![]() “Drag is therapy,” says Ivory Onyx, a California-based king who frequently impersonates Bruno Mars. For certain parts of society, that’s threatening. More knotty: When women assume male characteristics they deny the patriarchy what it sees as their traditional roles. Solving that riddle is complex, but a good place to start is women’s underrepresentation in front of and behind the camera (only 11 percent of movies are directed by women, as Jimmy Kimmel reminded us during his Oscars monologue on Sunday night). “It’s a raw, kinda messy, fuck-you, anything goes vibe.” Rain Dove, a model and activist who also posed for Vogue, doesn’t consider what she does drag at all on Instagram, where she has 215,000 followers and counting, she calls herself a “gender capitalist,” meaning she opts to code as a woman or a man depending on which will get her the most out of any given situation.Įven as the world of drag kings expands, it remains more or less absent in pop culture. “Today’s drag is more expansive, gender-bending, and really pushing the edge from all sides,” says Murray Hill, a veteran of New York’s downtown scene who appears in this portfolio. But as understandings of gender have become more fluid in recent years, so too has this definition now, there are trans men kings, nonbinary kings, and even cisgender men who perform as drag kings-just as there are cisgender women who perform as queens. Historically, drag kings have been female performance artists who wear masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes. Drag has gone mainstream, and it’s been a long time coming: RuPaul’s first show started airing on VH1 back in 1996.īut where are the kings? When I asked that question, more than a few people had their own for me: What’s a drag king? In the span of a week in January, the New York Times declared this the golden age of drag (with a few caveats), put RuPaul on the cover of the magazine, called Drag Race “the most radical show on TV,” and began posting weekly recaps of the third season of Drag Race All Stars.
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