Martin Lawrence
Martin Lawrence
Martin Fitzgerald Lawrence is an American actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and stand up comedian. He came to fame during the 1990s, establishing a Hollywood career as a leading actor, most notably the films Bad Boys, Blue Streak, and Big Momma's House...
, although drag characters have occasionally been popular on sketch TV shows like In Living Color
In Living Color
In Living Color is an American sketch comedy television series, which originally ran on the Fox Network from April 15, 1990 to May 19, 1994. Brothers Keenen and Damon Wayans created, wrote, and starred in the program. The show was produced by Ivory Way Productions in association with 20th Century...
(with Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey
James Eugene "Jim" Carrey is a Canadian-American actor and comedian. He has received two Golden Globe Awards and has also been nominated on four occasions. Carrey began comedy in 1979, performing at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto, Ontario...
's grotesque female bodybuilder) and Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
(with the Gap Girls, among others). On the popular 1960s military sitcom, McHale's Navy
McHale's Navy
McHale's Navy is an American television sitcom series which ran for 138 half-hour episodes from October 11,1962, to August 31, 1966, on the ABC network. The series was filmed in black and white and originated in a one-hour drama called Seven Against the Sea, broadcast on April 3, 1962...
, Ensign Parker (Tim Conway
Tim Conway
Thomas Daniel "Tim" Conway is an American comedian and actor, primarily known for his roles in sitcoms, films and television. Conway is best known for his role as the inept second-in-command officer, Ensign Charles Parker, to Lt...
) sometimes had to dress in drag (often with hilarious results) whenever McHale and/or his crew had to disguise themselves in order to carry out their elaborate schemes. The popular Canadian comedy group The Kids in the Hall
The Kids in the Hall
The Kids in the Hall is a Canadian sketch comedy group formed in 1984, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson. Their eponymous television show ran from 1988 to 1994 on CBC in Canada, and 1989 to 1995 on CBS and HBO in the United States...
also used drag in many of their skits. Dame Edna
Dame Edna Everage
Dame Edna is a character created and played by Australian dadaist performer and comedian, Barry Humphries, famous for her lilac-coloured or "wisteria hue" hair and cat eye glasses or "face furniture," her favorite flower, the gladiola and her boisterous greeting: "Hello Possums!" As Dame Edna,...
, the drag persona of Australian actor Barry Humphries
Barry Humphries
John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE is an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the...
, is the host of several specials, including the Dame Edna Experience. Dame Edna also tours internationally, playing to sell-out crowds, and has appeared on TV's Ally McBeal
Ally McBeal
Ally McBeal is an American legal comedy-drama series which aired on the Fox network from 1997 to 2002. The series was created by David E. Kelley, who also served as the executive producer, along with Bill D'Elia...
.
Dame Edna represents an anomalous example of the drag concept. Her earliest incarnation was unmistakably a man dressed (badly) as a suburban housewife. Edna's manner and appearance became so feminised and glamorised that even some of her TV show guests appear not to see that the Edna character is played by a man. The furor surrounding Dame Edna's 'advice' column in Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
magazine suggests that one of her harshest critics, actress Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek
Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez de Pinault is a Mexican film actress, director and producer. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role as Frida Kahlo in the film Frida.-Early life:...
, was unaware Dame Edna was a female character played by a man.
In England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, drag has been more common in comedy: Benny Hill
Benny Hill
Benny Hill was an English comedian and actor, notable for his long-running television programme The Benny Hill Show.-Early life:...
portrayed several female characters, and the Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...
troupe and The League of Gentlemen
The League of Gentlemen (comedy)
The League of Gentlemen are a quartet of British dark comedy writers/performers, formed in 1995 by Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith...
often played female parts in their skits. Alastair Sim
Alastair Sim
Alastair George Bell Sim, CBE was a Scottish character actor who appeared in a string of classic British films. He is best remembered in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1951 film Scrooge, and for his portrayal of Miss Fritton, the headmistress in two St. Trinian's films...
plays the head mistress in St Trinian's.
These characters are played straight(ish). Within the conceit of the sketch/film they are women, it is we that are in on the joke. Monty Python women are random middle aged working/lower middle class typically wearing long brown coats that were common in the 1960s. When the Pythons wanted a "proper" woman they used Carol Cleveland
Carol Cleveland
Carol Cleveland is a British actress/comedienne, most notable for her appearances as the only significant female performer on Monty Python's Flying Circus.-Early life:...
. They speak with falsetto voices.
The joke is reversed in Life of Brian where "they" are pretending to be men, including obviously false beards, so that they can go to the stoning. When someone throws the first stone too early the Pharisee asks "who threw that", and they answer "she did, she did,..." in high voices. "Are there any women here today?" he says, "No no no" they say in gruff voices.
