Performing Masculinity: What’s Real and What’s Drag?

The judgements passed on a drag king reminded Savannah Sullivan just how much of our daily lives is “gender performance”.

I am a woman who grew up playing full tackle football with the neighbor boys and who wanted so badly to be as cool as my older brother that I pretty much exclusively wore his hand-me-downs (think long jorts and Umbro tees) and rocked the exact same haircut he had until eighth grade (cat scratches, undercuts, everything the 90s threw at us). It was a rude awakening to find out I wasn’t acting sufficiently like a girl, and that being confused for a boy wasn’t something I was growing out of. By fifth grade, the lesbian rumors were already flying, and girls who had once been great friends were afraid to be seen with me on the playground. Given my history, reading Judith Butler in Graduate School and learning that there was such a thing as a theory of gender performance, was cathartic, but it wasn’t the first time I’d considered the idea that I, and so many others of us, were acting ‘our gender’ because someone (society) told us to.

I adapted to fit in with my gender a little better, and luckily was able to avoid major bullying past middle school. But the experiences I had made me sensitive to the other kids who weren’t as lucky to fly under the radar. I became a magnet for the queered students in my high school; whether they were too effeminate or not enough so, or whether they had committed some other kind of transgression against the high school masses (enjoying classes or loving the band), our table was the safe place for misfits like me.

I learned a lot in those years that stayed with me through college, and my soft spot for the various people I met that fell somewhere between the poles on the gender spectrum remained. One evening in during college in Nashville, TN, a gay friend who was still very much in the closet and I took a break from reality and went to gay bar. It was there I saw my first drag show. The ladies on that stage portrayed what I felt was a better version of a woman than I could ever hope to be.

They were graceful and elegant while still exuding sex appeal, and their curves were more exaggerated than mine, even with the help of a push-up bra. Even more incredible to me was that so many of these perfect specimen of women would walk off stage and be perfectly confident–even masculine–men.

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Fast forward several years and I live in Tallahassee, FL. In March of 2014, by happenstance I found myself at a drag show/competition in Tallahassee, FL past midnight on a Thursday. Of the five contestants, one was a drag king, a category of drag that in my many years as a fan of drag shows, had never come across. Within the queer communities of the South that I had frequented, drag queens were numerous but drag kings were nonexistent. For his song, he performed ‘Dance, Dance’ by Fall Out Boy, and, naturally, he danced. He danced beautifully, too.

Since this was a competition, the judges commented directly after each performance, American-Idol style. The commentary came from two men who regularly perform in drag and a heterosexual woman, and to be honest, it kind of surprised me. “Too much turnout,” they said; “Point your toes less. You’re too graceful. Your dance training is too obvious.” Still, the drag king took home third prize and the audience choice award.

Afterward, I shared with my friend that I was surprised that they would tell someone who danced so beautifully to do it–well, less beautifully. I think I even said, “I guess the way a man should dance is by looking like he can’t dance.”

I left thinking a lot about gender performance. On the one hand, the judges commentaries had rubbed me completely the wrong way. I wanted this to be a crowd that understood that men aren’t all gruff and rough. On the other hand, though, I get it: Drag shows are a place for hyper-polarized versions of societal gender notions.

Many drag queens wear pads to create the kind of curves that would make Barbie jealous, wigs that would look out of place in most settings, and clothing with sequins and cutouts in just the right places. It would be understandable, then, to expect drag kings to also fit an exaggerated notion of masculinity–muscle pads, shoulder pads, facial hair, shoe lifts–and perhaps, in that case, a more rigid or less-fluid dance style. After all, isn’t it precisely this kind of gender exaggeration that brings a community to understand that in the real world, no one fits those prescribed roles?

For me, drag shows have been a lesson on authenticity. I found that men, if they knew how to play the part right, could make “better” women than I did, and that women who show too much grace don’t make “very good” men. But I also have been reminded that in the end, all gender, on stage and off, is performed; our genders are a mixture of what we’re raised to believe is natural and what we have found to come naturally from within us. With that I can remember that a man with clumsy dance moves does not make for a better man, and no woman is a worse woman because of her jorts and crew cut.

—Photo gaelx/Flickr

Find more about discussion about gender in the “10 Questions About Gender” Series

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