Now you look at drag kings-kings like Landon Cider, Spikey Van Dykey-there are all sorts of different spectrums. Your job as a drag king was to emit the most amount of masculinity. Your facial hair was a goatee or a chin strap. When I started, every drag king wore a suit or jeans and a T-shirt. What makes you say that the drag king community is growing? So, there are the inherent characteristics that men are born with and nurtured with that carry over into the drag community. Some say it’s still the patriarchy even if it’s in drag. There are many different perspectives on it. Historically, the queens get more attention. But drag kings have been around since the beginning of time it’s not something new. In the last 10 years, I’ve seen it go leaps and bounds in the quantity and creativity of the kings all over the world. Why has the world been slower to embrace drag kings than queens?īeing involved as long as I’ve been, I’ve seen very intense growth. I started performing when I was just under 18. I’m from East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and the Grotto was the only gay club that I knew of. I started in Northampton, Massachusetts, at a little club that was a staple in the community called the Grotto it no longer exists. Regular gigs: Every first Friday of the month at Hamburger Mary’s Ontario, California every second Saturday at Hamburger Mary’s Long Beach, California every fourth Wednesday at VLVT Lounge, Santa Ana, California. Instagram: “Mister USofA MI 2013 and Mister USofA MI Classic 2017 I have my stepdown for Mister USofA MI Classic at Club Masque in Dayton, Ohio, on March 24.” I don’t know if I would’ve found this aspect of myself otherwise.” “Drag is what sent me on the path to discovering my queerness. “You can have a rough day, and go out in front of a crowd and the energy they give you can pull you out of whatever you have going on.” Putting on a David Bowie costume and performing his song “Time” changed Gene Jeanie’s life in the profoundest of ways. “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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