KINGS, QUEENS, AND IN-BETWEENS: EXPLORING GENDER AND

POWER THROUGH DRAG PERFORMANCES

_______________

A Thesis
Presented to the
Faculty of
San Diego State University

_______________

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
in
Womens Studies

_______________

by
Danielle C. Bauer
Summer 2013

iii

Copyright 2013
by
Danielle C. Bauer
All Rights Reserved

iv

DEDICATION
For Jo, in spite of it all.

It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through Art, and
through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.
-Oscar Wilde

vi

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens: Exploring Gender and Powder
through Drag Performances
by
Danielle C. Bauer
Master of Arts in Womens Studies
San Diego State University, 2013
Drag performance illuminates intersectional issues of social power and gender. This
thesis provides a feminist analysis on how drag and gender are structured by
heteropatriarchal forces and intersectionality. The drag performers identity interacts with the
performance in terms of methodology, execution, aesthetic, goals, and communicated
messages. I focus on drag kings, drag queens, and those who fall somewhere between or
outside of those categories. This thesis provides a brief historical review of drag, crossdressing, and camp humor in the U.S. in order to situate drag today. The focus is on LGBTQ
constituencies and women in popular culture.
I explore how drag functions within U.S. popular culture, with a focus on female
performers including Mae West, Madonna, Annie Lennox, and Lady Gaga. Often, what I call
unruly femininity is mislabeled as queer. Drag reveals how women are limited and
oppressed by dominant views of masculinity and femininity. I question if masculinity is
compatible with feminism and review its binary limitations.
This thesis explores how drag is changed by digital technologies and the Internet
what I call cyberdrag. It reveals how the transfer from the corporeal to the digital affects
drag. I use Lady Gagas drag persona, Jo Calderone, as a case study to update how drag
operates in the twenty-first century.
Centering intersectionality, I review how cross-dressing in drag performance often
crosses more than gender, and how those crossings signify social power. I call these
crossings embodied tourism. I test how various combinations of identity influence drag
performance and what those differences illuminate about gender and power.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER
1

INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1
Methodology and Overview ....................................................................................2
Personal Background ...............................................................................................5

LITERATURE REVIEW ..............................................................................................9

Defining Drag ..........................................................................................................9
Masculinity at the Feminist Crossroads .................................................................10
Female Drag in Popular Culture ............................................................................12
The Power of Looking ...........................................................................................12
Drag Kinging vs. Male Impersonation...................................................................14
Sex, Gender, Drag ..................................................................................................17
Defining Masculinity and the Role of Gender Embodiment .................................19
Revealing Masculinity as Social Dominance ........................................................21

3 DRAG AND LGBTQ CONSTITUENCIES ...............................................................25

What's LGBTQ Got to Do with It? ........................................................................28
Homosexuals, Gender Deviants .............................................................................29
Camping Drag ........................................................................................................30
Laughter and Gay Melancholia ..............................................................................32
Disidentified Drag as Queer...................................................................................36
Lesbian and Queer Women, Female Masculinity, and The Drag King .................38
Critique of Extant Theory ......................................................................................40
Androcentrism and Misogyny................................................................................43
Beyond Gender-Crossing: Racialized and Working-Class Masculinities .............47
4 SETTING THE STAGE: WOMEN, POPULAR CULTURE, AND DRAG ..............52
Women in Popular Culture ....................................................................................53

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Subcultural Visibility/Pop Commodificiation .......................................................54
Female Camp in Popular Culture ...........................................................................57
Unruly Femininity ..................................................................................................58
Normalizing Queerness ..........................................................................................59
Feminist Issues .......................................................................................................63
Gaga's Gender-Bending Predecessors ...................................................................67
5

JO CALDERONE TAKES CENTER STAGE............................................................73

Gagas Encoding: Why Drag? ...............................................................................75
The Decoding Process: Reception and Interpretations ..........................................78
Heteronormative Drag ...........................................................................................79
The Complicated Relationship between Gaga and LGBTQs ................................80
LGBTQ Responses ................................................................................................84
Calderone as Racialized and Working-Class .........................................................85
Blurring Reality, Preserving the Self, and the Limitations of Femininity .........86
Popular Culture and Social Media .........................................................................89
Photo Editing ...................................................................................................93
Voice and Video Editing ..................................................................................96
Recreating Calderone, (Re)creating Drag ......................................................100

6 CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY .......................103

REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................110

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Dr. Susan Cayleff. Her insight and
expertise propelled this project and supported my scholarly growth. I appreciated her warm
encouragement, as well as her thoughtful critiques and insights. She is the best mentor
anyone could ever hope to have along this process. She is an incredibly inspiring scholar and
instructor.
Many thanks also to my committee members, Dr. Anne Donadey and Dr. Yetta
Howard, for their keen eyes and helpful suggestions. Their guidance enabled me to expand
upon this project in crucial ways.
I would also like to thank my mom, dad, and brother for supporting my one-manband shows and watching every living-room performance of my youth. They have always
fostered my creativity and encouraged my pursuit of education. I am eternally grateful for
their hard work and personal sacrifices that have enabled me to pursue my dreams within
academia.
Thank you also to my dear friends for listening to my incredibly long-winded stories
and continuing to lend an ear, especially after hearing, Do you want to hear my new theory
about [whatever]? Your enduring friendship means the world to me.
Thank you, C.D.S., for assuring me that these ideas matter.

