A History of Drag

Some people have no idea just how far back drag goes! It's really not a new concept, but in the recent years it's been moved to the more mainstream and the diva's of late are starting to get like the old MGM girls and do it all-comedy,dance and live singing. But female impersonation and drag appears to have existed through the length of human civilization and its cultures. Ancient Roman literature and history feature a multitude of male cross-dressers, while in numerous Native American cultures, cross-dressing was respected as prophets and seers who were able to glimpse the world through both masculine and feminine perspectives. In the late nineteenth century, Richard von Krafft-Ebing observed in his Psychopathia Sexualis that the smallest German hamlets often featured drag culture. In contemporary India men who choose to live and dance as women are regarded with particular religious reverence

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Female impersonation doesn't say anything about sexual identity. For example, many male actors in Elizabethan England and in the classical Chinese theater performed female roles because women were generally banned from the stage. Whether or not these performances blurred the sexual identification of the actors remains a point of debate in social and theater history.


The origin of the phrase drag queen is unclear. It may derive from Elizabethan slang, or may have come to be applied to female impersonators as a consequence of the extravagant drag balls of the earlier twentieth century, a precursor of the drag shows that became associated with gay bars and nightclubs in the period between the world wars. Why is it that a man performing with over-the-top female clothing and exaggerated mannerisms provokes such fascination among gay men? In the book The Queens Throat it suggest that drag queens, like opera divas, perform the kind of freedom that most gay men can enjoy only vicariously through low camp and high camp drags.



The drag of low camp, for example, stresses the masquerade itself.An impersonator of Connie Francis, for example, may exaggerate the singer's famous early-1960s hairstyle or extend her long breathless notes in order to stress those features that defined her style. That this style no longer reigns makes its status as a masquerade easier to detect and funnier to view. This is the type of drag whose humor constitutes a gender critique with which gay men can empathetically identify. Performers such as the Kinsey Sicks, Mona Foot, Sherry Vine, The Lady Bunny, and Flotilla de Barge offer good examples of low camp drag.



The drag of high camp, by contrast, takes a far more serious approach. This type of performance tends to idealize rather than criticize, offering the impersonation as an authentic expression delivered anew to an adoring audience. An impersonation of Judy Garland, like the above photo of the fabulous, late Craig Russel, might stress her exact look at any one point in her career, or the exact quality of voice she would have possessed at that time. The gay male audience enjoying this kind of impersonation tends not to laugh but to wait on every note with bated and excited breath.



RuPaul represents a good, though subtle, example of the recent transformation in the 90's from high camp drag into low camp drag. Born in 1960 in San Diego, RuPaul Andre Charles grew up a "sissy." His persistent good nature allowed him to cope with his effeminacy quite well and this, in turn, allowed him to become one of the most acclaimed, politically gay-identified drag queens in the United States. RuPaul was one of the recent queens to take drag really mainstream and also start to use his own voice with his highly worked masquerade so reminiscent of high camp drag. RuPaul normally performs his own songs. When he does sing songs other than his own, he performs them as "covers" of anonymous works to which he applies his own distinct performance styles. RuPaul's female "realness" and chatty affirmation mildly break the rules of low camp drag where self-deprecating comedy and obvious masquerade have largely become the rule. These components of low camp have not only given drag a new life among gay men, but they have also given the practice a broad appeal well outside its original constituency. I think drag is her to stay loves!