Alastair Sim
Alastair Sim
Alastair George Bell Sim, CBE was a Scottish character actor who appeared in a string of classic British films. He is best remembered in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1951 film Scrooge, and for his portrayal of Miss Fritton, the headmistress in two St. Trinian's films...
plays the head mistress straight in St Trinian's. No direct joke to the actor's true gender is made. However she is quite non-feminine in her pursuits of betting, drinking and smoking. Her school sends out girls into a merciless world where it is the world that need beware.
Kenny Everett
Kenny Everett
Kenny Everett was an English comedian, radio DJ and television entertainer. Born Maurice James Christopher Cole, Everett is best known for his career as a radio DJ and for the Kenny Everett television shows.-Early life:...
dragged up in his TV show as an OTT
Ott
Ott is a record producer and musician who has worked with Sinéad O'Connor, Embrace, The Orb, and Brian Eno, and has achieved recognition since 2002 for his own psychedelic dub tracks and his collaborations with Simon Posford...
screen star called Cupid Stunt. Kenny was particularly unconvincing as a woman because he had a beard to which a lot of flesh-tone makeup was applied. However she says "all in the best possible taste" as she exposed her knickers as she re-crossed her legs. She is in more of the Dame Edna genre.
David Walliams and (especially) Matt Lucas often play female roles in the British television comedy Little Britain
Little Britain
Little Britain is a British character-based comedy sketch show which was first broadcast on BBC radio and then turned into a television show. It was written by comic duo David Walliams and Matt Lucas...
. Walliams also notably plays the part of Emily Howard - a "rubbish transvestite," who makes an unconvincing woman.
Maximilliana and RuPaul co-star together in the TV show Nash Bridges starring Don Johnson and Cheech during the 2 part episode of "Cuda Grace". Maximilliana looking passable, leads one of the investigators to believe she is "real" and sexually advances only to learn there is something extra down there, greatly to his dismay.
Music
The world of popular musicPopular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
has a venerable history of drag. Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
was a popular actress and singer who sometimes performed dressed as a man, such as in the films Blue Angel
Der blaue Engel
The Blue Angel is a film directed by Josef von Sternberg in 1930, based on Heinrich Mann's novel Professor Unrat. The film is considered to be the first major German sound film and it brought world fame to actress Marlene Dietrich...
and Morocco
Morocco (1930 film)
Morocco is a 1930 film in which a Foreign Legionnaire meets and falls in love with a singer. It was directed by Josef von Sternberg and stars Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich and Adolphe Menjou. The story was adapted by Jules Furthman from the novel Amy Jolly by Benno Vigny...
. In the glam rock
Glam rock
Glam rock is a style of rock and pop music that developed in the UK in the early 1970s, which was performed by singers and musicians who wore outrageous clothes, makeup and hairstyles, particularly platform-soled boots and glitter...
era many male performers (such as David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
and The New York Dolls) donned partial or full drag. This tradition waned somewhat in the late '70s but was revived in the New Wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
era of the '80s, as pop singers Boy George
Boy George
Boy George is a British singer-songwriter who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by...
(of Culture Club
Culture Club
Culture Club are a British rock band who were part of the 1980s New Romantic movement. The original band consisted of Boy George , Mikey Craig , Roy Hay and Jon Moss...
), Pete Burns
Pete Burns
Pete Burns is an English singer-songwriter, author and television personality who founded the band Dead or Alive in 1980, for which he acted as the vocalist and songwriter, and which rose to mainstream success with their 1985 single "You Spin Me Round "...
(of Dead or Alive
Dead or Alive (band)
Dead or Alive were a British New Wave band from Wirral, England, United Kingdom, Europe. The band rose to fame in the 1980s with their number one single on the UK Singles Chart, "You Spin Me Round ". They were the first group to have a number one single under the production team Stock Aitken Waterman...
), and Philip Oakey
Philip Oakey
Philip Oakey is an English composer, singer, songwriter and producer.He is best known as the lead singer, frontman and co-founder of the famous English synthpop band The Human League. He has also had an extensive solo music career and collaborated with numerous other artists and producers...
(of The Human League
The Human League
The Human League are an English electronic New Wave band formed in Sheffield in 1977. They achieved popularity after a key change in line-up in the early 1980s and have continued recording and performing with moderate commercial success throughout the 1980s up to the present day.The only constant...
), frequently appeared in a sort of semi-drag, while female musicians of the era dabbled in their own form of androgyny
Androgyny
Androgyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ, stem ανδρ- and γυνή , referring to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics...
, with performers like Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox, OBE , born Ann Lennox, is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving minor success in the late 1970s with The Tourists, with fellow musician David A...