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Drag performance, the parody of gender via cross-dressing and adoption of
mannerisms, has been and continues to be a staple within U.S. LGBTQ communities. It is a
site of political and social critique of gender norms. Because heterosexual norms largely
determine gender roles, drag subverts socially-constructed links between sex, gender, and
sexuality that reify heteronormativity.
Yet, drag is not only performed by and within LGBTQ communities. I look to the
ways drag functions among LGBTQ communities in gay cultural spaces, and also to
heteronormative women in U.S. popular culture. Exploring drag across various social
locations and cultural sites illuminates how it is reflective of social privileges and
oppressions. Straight women and men often perform drag in ways that highlight their
interactions with sex, gender, and power. Additionally, drag often crosses over into
heteronormative popular culture. Beyond traversing various cultural spaces, it has also
moved from the physical stage to cyber platforms catalyzed by new digital and Internet
technologies. I explore these issues to provide further insight to cultural understandings of
sex, gender, sexuality, and embodiment that regulate social power and shape lived
experiences.
The discourse of drag requires a significant overhaul. It lacks a critical focus on how
identity influences drag performance. Drag is frequently discussed in a monolithic way,
where performances that utilize it are grouped in ways that gloss over discrete differences
among them. Drag does not define a performance that utilizes it, but rather the type of
performance and the identity of the performer define how, why, and to what effect drag is
constituted.
Because the history of drag is extensive, this thesis looks at social and theoretical
discourses from the late nineteenth century through the present. A historical framework
shows drag is temporally situated within cultural attitudes regarding sex and gender. Most
often, theories of drag are ahistorical and anachronistic as older theories of drag are used to

2
frame new drag performances in ways that may not consider the performers temporal
material realities.
Drag is a performance art. At times it is political, other times it is considered merely
entertainment. It can often reify normative thinking, while in other deployments it
transgresses those limits. The constitutions and effects of drag performance are shaped by
who is performing and by the location of the performance. Because of this, we should move
beyond discussing performances that utilize drag in a monolithic sense, and conceptualize
them as genres of drag.
Discourses discussing drag are also limited because the language we have available to
discuss sex and gender are severely binary. Despite decades of feminist, postmodern, and
queer theoretical interventions, gender continues to be discussed in terms of binary units
masculine and feminine. Despite the many vantage points of feminist and queer theorists,
they continue to rely on masculinity and femininity as the only means of describing gender.
These terms have been extended beyond coherent use in ways that expose the whole system
as faulty. This thesis exposes theoretical problems of the continued use of masculinity and
femininity in hopes to move beyond their limited dialectic capabilities.
I argue that motivations to do drag are directly connected to personal experiences,
material realities, and social positionings. When people perform drag, they bring themselves
to the performances because the medium of drag is the body. It is a layered performance of
transformation that moves between and among various personas and egos.

METHODOLOGY AND OVERVIEW

This thesis utilizes a mixture of methodologies and draws from several theoretical
backgrounds and locations of inquiry. In part, this thesis explores theory and critiques of it. I
compare and contrast how current theories of sex, gender, and drag stand in relation to one
another, and how these works have formed current drag theory. I look to feminist, queer, and
postmodern perspectives of these issues to begin to explain how gender is constituted and
how it functions within U.S. society.
A major goal of this project is to suggest points of intervention. Some sites for
theoretical intervention include: exploring the interactions between sex, gender, and sexuality
categories in drag discourse as they relate to the body. As one major intervention, I reframe

3
drag alongside the concept of embodied tourism. This concept centers the need to
acknowledge how drag operates around more than gender crossing, but also temporary
embodied crossings of race, ethnicity, and class. Other goals include: reviewing the
constructions and limitations of femininity and masculinity to seek out new gender
languages; exploring how sexual orientation affects drag performance among women; teasing
apart the aesthetics of gender from the psychosocial elements of gender; and reviewing drag
scholarship through a feminist lens that highlights material realities and intersectional
constitutions of social power.
As another major intervention of this thesis, I update drag theory to the current
technological climate and bring it into the twenty-first century. Drag has moved into new
digital sites of performance that utilize several new applications of and interactions with
drag. I call this new kind of drag cyberdrag. I explore cyberdrag in the following ways:
exploring the effects of digital technologies on sex and gender embodiment; defining new
sites and methods of drag made possible by technology; reviewing the effects of social media
(Facebook, YouTube, etc.) on communication as it pertains to drag performance; and
utilizing discourse analysis and cyber-ethnography to review perceptions, interpretations, and
online engagements with drag. I utilize Lady Gagas drag persona, Jo Calderone, as a case
study to explore cyberdrag.
Chapter one is a theoretical exploration of extant literature. I review literature
concerning social power and identity in relation to sex, gender, race, and sexuality. I focus on
what drag performance exposes about social relations, especially for women. My literature
review provides a theoretical, political, and historical background of drag. This discussion
frames the current state of drag with the goal to uncover theoretical fissures, critically review
and test its logics, and expand upon it where necessary. Because this scholarship is extremely
vast, I focus on how political messages imbue drag and how these shift based on sites of
performance and the social locations of performers. I also examine what drag exposes about
women's lives and experiences on stage and off.
Chapter two reviews the history and theoretical underpinnings of drag in relation to
LGBTQ identities and communities. I explore why it is typically discussed in relation to
LGBTQ constituencies and cultural spaces, and the ways it has been used as an oppositional
strategy against heteronormativity. I review the performances of drag kings and drag queens,

