Morgan Clemens
Ms.Gormley
WRS
27 October 2017
The History of Drag Gender can be interpreted in many different ways. One interpretation is Drag. Drag is an artform that has been since Ancient Greece. Through the years, drag has changed a lot from its eEarly sStages to 50’s,60’s, 80’s,90’s and RuPaul’s Drag Race. Drag has also maintained a consistent, and at times rocky, relationship with the LGBT+ Community. Drag is a popular form of self-expression that breaks the boundaries of gender Funnily drag did not n’t start out as a form of expression but as a necessity. In Ancient Greece, women could not n’t perform in plays because it was considered deemed “too dangerous”(Conger). In the middle ages, Europe’s Christian church continued the ban
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In this time, the public became more harsh towards LGBT people ( “A Brief History Of Drag Queens”). Drag performers had to be wearing no less than 3 items of male clothing at all times, if not, they would be arrested. In 1965, the Imperial court was founded. This was the first type of organization for drag queens, and it soon lead to drag balls. Drag balls are often described as a “fraternity like system” where queens formed houses and the “Drag Mother” would be the head of the house. The queens the Drag mother took under her wing were called “Sisters”(“A Brief History Of Drag Queens”). “Mothers” and “Fathers” helped younger members by offering moral support, social support, and sometimes even a place to live if they were kicked out of their own homes (Conger). At Drag balls they also would compete like fraternities in Drag Queens vs. Drag Kings competitions such as “Femme Queen Impersonation” and “Male …show more content…
Drag exploded in the 1990s, which was very different from how it was look at in the 70s (Brinkley). Drag had become more popular in LGBT+ community and in American culture (Miller). RuPaul was in high interest in the early 1990’s because his album “Supermodel of the World” that came out in 1993.He was the first drag queen ever to get onto the pop charts. When asked to comment about being a drag queen he said, “Drag Queens are like the Shamans of our society, reminding people of what’s funny and what’s a stereotype”. Many drag movies also got national attention. Some of these movies were “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” in 1994 and “Too Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar” in 1995 (Miller). One of the most famous drag movies to come out of the 1990’s is Jenny Livingston’s “Paris is Burning” which features African American drag ball culture and showed what goes into transforming into drag
was frowned on. Skirts would fly upward and legs would show! And it was not
The way I view gender is a way to express yourself. ...Gender is just a doorway, and so is sexuality, race and age.
...mance as Ixion gained rave reviews, but when she moved to another theater, the reviews took an abrupt shift to the discourse of burlesque. They called it the “leg business” and the “nude drama,” and performers were recast as “brazen-faced, stained, yellow-haired, padded limbed creatures” (Allen 16). Burlesque became to be known as a vehicle to over-sexualize women and an opportunity for women to parody masculinity. William Dean Howells wrote an essay on burlesque, he declared: “[T]hough they were not like men, [they] were in most things as unlike women, and seemed creatures of a kind of alien sex, parodying both. It was certainly a shocking thing to look at them with their horrible prettiness, their archness in which was no charm, their grace which put to shame” (Allen 25). Burlesque could be said to be grounded in the aesthetics of transgression and the grotesque.
The clusters of social definitions used to identify persons by gender are collectively known as “femininity” and “masculinity.” Masculine characteristics are used to identify persons as males, while feminine ones are used as signifiers for femaleness. People use femininity or masculinity to claim and communicate their membership in their assigned, or chosen, sex or gender. Others recognize our sex or gender more on the basis of these characteristics than on the basis of sex characteristics, which are usually largely covered by clothing in daily life.
Howard, Jean. "Cross-dressing, The Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern Eng- land." Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988): 418-40.
Through the1960’s the boyish androgynous figure was once again becoming popular. Women were starting to be treated equally to men as they now had ‘greater independence, better qualifications and far wider employment opportunities than their predecessors, the little-girl ideal of the 1960’s endured, expressing the protest of women against their relegation to inferior roles in society and their treatment as sex objects’ (Thesander, M. 1997. p. 180). Women wanted to be liberated and to feel that they are equal to men so they no longer wanted to wear tight fitting lingerie and outer-wear garments.
Through inspecting the protagonists in Giovanni’s Room and Stone Butch Blues with the same lens used by Judith Butler in “Imitation and Gender Insubordination”, difference in reaction to oppression via compulsory heterosexuality are revealed. In Butler’s essay, she analyzes how and why gender is performative in nature while revealing that although people commit themselves to compulsory performances, or imitations, of gender, there is no “original” or “true” gender, even though the notion of imitation seems to imply that there is. Butler uses the example of drag (which she proposes as presenting oneself as a gender one does not ascribe to) to explain that it, “…is not the putting on of a gender that belongs properly to some other group… that
Throughout the history of the United States, women have struggled to gain independence, fighting first for gender equality and later for equal rights. Their efforts and changing roles are reflected in changes in fashion over time.
Is Gender the same thing as Sex? This topic is complicated because many people confuse these two as the same thing but they are very two different things. There are several Cultural Myths about Gender and Sex. Gary Colombo, who wrote: “Thinking Critically, Challenging Cultural Myths” who explains that a cultural myth is a shared set of customs, values, ideas, and beliefs, as well as a common language. In “Sisterhood is Complicated” by Ruth Padawer who is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, focusing on gender and social issues in “Sisterhood is Complicated” she shows many of the Stereotypes about Gender and Sex and how they are unmistakably just cultural myths. It also has how there are positives being trans at an all women
Kathleen Casey’s The Prettiest Girl on Stage is a Man: Race and Gender Benders in American Vaudeville kind of brings this essay full circle with its exploration of the adoption of gender and racial performances in American vaudeville, a popular form of entertainment during the early twentieth century. Vaudeville performances are characterized by physical humor, masquerade, and metamorphosis. This particular type of performance is not much different than “camp” explored in Newton’s Mother Camp, which emphasizes gay humor and theatrics. While camp is performed by drag queens, the vaudeville performers explored in Casey’s work perform gender in different ways. One of the four case studies in the book is that of Eva Tanguay who embodies female
Within society’s dominant white supremacist, capitalist, hetero-patriarchal lens, behaving badly can be used as a model for creating change. By directly challenging norms, one is also empowered by centering themselves in whatever action or space is taken. Divadom is drawn around the ability to control, whether it be the narrative presented or the audience, and as a person, the diva uses the body as a platform to perform. “Gender Performance: From the Freak Show to Modern Drag” by Olivia Germann and Chapter seven “Divas Pop and Pomo” of The Diva’s Mouth: Body, Voice, and Prima Donna Politics, both delve into the power of performance for the collective and individual, while simultaneously addressing the constraints imposed by the audience, whether
Gender is not about the biological differences between men and women but rather the behavioral, cultural and psychological traits typically associated with one sex. Gender is socially constructed meaning it 's culturally specific, it 's learned and shared through gender socialization. What it means to be a woman or man is going to differ based on the culture, geographical location, and time. What it meant to be a woman in the US in the 19th century is different than what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. As cultures evolve over time so are the ideals of what it means to be man or woman.
The word gender refers to a general classification of human beings into male and female with socially and culturally constructed characteristics, behaviors, attributes and roles preconceived and labelled as appropriate for each class. The society and culture today have placed human beings in a box which to a large extent dictates how we act in the world.
The term drag is a reference to the female clothes worn by a male performer in William Shakespeare’s plays when the boys played the girls roles.
6. Hammond, Colleen. "Dressing with Dignity - History of Women's Fashion Industry - How to Fight Sexual Revolution and Immodesty in Dress!" N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.