In Appreciation of Drag

Introduction

The next time you decide to comment “YAS QUEEN” on your best friend’s particularly stunning selfie, stop and thank a drag performer.  It’s necessary to acknowledge the contributions drag performers have made towards the greater mainstream culture.  Even though drag performance has been considered a subculture, I constantly see its influence in modern vernacular, dance, style, and nearly every aspect of popular culture that we know of today.  I am interested in a certain type of drag performance centered on the black and brown queer people who popularized drag balls.  I want to know their history.  These events in addition to being a performative outlet, were a method of community and network building for marginalized individuals.  Drag performers of the 20th century and today are participants in not only a cultural phenomenon, but a political statement that disrupts the preconceived ideas about gender presentation and kinship.  I worry that because drag culture has become so ingrained in many spheres, we may lose the true social and political significance of the artform.  If we are more than comfortable co-opting their culture, we should just as easily understand the history.  By blindly adopting the aesthetics of drag and ball culture, we are, in a way, erasing a legacy built by Queer and Trans* POC.   

What is a Drag Ball?

Everyone knows RuPaul’s Drag Race, but what came before it? What existed in the shadows before the glitz and glam of the 21st-century? Drag balls.  These are characterized as large competitions in which drag performers dance and walk for judges and a captivated audience.  Performers dress according to theme and are tasked with embodying it in their performance while also wowing the crowd with their dance/movement abilities.  Such themes may include “Butch Queen”, “Bizarre”, or “Sex Siren” and whoever embodies them best wins the competition.  Performers may compete solo, but they represent larger drag houses.  These houses are led by a matriarch of sorts who serves not only to be a mentor in the performance sphere, but often these heads of houses also shelter and protect younger participants who would otherwise be living on the streets.  

                                                           

(Pepper LaBeija: House of LaBeija, Angie Xtravaganza: House of Xtravaganza, Willi Ninja: House of Ninja)

Drag balls are not a thing of the past.  Queer and trans+ POC still find solace in performing and competing against each other in this way, though I would say that the urgency ball culture had at its peak of popularity has diminished.  However, the desire, or need, for space is ever present.  The classic, and culturally significant, film Paris is Burning is a fantastic study of ball culture’s rise to prominence and documents the connections and communities formed.

The Beginnings

Surprisingly, drag balls weren’t always spaces exclusively for black and brown queer people.  I was working under the assumption that these performances were a specific production of 1980s New York, but that isn’t the case.  Ball culture as we (I) know it was formed in reaction to a similar practice which was designated solely for white gay males.  The space wasn’t accessible to the queer POC who would later popularize drag performance and balls in the latter half of the 20th century.  At its inception, drag balls were an opportunity for the collective performance of gender variance for white men.  At these events, competitions weren’t had, but this was a chance for men to dress in drag and put together fashion shows for their community.  Something that most definitely differentiates these early balls with the concept we know of today is the overtly racist nature of these events.  Apparently, if black and brown drag queens wanted to join in on the festivities, they must lighten their skin.  Whiteness, or perceived whiteness, was a stipulation for joining in on a queer space.  This is of particular interest for me coming from a performance background.  It says something about the way we as a society perform gender and race.  In this case, one cannot perform gender or gender variance without also performing a perverted idea of what race is.

In response the the exclusionary policies within the traditional structure of drag balls, black and brown queer and trans folks decided to create their own community spaces in which they could perform gender and sexuality removed from the dominant white population.  The roots of drag balls as we know now came about in the 1960s and 70s.  The practice became a way to protect the community while also giving young queer people their own space to express themselves.    

Cultural Significance

I, as a 20 year old woman, can’t remember a time in which the impact of drag wasn’t felt in my life.  This could possibly be due to my curiosity and experimentation with queerness from childhood, but may also be because drag culture has infiltrated the mainstream.  We can automatically point to one of the biggest cultural productions from drag culture, RuPaul’s Drag Race as a clear example of contemporary drag performance.  For many, this is their first entrance point to anything related to drag culture.  While we can of course look at this show and the exposure it has given to this aspect of the queer community, it remains important to understand that this show does not exist in a vacuum.  Drag performers have long existed and the credit we give Drag Race is actually due to the performers that came before them, from the popular ball culture in the 80s.  Instead of crediting the white, cis, gay men (who may themselves perform drag) we must recognize that our vernacular comes from black and latinx folks.  Attributing certain language to the correct populations may seem miniscule, the fact remains that when these people are so marginalized, it’s worth crediting them when possible.

Here are some words/phrases that have roots in Queer POCs:

Shade, Tea, Realness, Reading, Serving, Gurl, (the) Gag, and so much more

What Does Drag Do?

Drag is performance. Drag is security.  Drag is family.  Drag is political.  I think about what it means to form a network and the inherently political nature of community building.  To form a collective, in this case a drag house or family, we are confronting social constructions of kinship and family. Additionally, the act of drag was, and remains, a way to keep black and brown people off of the street and temporarily removed from a culture of surveillance that is only meant to further disenfranchise them.  In America there is a narrowly defined idea of what makes a family.  In its most simple form a family is meant to be a unit built upon blood, but these practices of creating a drag family completely subverts that.  It forms a bond built upon love, connection, and communal safety instead of one built on obligation.  Additionally, these performers are at a higher risk of experiencing violence, drug abuse, and homelessness.  Their racial identities in conjunction with gender and sexuality have created an embodiment of marginalization in America.  Drag forms a sense of accountability that wouldn’t exist if these people remained in a position of subalternity.  What ball culture has given queer folks generations from its inception is a network of people to whom they are accountable for, in the idea that performers “look out for their own”.  A connection born out of mutual desire to be seen and heard, rather than tossed aside by the mainstream, is what these drag houses within ball culture offer.

While it’s natural to be interested in drag culture, it’s also important to know the true significance of the performance.  Every ball, drag brunch, tv show isn’t solely for mainstream (cis, white, straight) consumption.  The roots of this art are in subjection, marginalization, and need.  The drag performance that we see today still echoes back to years in which gender and sexuality weren’t talked about.  At the core, it’s important to remember that this culture wasn’t made for us-we are a secondary audience.  I’m advocating for a more holistic approach to consuming drag culture in which people still feel comfortable using whatever vernacular, style they chose, but with reverence towards those that came before us and the challenges they had to face.