4
and explore how gender affects performance, the role of camp humor, and how these issues
reflect misogyny, heterosexism, and sexism.
In chapter three, I test how existing theories hold up when applied to diverse kinds of
drag performances by heteronormative women in popular culture. Popular culture and
feminist scholar Suheyla Kirca states, feminist intervention in popular culture might offer
feminist politics a pragmatic strategy to shift the balance of power and prepare the ground for
change, and thus help transform society.1 I focus on cross-dressing, camp humor, and drag
and their uses within stage and music performance, highlighting the acts of Mae West,
Madonna, and Annie Lennox. I offer the sociolinguistic intervention of unruly femininity as a
way to conceptualize performers and performances that actively resist hegemonic ideas of
femininity. Without this intervention, many instances of resistance to hegemonic femininity
are defined as queer in ways that trouble the coherency of queer. As a concept, unruly
femininity is useful because it functions as an option to explain how heteronormative (nonqueer) women can resist hegemonic femininity.
Chapter four compares preceding chapters to a recent use of drag within U.S. popular
culture. I explore Lady Gaga's use of drag character Jo Calderone on August 28, 2011 during
the televised broadcast of the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) and surrounding
multimedia of Calderone. Inspired by work on the semiotics of communication, I look to
Stuart Hall's concepts of the encoding and decoding processes to examine how Calderone's
performance is represented within the four states of communication, including production,
circulation, use (distribution or consumption) and reproduction.2
I use discourse analysis to explore how meaning is constructed around drag in
popular culture and analyze the sources that create the stories about Calderone's performance.
This is done alongside framing the performance within scholarly discourse laid out in
preceding chapters. Using Google Trends, I have discovered a massive flurry of Internet
searches for Jo Calderone on the night of his VMAs appearance. For this reason, looking to
discourse created on the Internet demonstrates how the meanings of a drag performance are
1

Suheyla Kirca, Popular Culture: From Being an Enemy of the Feminist Movement to a Tool for
Womens Liberation?, Journal of American Culture 22, no. 3 (1999): 105.
2

Stuart Hall, Encoding, Decoding, in The Encoding and Decoding of the Television Discourse
(Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1973), 508.

5
co-created through multiple sites of engagement. This use of content analysis directly
addresses how visual codes translate into messages and if the process changes the intended
message.
Exposure to the ideas of Internet content influenced how Calderone was interpreted,
discussed, and decoded. I look to multiple sites on the Internet that co-created the discourse
centered on Calderone. These sites of inquiry illuminate how drag performances are
constructed for the mainstream stage, how audiences engage with cyberdrag, and how and to
what effect cyberdrag extends drag discourse beyond corporeality.

PERSONAL BACKGROUND
In my life, the prescriptions and restrictions of gender have produced a series of
troubled feelings ranging from a general dull malaise, to extreme frustration, to absolute
skepticism. Some of my first memories of this included asking fast food employees why I
couldnt have the boy toy rather than the girl toy in my kids meals. They seemed
stunned by the question. Challenging gender roles as an adult continues to be met with
responses of people who seem to have never questioned gender themselves. I am constantly
aware of how it influences my life while others seem oblivious to its ubiquitous effects.
When asked why gender is the way it is, many people how responded to me, because. I am
not satisfied with that answer.
Another anecdote speaks to my positionality: running around the backyard shirtless as
a child and being completely confused when the neighbor told me that I needed to be a
lady. I had trouble understanding what a lady was, but knew that every time I was told to
be one were the times I felt most free and happy. My childhood quickly became my
adolescence and I lost touch briefly with my tomboy looks, as most of us are sadly coerced to
do. Despite this, I continued to play sports, take science classes, play in the drumline, and
work as a technician in television and radio. I never did settle into being whatever it meant to
be a lady. I may have looked the part, but I certainly did not want to play the role.
I cannot remember my first experience of drag, but I know that cross-dressing and
gender transgression were part of some of my earliest memories. Looking back on my life, I
have consistently maintained a taste for gender transgression. Although it may be essentialist
to claim I was born with that taste, nothing else seems to justify how deeply seated it is in my

6
identity. I have been aware of it since I have been aware of my own self. It first arose in the
performances of David Bowie, the glam rocker that rendered gender into a kind of science
fiction. Then, the cross-dressing movies of the eighties and nineties: Mrs. Doubtfire, Just one
of the Guys, and Tootsie. I was entranced by Idgie, the tomboyish bee-charmer (read: girlcharmer) in Fried Green Tomatoes. I found this taste in musicians like Rufus Wainwright
and Anthony and the Johnsons, as well as writers like Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde. Then I
made my way to the films Too Wong Foo: Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, Hedwig
and the Angry Inch, and Pricilla Queen of the Desert and my taste for drag, cross-dressing,
and gender-role transgression was solidified. I admit that something about Lady Gagas
performances caters to this taste, as well.
I realize now that my only outlet and exposure to gender transgression as a child and
teen were through mass media. I found myself scavenging for instances of any out of the
usual gender presentations. I also kept these interests to myself, knowing somehow that they
werent acceptable. I spent most of my days unconsciously doing drag myself. Perhaps there
is some theoretical backing to the drag prince who later becomes the drag king. In fact, the
dress-up and make-believe done by children is not far off from the drag performance of
adults. At every opportunity, I dressed up as male characters, put on stage shows for my
family in my living room, and spent almost every Halloween in dragone of the few days
drag is publically allowable. Looking back on my high school prom, I remember feeling very
much like a drag queen, although I did not know at the time that I could be one. I did not
have the words to explain these tastes, but I knew I related to gender differently than my
peers. I perceived it as a site of creative exploration and theatricality. I discovered later that
the transgressions of those explorations are dangerous.
I finally found the words to explain my gender discontent and skepticism when I
found feminist, queer, and postmodern theories in college. Adrienne Rich told me that
women are trained to be heterosexual with natural aspirations to become a mother and
wife; Simone de Beauvoir illuminated the difference between being a female and
becoming a woman; The Radicalesbians radically disavowed the heteronormative tenets of
womanhood; Judith Halberstam opened my eyes to female masculinity and that I was not the
only one who mourned the loss of my tomboy childhood; and most importantly, Judith Butler

