Drag King Mystique
07.01.05
By Jennifer VanCory
Have you ever wanted to know (but been too afraid) to ask a drag king "What is it all about?" As lesbians, I suspect that many of us like to publicly act to one another as if we already know the answer to this question, while we secretly strain to understand. They're just handsome women dressed as men who can perform the hell out of a karaoke song. Right?
It's a mistake to reduce drag kings to merely women performing in male clothing. The emphasis is less on male impersonation and more on gender performance," says drag king, Ken Las Vegas. Vegas is the founder of the Washington-based DC Kings and producer of the Great Big International Drag King Show. There has been a gradual evolution of the drag king and his culture. During the 1920s, Gladys Bentley was the first notable female-to-male (FTM) performer. Bentley, a popular African-American blues singer, made a name for herself by performing in the speakeasies of Harlem dapperly dressed in her top hat and tuxedo. The singer's vocal talents were as widely publicized as were her relationships with women.
In 1996, Mo B. Dick and Club Casanova came along which lead to the recent explosion in the popularity of drag kings. Like the speakeasies of the 1920s, governmental and law enforcement crackdowns led to the closure of Club Casanova which turned into a traveling road show. As a result, the drag king phenomenon has spread considerably during the past nine years. Trying to understand drag kings as well as their culture can be complicated by its fusion of expression, identity, feminism and illusion that seem to perpetuate and redefine itself. Thus, making it hard to separate the true person from the performance or even leave us guessing on some level as to what the on-stage act may represent to the actual performers.
Las Vegas elaborates, "One of the things that I consistently encounter is the expectation is that I'm Ken Las Vegas all the time… and that's so not the case. I do get disappointments from people when they talk to me when I'm out of drag and they expect whatever I portray(on stage)… I don’t know what I portray. I even had one girl who I was dating say that she was very surprised how feminine I am... and I was like that’s too bad you assumed."
When performing, "E-Cleff is very smooth and sexual onstage and that is definitely not Ebone. I would say only 10% of me is actually on that stage. When I get on that stage I'm in a totally different world. It's my alter ego really. The real me is such a nerd and a hidden gay boy," says DC Drag King member, E-Cleff.
"Boise is sort of an exaggerated form of my childish, playful self. So, it’s definitely bits and pieces of me up on the stage but just stuff that I wouldn’t normally allow myself to do as Sarah," said fellow DC Drag King performer, Boise Studley.
For some kings, the performance process can also lead to a deeper self-discovery that may mark the beginning of their journey into transexuality. "We have trans-kings who originally started off as identifying as female per se and then going through this gender discovery of maybe…they feel more male than female and then start the process of becoming trans. It just taps something in them. Actually for quite a few kings, they enter the world of trans (FTM) through performing male gender publicly and getting that public affirmation," said Las Vegas.
There are overt differences between drag kings and queens and their audiences. Drag queen performances are often about female parody, costume and diva-ness whereas drag kings view their performances as an opportunity for gender expression and entertainment in a supportive environment.
What may be interpreted as a more sexually charged atmosphere is evident at drag king shows. "Women are turned on by seeing women owning their sexuality and putting it out there in a very assertive way," explained Las Vegas.
Furthering the distinctions between drag queen and drag king performances Las Vegas said with drag queens “There is a sense of diva-ness that you just really cannot touch. So it leaves you on the stance of being an observer.”
Interestingly, drag kings have encountered prejudice within the LGBT community itself. On one occasion, Las Vegas received word from a well known drag queen in Washington D.C. "criticizing the kings for not looking male enough. You know… just saying that we are basically females with facial hair pasted to our face and that we don't really go beyond that. I had to stop and really think about the power of that statement. This is one more time that a male even though dressing like a female is still determining what a female should do to be validated in a male’s eyes," said Las Vegas.
"The DC gay community and Pride in general is very gay male oriented. Look at the newspapers around us. Very gay male oriented and white gay male oriented for that matter," says E-Cleff.
E-Cleff described a similar encounter with sexism one year at Washington's Capital Pride event where a Mr. and Miss Capital Pride are selected during this annual event. "Allix Allot (DC Drag King performer) and myself went out for Mr. and Miss Capital Pride" said, E-Cleff. "Ms. Capital Pride is all drag queens and Mr. is all bio-males," he explained. "Why are there no women on that stage? So we went out for Mr. Capital Pride as drag kings. It was really to make a point about diversity and inclusion. It definitely stirred up some folks because they thought that we didn’t have the right to be there."
Although drag kings have experienced prejudice, they have also received affirmation and acceptance from their audiences and in some cases their families. E-Cleff’s mother has attended two of his shows and they sang a duet the Jackson Five song “I’ll Be There.” “It was good…we got a good response and it was good for her too just because a lot of people came up to her and said I haven't seen my Mom in a year (because of being LGBT) or I really don’t talk to my mom and it’s just so good to see you here.”
What is a drag king if it’s not the attire or the facial hair? “It’s really not about that. It’s really about being able to feel comfortable and to inhabit a different attitude. It is a performance and that performance of gender is what makes a drag king,” said Boise.
The evolution of drag kings continues which now includes in performances “bio-queens” which are biological women who perform as women and “trans-men who feel like you know that that they still want to perform even though they now identify as male. They are not really doing an illusion anymore they are doing more just like maybe a political performance. So it less about gender and it's more about the entertainment. That's where I think drag king is today,” said Las Vegas.