, Phranc and The Bloods sometimes performing as drag kings. The male grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
musicians of the '90s sometimes performed wearing deliberately ugly drag - that is, wearing dresses but making no attempt to look feminine, not wearing makeup and often not even shaving their beards. (Nirvana
Nirvana (band)
Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...
did this several times, notably in the In Bloom
In Bloom
"In Bloom" is a song by the American grunge band Nirvana. Written by frontman Kurt Cobain, the song addresses people outside of the underground music community who did not understand the band's message....
video.) However, possibly the most famous drag artist in music in the 90s was RuPaul
RuPaul
RuPaul Andre Charles , best known as simply RuPaul, is an American actor, drag queen, model, author, and singer-songwriter, who first became widely known in the 1990s when he appeared in a wide variety of television programs, films, and musical albums. Previously, he was a fixture on the Atlanta...
. In Japan there are several popular singers, such as Mana
Mana (musician)
Mana is a Japanese musician and fashion designer, best known for his role as leader and guitarist of the visual kei band Malice Mizer. His clothing label, Moi-même-Moitié, helped popularize Japan's Gothic Lolita fashion movement. Mana is currently working on his solo project Moi dix...
(Moi dix Mois
Moi dix Mois
Moi dix Mois is a musical project founded by Japanese musician and fashion designer Mana in 2002 after his previous band, Malice Mizer, paused activities.- History :...
and Malice Mizer
Malice Mizer
Malice Mizer was a visual kei rock band from Japan. They were active from August 1992 to December 2001. Formed by Mana and Közi, the band's name stands for "malice and misery", extracted from "nothing but a being of malice and misery" — their reply to the question "what is human?"...
), Kaya
Kaya (Japanese musician)
is a Japanese visual kei musician, who was vocalist of the now defunct electro/darkwave duo Schwarz Stein , and also Meties and Isola under the alias of Hime. Originally on Mana's record label, Midi:Nette, Kaya recently signed to , and the label's name was changed to Kaya is also known for his...
(Schwarz Stein
Schwarz Stein
Schwarz Stein was a Japanese visual kei electronic music duo formed by Hora and Kaya in 2001 and disbanded in 2004.-History:...
), Hizaki
Hizaki
Hizaki is a Japanese visual kei musician, best known as guitarist for the symphonic metal band Versailles. Before forming Versailles he was in several independent bands and had a solo career.- Biography :...
and Jasmine You
Jasmine You
Jasmine You was a Japanese musician, best known as original bassist of the symphonic metal band Versailles. In 1998 Jasmine You entered the visual kei music scene after joining Jakura, who managed to become pretty successful before disbanding in 2003. In 2006 he was invited by his long-time...
(both Versailles
Versailles (Japanese band)
Versailles is a Japanese visual kei metal band formed in 2007. Their key characteristics are their rococo-esque costumes, dueling guitars and heavy but melodic arrangements....
), who always or usually appear in full or semi-drag. Maximilliana worked with RuPual in the Nash Bridges episode "Cuda Grace" and was a regular at the now defunct Queen Mary Show Lounge in Studio City, California until the very end. Max (short for Maximilliana) is most well known for her performance as Charlie/Claire in Ringmaster: the Jerry Springer Movie. Max has also appeared in other movies including Shoot or Be Shot and 10 Attitudes as well as on television shows including: Nash Bridges, Clueless, Gilmore Girls, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Mas Vale Tarde with Alex Cambert, MadTV, The Tyra Banks Show, The Tom Joyner Show, America's Got Talent and much more. As of November 11, 2011 Maximilliana released her first album of all original, fun, dance music for the LGBT community and is available on iTunes, Amazon and CdBaby.
Drag kings and queens
In gay slang, a "queen" is an effeminate gay man, or a gay man with a specializied quality (e.g. "rice queen," for a non-Asian gay man who prefers Asian men; "snow queen" for a non-caucasian man who likes caucasian men; and "bean queen," for a gay man who prefers Hispanic men). Along with "drag," the term "drag queen" has entered the general lexicon.Drag queen
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...
s (first use in print, 1941) are stereotypically viewed to be gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
men that dress in drag, either as part of a performance or for personal fulfillment. Though a good portion who wear women's clothing are straight men, the term drag queen distinguishes them from transvestites, transsexuals or transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
people. Doing drag here often includes wearing dramatically heavy makeup, wigs and prosthetic devices as part of the costume.
Females (many of whom do not identify as women) are called drag king
Drag king
Drag kings are mostly female performance artists who dress in masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes as part of their performance. A typical drag king routine may incorporate dancing and singing, live as in the Momma's Boyz of San Francisco's performances or lip-synching...
s; however, drag king also has a much wider range of meanings. It is currently most often used to describe entertainment (singing or lip-synching) in which there is no necessarily firm correlation between a performer's deliberately-macho onstage persona and offstage gender identity or sexual orientation, just as biological males who do female drag for the stage may or may not identify as being either gay or female in personal identity. A faux queen is usually a woman doing traditional female drag in the same spirit as men have done.