7
expressed that gender is not natural, but rather a hegemonic repetition of acts. These
writers wrote the words I had been searching to find.
My academic background combined these feminist and queer writers with the
magical realist and postmodernist novelists such as Milan Kundera, Jorge Luis Borges, and
Thomas Pynchon, along with the French poststructuralists Jacques Derrida and Jean
Baudrillard. Because of this, I consider gender to exist simultaneously as an art, a fiction, and
a material reality. The multi-faceted approach makes my interpretation of gender personal
and politically informed.
I approach gender like I approach religion: I am a gender agnostic. I know that
gender, like religion, holds a lot of power within our lives and is heavily indicative of social
control; yet, Im not entirely sure of what it is. Although gender may have some rootedness
in biological issues, I largely see gender as something made up and enforced by humans in
order to garner social power. I acknowledge that gender exists as a form of social control and
is often passed off as truth in order to enforce social hierarchies without question. Although I
am interested in what gender is (i.e. gendered characteristics), I am more captivated by how
gender comes to be (i.e. how aesthetic and psychosocial characteristics come to be gendered).
I use the concept gender agnosticism to stand as one interpretation of gender and one
that does not claim to know the Truth of gender. Claiming to not know the truths of gender
has lead me to explore the many discourses that seek to define what is called gender more
deeply. Often, a position of not claiming to know the truth allows for further uninhibited
exploration, as it does not require proving a current or established stance in the process. This
allows for the exploration of how characteristics of behavior and aesthetic come to be
gendered. As traditional agnosticism is a kind of white-flag atheism, gender agnosticism is a
kind of white flag in terms of gender theory. It refuses to claim knowing the Truth of gender
while also maintaining a healthy skepticism of the current discourses that do.
I believe much of queer theory treats gender like atheists treat religion: a complete
disbelief in the (institutionalized) system. Because of this, I worry that many of the material
realities of gender are not validated or considered when gender is cast as a ridiculous fiction.
In order to address this issue, I use a feminist approach that considers material realities of
sex, gender, and embodiment along with queer and postmodern deconstructions of those
categories. I approach sex and gender as social constructs without dissolving the category

8
woman because the material realities of those categories regulate womens lives. Just
because something is socially-constructed does not mean it does not produce real effects.
After twenty-seven years of personal experience, four and a half years of
undergraduate study, and two years of graduate school, I remain unsatisfied with our cultural
understandings of sex, gender, and embodiment. Despite the work of queer and feminist
gender scholars, gender continues to inform and limit nearly every aspect of human life.
Gender has been exposed over and over again as a fiction, yet we are far from unraveling it. I
see drag performance as a way to further explore what gender is, how it oppressively invades
our lives, and what can be done to overturn those limitations.

CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
This thesis utilizes a theoretical framework based on the work done by poststructuralist,
feminist, and queer theorists of drag, the body, and gender. Poststructuralist work surrounding
sex, gender, and drag deconstructs multiple binaries: male/female, heterosexual/homosexual,
nature/culture, nature/technology, and masculine/feminine.3 To provide an analysis of the current
status of drag within U.S. culture, I utilize multiple fields of scholarship to situate drag: feminist
definitions of sex and gender in relation to heteropatriarchy; sex and gender as sociallyconstructed; the material realities of the body; constructions and feminist implications of
masculinity and femininity; intersectional issues surrounding drag; and the role of the current
state of technology and its influence on drag.

DEFINING DRAG
My goal is to expand and update the definition of drag as it operates within
heteropatriarchal U.S.4 culture from the turn of the twentieth-century up to the present. Drag
challenges the assumed link between sex and gender, where gender is contingent upon sex. At
the most basic level, it is the embodiment and performance of gender associated with crossdressing and adoption of mannerisms. Drag temporarily yields cross-gendered behavior,
appearance, and attitude by non-compliance with normative gender roles as contingent on
cultural scripts overseen by biological sex. Despite this shared basis, the effect, composition, and
motivations of drag performance are far from universal. Drag discourse needs to be updated as a
result of changing technologies and cultural understandings of gender, sexuality, and power.
3

This thesis will explore these issues in later sections, yet I must contend that I use masculinity within this
section because of its proliferation within gender discourse; however, I argue that masculinity and femininity are not
clearly defined, continue to operate as binary even when destabilized, and create a hierarchical system based on
domination passed off as aesthetic embodiment of sexual dimorphism.
4

Many of my sources are not limited to the U.S., but exist within Western discourse that is often centered in
scholarly discourse of drag within the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

10
It is important to note the existence of drag within entertainment performance.
Performance art scholar F. Michael Moore tracks the history of cross-dressing used on stage and
screen, yet fails to acknowledge the vast differences between drag, cross-dressing, and
impersonation. He suggests, Drag, the wearing of clothes of the opposite sex, is as old as gender
itself.5 Because it is socially-situated and adaptive to specific social climates, its value
transcends entertainment. Moore's understanding of drag is depoliticized and sanitized without
considering gender politics. In these instances, drag merely upholds dominant models of sex and
gender constructions, as nothing is transcended or troubled and uncomplicated entertainment is
centered. Additionally, the concept of gendered impersonation implies that the drag performer is
a kind of gender imposter, and thus, that biological sex determines gender authenticity.

