I fell in love with drag the same way I fell in love with Liza Minelli and Lady Gaga and Marilyn Monroe. But then maybe they’re all part of the same, magical parcel: the drama, the art, the theatricality, the humour, the camp, the illusion.
The magic that exists in a role of tape, some paint and some powder.
I think we all masquerade in some way or another, but not many men subject themselves to the behind the scenes of the literal masks of presenting ourselves to the world.
But.
I’m also a bit afraid of drag. I’m afraid of the masculinity within the hyper femininity. Afraid that, despite of how I identify, I’m intruding on a space that I’m not wanted in.
It makes me feel some kind of way that the men DRessed As Girls capitalise on what (depending what feminist paradigm you subscribe to, eg, liberal, radical, Marxist, etc) ultimately oppresses us.
Sometimes it can feel like another stolen sorcery, repackaged to women as out of reach, over the top, maybe performance art, but not for you, for us. That colour would be too bold, that wig too obvious, those clothes too risqué, that demeanour too brazen, that persona too fake, that shade too bitchy, that joke too off colour.
Stay in your socially acceptable box, Females.
Is there a saviour out there for us? The bio queen to shed light on what is truly feminine, beyond the superficial layer of female illusion? Who will mine the depths of womanhood in drag, accessing those realms that only tapping into the inner She will enable? The inward fold for outward expansion. The deep roots that lead to a vast underworld of being, of life, of Her.
Does she exist?