MASCULINITY AT THE FEMINIST CROSSROADS

Feminist understandings of masculinity and femininity were addressed by feminist
scholar Patricia Hill Collins. She contends that masculine traits are merely those that are most
valued in a patriarchal society, including intelligence, aggression, leadership, rationality, and
strength.6 As interlocking systems, gender traits and embodiment are shaped enormously by race
and class.7 Because of this, gender and drag performance can only be read through these social
categories.
Journalism scholar Robert Jensen (2010) argued that masculinity is best defined as what
it is not: what a real man isn't is a woman or gay.8 Masculinity and femininity become difficult
to define because they rely heavily on sexist, racist, classist, heterosexist, and ableist systems of
oppression, yet are passed off as natural traits of maleness and femaleness. The required

5
F. Michael Moore, Drag!: Male and Female Impersonators on Stage, Screen, and Television: An Illustrated
World History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1994), 1.
6

Patricia Hill Collins, Toward a New Vision: Race, Class, and Gender as Categories of Analysis and
Connection, in Doing Gender Diversity: Readings in Theory and Real-World Experience, ed. Rebecca F. Plante
and Lisa M. Maurer (Boulder: Westview Press, 2010), 25.
7
8

Ibid.

Robert Jensen, Masculine, Feminine or Human?, in Doing Gender Diversity: Readings in Theory and RealWorld Experience, ed. Rebecca F. Plante and Lisa M. Maurer (Boulder: Westview Press, 2010), 100.

11
hierarchy of patriarchy operates around masculinity, a system that should be rejected by
feminists regardless of their social positionings.
In Female Masculinity (1998), queer scholar Judith Halberstam defines the drag king as
a female (usually) who dresses up in recognizably male costume and performs theatrically in
that costume.9 In The Drag King Book (1999), she contends that the drag king is a tribute to
masculinity.10 I juxtapose this theory of drag kinging with feminism: does female masculinity
work against feminist tenets if power and privilege merely transfer from the male body to the
female body? Should we glorify masculinity (read: embodied racialized, classed, and gendered
domination) in any form? Can we dismantle the master's house with the master's tools?11
I am not convinced that female masculinity is a feminist solution to working against
social oppressions if masculinity is founded on hierarchical dominance. Moving beyond this
system requires new versions of gender that transcend the binary. Perhaps feminist and queer
discourses would come to more transgressive and useful understandings if we do not assume that
a female resisting femininity is adopting masculinity, especially when masculinity is structured
around domination.12 Instead of female masculinity, can we conceive and theorize of female
non-femininity in order to move beyond both normative and non-normative dialectics that

Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 232.

10

Del Lagrace Volcano and Judith Jack Halberstam, The Drag King Book (London: Serpents Tail, 1999),

11

Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984), 112.

27.
12

Many scholars have addressed the queer reworking of femininity with concepts including queer
femininity and queer femme. This scholarship largely argues that queer femininity is a way to reclaim femininity
from heteropatriarchal forces. For a review of queer fem(me)s feminist potential and power as a site of hegemonic
gender resistance, see: Lisa Duggan and Kathleen McHugh, A Fem(me)inist Manifesto, Women & Performance:
A Journal of Feminist theory 8, no. 2 (1996): 153159. For another manifesto anthology, see: Chloe Brushwood
Rose and Anna Camilleri, eds, Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity (Vancouver, B.C.: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002).
Often, the term femme signals its history as a binary category that complements butch (the butch/femme
system) within lesbian communities. For more information regarding that history and a review of femme within
that context, see: Heidi M. Levitt, Elisabeth A. Gerrish, and Katherine R. Hiestand, The Misunderstood Gender: A
Model of Modern Femme Identity, Sex Roles 48, no. 3/4 (2003): 99113. For an anthology that operates to
highlight multiple perspectives of femme experiences and understandings, rather than rigid, clear definitions of the
term, see: Jennifer Clare Burke, ed., Visible: A Femmethology (Ypsilanti, MI: Homofactus Press, 2009). Although
these concepts provide multiple new perspectives and actively resist the hegemonic oppressions of traditional
femininity, I seek to find alternatives to understanding gender beyond masculine and feminine, queer or
otherwise. Rather, finding new units of measuring what are considered gendered characteristics may help to
establish what exactly what gender is, how it is constructed, and how it regulates social power.

12
comprise the gender binary? This question also elicits a need to explore hegemonic femininity
and non-dominant femininities to the same extent as masculinities.

FEMALE DRAG IN POPULAR CULTURE

Drag is directly contingent on gender, hence drag practices and theories are vastly
complicated by issues of sex, race, class, ability, and embodiment as faced specifically by
women in a patriarchal culture. Although gay male drag queens experience social oppression as a
result of heterosexism, women, gay and straight, experience drag quite differently in practice and
theory. Female drag performers face specific sets of issues by performing masculinities within a
sexist and heterosexist culture. Scholarship that examines female drag generally focuses on
heteronormative women. The other main tract focuses on female drag as performed by lesbianor queer-identified women in gay and lesbian cultural spaces. The implications of the differences
between the two are rarely acknowledged or analyzed.
The lack of feminist consciousness within drag discourse means drag has typically been
explored in terms of sexuality (gay men in drag), rather than one of gender oppression (women
in drag). This is a theoretical inaccuracy as it conflates gender and sexuality, while also glossing
over how these categories produce different experiences, oppressions, and material realities.
Being female changes the approach, reception, and politics behind drag performance. Because
women experience the world via patriarchal oppressions, the politics of drag for women exists in
unique ways that male drag performers do not experience. My focus begins with lesbian/queer
women because drag is often discussed in connection to gay and lesbian communities. It extends
to the ways in which it can be linked to women at large, regardless of sexual orientation. When
scholars fail to examine female drag outside of the framework of sexuality, a vast set of issues go
under-explored. The analysis of female drag requires the recognition of larger structures of
gendered power dynamics of female objectification within performance and visual art.

THE POWER OF LOOKING

As performance art, drag is complicated by social power buried within the act of looking
and being the object of that gaze. Feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's (1975) work on the male
gaze is pivotal in understanding the differences between female and male drag performers.
Mulvey explains that women are constructed as visual objects of erotic pleasure for men via the

13
male gaze within cinematic and other forms of visual arts. Because of this, the differences
between male drag and female drag are vast. She writes, In a world ordered by sexual
imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The
determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled
accordingly.13
Fashion and gender scholar Debra Silverman (1993) directly connects Mulvey's
theorizing to female drag. The constant reinforcement of female objectification in U.S. visual
culture extends to drag: women are the objects of critique, not the subject of drag. She suggests
that popular culture and media re-appropriate men's fashions for the female body in order to
provide another version of the sexualized female form. This involves transforming men's attire to
become feminized, which simply means, sexualized.14 She claims that female drag positions
women, if only ironically, within a male, heterosexual fantasy of femininity and at the same time
causes gender trouble.15 A woman in masculine attire, for example a suit, is not transgressive to
patriarchy and is instead re-appropriated as heteroerotic.16
The exchange between performer and audience is heavily shaped by how messages are
communicated and received. As discussed by Hall, messages are encoded, transmitted, and
decoded by viewers.17 In this process, messages of performance shift based on the framework
viewers use to decode what they are seeing. Hall argues that messages are mostly commonly
infused with dominant or hegemonic messages. They are in turn read without question as takenfor-granted rules and norms of society at large, upholding the status quo of social hierarchies.18
Drag scholars center the role of audience. Drag scholar Tara Pauliny (2002) argues that
the drag king elicits erotic desire that troubles normative thinking through performances of
masculinities that rely on troubled versions of sex and gender embodiment.19 This makes
13

Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 11.

14

Debra Silverman, Making a Spectacle, Or Is There Female Drag?, Critical Matrix 7, no. 2 (1993): 69, 75.

15

Ibid., 76.

16

Ibid., 75.

17

Hall, Encoding, Decoding, 508.

18

Ibid., 513.

19

Tara Pauliny, Erotic Arguments and Persuasive Acts: Discourses of Desire and the Rhetoric of Female-to-

14
viewing active, where audiences cannot simply accept and enjoy these images, they must also
interact with them and position themselves in relation to them, at least on the level of
subjectivity.20
Drag scholars Leila Rupp, Verta Taylor, and Eve Shapiro (2010) also connect drag
performance to desire. They argue that drag gives a way for the audience to express desire
towards people that they might otherwise not be inclined to express in public. 21 If desire is
linked to the gender of the performer, heteronormative desires are challenged and queered
desires are centered. Drag scholars Elizabeth Kaminsky and Verta Taylor (2008) suggest that this
process of negotiating desire draws a division between us (gays and lesbians) and them
(heterosexuals), where the performance and space becomes oppositional to dominant culture. 22
Rupp et al. also suggest that the social location of the audience shapes what various
people take away from the same performance. For instance, there is the hope that queer
audiences may consider complex issues, such as critiques of war and politics, where straight
audiences will be most affected by complications of gender and sexuality. 23 Although drag
performance brings people together as a site that arouse[s] unaccustomed sexual desires,24
the centering of queer people and issues is critical to ensure that the political backbone of drag
remains. Additionally, it is questionable if drag can exist as oppositional in dominant groups and
public spaces marked by heterosexism and homophobia.

DRAG KINGING VS. MALE IMPERSONATION

Halberstam provided much of the original work on drag kings. She assigned the drag
king female masculinity and created a conceptual framework and vocabulary with which to

Male Drag, Journal of Homosexuality 43, no. 3-4 (2002): 232.

20

Ibid., 238.

21

Leila J. Rupp, Verta Taylor, and Eve Shapiro, Drag Queens and Drag Kings: The Difference Gender
Makes, Sexualities 13 (2010): 288.
22

Elizabeth Kaminisky and Verta Taylor, Were Not Just Lip-Syncing Up Here: Music and Collective
Identity in Drag Performances, in Identity Work in Social Movements, ed. Jo Reger, Daniel J. Myers, and Rachel L.
Einwohner (Duluth: University of Minnesota, 2008), 49.
23

Rupp, Taylor, and Shapiro, Drag Queens and Drag Kings, 276.

24

Ibid., 289.

15
discuss it. She situates drag kinging within a framework of agency and transgression, unlike
previous understandings of female drag. She links the drag king directly to the parody of
masculinity: Historically and categorically, we can make distinctions between the drag king and
the male impersonator. . . Whereas the male impersonator attempts to produce a plausible
performance of maleness as the whole of her act, the drag king performs masculinity (often
parodically) and makes the exposure of the theatricality of masculinity into the mainstay of her
act.25 This definition demonstrates that masculinity is the center of the performance, not the
sexualization of the female body in masculine-coded attire. Additionally, she contends that the
major difference between the king and the male impersonator is the pointed motivation and
transgressive element of the act: the parody of masculinity. She contends that because the king
offers a theatrical parody, unlike the male impersonator, the king is more transgressive than the
male impersonator.26 Despite her distinction, the display of plausible masculinity can
destabilize sex/gender binaries without requiring exaggerated parody.
Halberstam also explores the issues of sex, gender, and embodiment as presented by drag
king performance. She suggests that the parody of masculinity does not limit the performance to
sex or gender, but opens up it to any subject attempting to parody masculinity. This stance
suggests that the sex has no influence on gender. Despite this, sex must be considered because of
its cultural prevalence outside of queer discourse, regardless of the theoretical difficulties,
limitations, and inconvenience it yields for queer theorizing.
Conversely to Halberstam, many scholars address how social locations of performers
affect the politicization and transgression of drag. Sexuality and gender scholar Robin Maltz
(1998) disagrees with Halberstam's dissolving of sex and social identity of the performer. She
highlights lesbian sexuality or identity as the transgressive element of female-bodied male drag.
She argues that the stone butcha female sexuality that is defined by pleasing female partners
without physical reciprocationadds a nature of eroticism to drag.27 In this way, the stone butch
eroticizes her performance with the promise of female sexual gratification that cannot be
25

Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 259.

26

Ibid.

27

Robin Maltz, Real Butch: The Performance/Performativity of Male Impersonation, Drag Kings, Passing as
Male, and Stone Butch Realness, Journal of Gender Studies 7, no. 3 (1998): 276.

16
achieved by either straight women or men as neither centers the pleasuring a female partner
without reciprocation.
Queer performance scholar Jos Esteban Muoz (1999) also contends that the minority
status of drag performers politicizes drag. He frames queer drag as a transgressive, political
performance marked by resistance. He utilizes the concept of disidentification to explain how
queers of color do not use drag to assimilate or oppose dominant ideology.28 Disidentification
becomes a mode of resistance that utilizes drag to create culture, something that has been largely
kept out of the hands of social minorities. Through disidentification, drag performers are
cultural workers who resist white ideals via desire, identification, and ideology.29 Disidentified
drag refuses traditional models of gender and sexuality as written by white dominant discourses.
The Drag King Anthology (2002), edited by popular culture, gender, and sexuality
scholars Donna Jean Troka, Kathleen LeBesco, and J. Bobby Noble furthers the conversation of
the influence of social location. This anthology gives voice to drag kings, rather than focusing on
the scholarship of expert writing.30 It also reviews the class, age, and race issues within drag
king performance and scholarship, and frames drag kings' relations within and to feminism. This
text explores how heteronormative discourse and desire is transgressed through drag kinging
when situated within sexuality, patriarchy, class, and race analyses.
In Long Live the King (2009), drag scholar Maite Escudero-Alas also links transgressive
parodies of masculinities to gay/queer women, as they parody masculinity in order to bring to
light its layers of sexism and homophobia.31 Although Halberstam is correct that anyone can
parody masculinity, the stakes are not universal. Escudero-Alas argues that drag performers fall
into a queer set of politics marked by those who resist assimilation in direct relation to
normative, binary understandings of gender and sexuality.32
28

Jos Esteban Muoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 11.
29

Ibid., 15.

30

Donna Jean Troka, Kathleen LeBesco, and Jean Bobby Noble, Introduction, in The Drag King Anthology,
ed. Donna Troka, Kathleen Lebesco, and Jean Bobby Noble (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 2002), 9.
31

Maite Escudero-Alas, Long Live the King: A Genealogy of Performative Genders (Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars, 2009), 1.
32

Ibid.,12.

17
Along these lines, Rupp et al. do not explicitly agree with Halberstam that men can be
drag kings. They contend that the identity of the performer does affect the performance in terms
of reception and motivation: drag kinging includes female-bodied individuals performing
masculinity, transgender identified performers performing masculinity or femininity, and female
identified individuals performing femininity, the latter known as bio queens.33
They argue that although both kings and queens transgressively underscore the social
construction of gender and sexuality, they do so from different vantage points.34 They write:
The drag kings very consciously and deliberately evoke queer theory and the perspectives of the
transgender movement, raising questions about what is real beneath the costumes. The drag
queens play with categories of gender and sexuality out of their own histories and desires, but
they announce that they are gay men with intact male genitalia.35
In this way, king and queen performance, despite their similarities, vary in terms of
politics as shaped by larger social issues, including the ways in which sex and gender shape the
performers' lives and, thus, the ways in which varying performers approach drag. The genres of
drag vary largely by political intention. Recognition of this diversity illuminates ways it is both
socially-transgressive and reinforces traditional notions of sex and gender.

SEX, GENDER, DRAG

Early feminists interpreted sex and gender as reinforcing heteronormative patriarchy and
female oppression. They focused on the naturalized link between sex and gender that binds
women to the oppressive forces of compulsory heterosexuality.36 Scholarship also focused on the
sex/gender system37 and the heterosexual matrix,38 both of which expose the ways in which sex,
33

Rupp, Taylor, and Shapiro, Drag Queens and Drag Kings, 276.

34

Ibid., 286.

35

Ibid., 287.

36

Adrienne Rich, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, Signs 5, no. 4 (1980): 631660.

37

Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, ed. Linda
Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1997), 1926.; Gayle Rubin, The Traffic in Women, in The Second Wave: A
Reader in Feminist Theory, ed. Linda Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1997), 2762.
38

Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992); Judith Butler, Gender
Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).

18
gender, and sexuality have been constructed through contingent binaries. They link sexual
dimorphism, gender roles, and the aesthetics and embodiment of gender in hierarchical systems
as reinforcing heteropatriarchy. Second Wave Feminist theorist Shulamith Firestone (1970)
writes, genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally [...] if
women didn't operate within an economy that 'naturalized' and profited from the classification of
women as the 'other' and less superior of man.39
Shortly thereafter, Second Wave Feminist theorist Gayle Rubin (1975) suggests, a
'sex/gender system' is the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality
into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.40
The naturalized link between sex and gender operates as a way to naturalize heterosexuality,
where sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual.41 In this analysis, the
social category women is socially-constructed and creates an oppressed class that allows
patriarchy to thrive.
These scholars consider biological sex the basis of oppression. Problematizing the
sex/gender binary, gender scholar Judith Butler (1990) suggested that sex does not exist a priori
to gender, but it is also a cultural effect of gender, rather than a natural or biological
occurrence.42 She writes that although the split between sex and gender originally intended to
dispute the biology-is-destiny formulation . . . [it proves] gender is culturally constructed.43 She
argues that this sex/gender system reinforces the idea that sex is not also socially-constructed.44
Despite this common division, sex, like gender, is socially-constructed. This influences drag as
notions of sexed bodies affect the embodiment and performance of various genders.
She affirms the idea that all gender is constructed through performance, where gender is
a styled repetition of acts.45 In Imitation and Gender Insubordination (1991), she claims that
39

Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, 25.

40

Rubin, The Traffic in Women, 28.

41

Wittig, The Straight Mind, 5.

42

Butler, Gender Trouble, 110.

43

Ibid., 6.

44

Ibid., 7.

45

Ibid., 140.

19
46

within this repetition of acts, gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.

Because of this, she argues that drag performance is not necessarily subversive, as it upholds the
concept that one crosses from an original gender to a performed gender; it risks upholding
traditional ways of thinking of sex and gender and the naturalness of heterosexuality.
In Bodies That Matter (1993), Butler responded to criticisms and misinterpretations of
her earlier work and addressed the ways in which materiality affects sex and gender; she situates
the body back into this conversation. She analyzes how sex becomes materialized via the body
through gendered understandings: the material reality of the body is no longer inaccessible as a
kind of anatomical truth, but rather, as a malleable social text. It is in this way that sex can be
understood as gender.

DEFINING MASCULINITY AND THE ROLE OF GENDER

EMBODIMENT
Halberstam follows Butler's work and overrides the ways gender, masculinity and
femininity, stand in relation to sexed bodies. Like Butler, she reviews the naturalized link drawn
between bodies and gender, yet seeks to further denaturalize the connection between the male
body and masculinity via queer deconstruction. She explores the social power and privilege that
accrue to masculinity which can be garneredsomewhatby female masculinity, drag kings
included, and minority males as non-dominant masculinities.47 She suggests that masculinity
must not be reduced to the effects of the male body, since masculinity can be embodied by
female figures, including but not limited to drag kings.48 Female masculinity refutes the
naturalness between masculinity and the male body.49
J. Bobby Noble, in Masculinities without Men (2004), critiques Halberstam's suggestion
that female masculinity displaces the socially-dominant link between males and masculinity. He

46

Judith Butler, Imitation and Gender Insubordination, in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed.
Diana Fuss (London: Routledge, 1991), 21.
47

Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 1.

48

Ibid.

49

Ibid., 232.

20
argues that female masculinity marks a space of proximity with men. Despite this difference,
50

he agrees that female embodiments of masculinity profoundly disturb a phallic economy.51 He

addresses anatomical sex (male genitalia) and phallic power correlating to the power garnered
with masculinity. His concept of No Man's Land, claims 'authentic' masculinity is under
dispute and, like Halberstam, says there is no monolithic or authentic version of masculinity,
only hierarchical versions.52
One of his most interesting claims is that it is possible for the female body to achieve
phallic power by resisting female markers, rather than conceiving of it in relation to the penis.53
By reducing the visible maker of femaleness (breasts), phallic power can be achieved by
women.54 This important assertion defines how sex physically demarcates and defines
masculinity and femininity, and how female and male bodies access gender.
While discussing masculinity, Halberstam provides little analysis of what exactly
masculinity is in terms of costuming, aesthetic, and behavior. In a kind of I know it when I see
it as used by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward in obscenity trials of the 1960s,55
Halberstam suggests, although we seem to have a difficult time defining masculinity, as a
society we have little trouble in recognizing it.56 From a scholarly and feminist perspective, I
believe that if Halberstam is to center her book on the concept of female masculinity she must,
indeed, define masculinity, despite the difficulty of such a task.
Halberstam does address the minority status implied by female masculinity, suggesting
that minority masculinities challenge dominant masculinities, which she calls heroic

50

Jean Bobby Noble, Masculinities Without Men?: Female Masculinity in Twentieth-Century Fictions
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004), xlii.
51

Ibid., xv.

52

Ibid., 145.

53

Ibid., 127.

54

Ibid., 124.

55

Peter Lattman, The Origins of Justice Stewarts I Know It When I See It, Wall Street Journal Law Blog,
last modified September 27, 2007, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/09/27/the-origins-of-justice-stewarts-i- know-itwhen-i-see-it/.
56

Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 1.

21
57

masculinities. I am skeptical of the ability of female masculinity to shake the realness of

male masculinity. If masculinity is defined by its possessor's ability to access social privilege, I
am not convinced that masculinity as performed by males or females operates similarly. A queer
perspective that dissolves the body enough to also dissolve sex runs the risk of glossing over the
material realities defined by feminist analysis.
While Halberstam operates from a queer perspective devoted to denaturalizing and
troubling binary categories, I contend that masculinity and femininity are merely yet another
binary. From both social-constructivist and essentialist perspectives, Halberstam's know it when
you see it approach to masculinity leaves masculinity undefined. Conversely, defining
masculinity reveals that the characteristics categorized as masculine or feminine have too
much to do with power dynamics of heteropatriarchal social organizing to leave it undefined. I
reject the queer theoretical perspective that dissolves the material realities of sex and gender, of
which culturally-understood femininity, females, and women are all on disenfranchised sides of
dialectic pairings with masculinity, males, and men. It is only from a socially-privileged position
that the material realities of the body as a sign of social power can be dissolved.

REVEALING MASCULINITY AS SOCIAL DOMINANCE

In short, multiple analyses proliferate. While Halberstam avoids a clear definition of
masculinity, other scholars take up the challenge. The work of R.W. Connell (1987) and her
concept of hegemonic masculinity58 (defined as the configuration of gender practice which
embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy59) began
this discussion. The notion of female masculinity is an oxymoron if it suggests that the female
body can have access to patriarchal privileges by putting on masculinity.
Masculinity scholar Demetrakis Z. Demetriou (2001) reviews the limitations of her
theorizing and credits hegemonic masculinity for progressing gender theory beyond sex role

57

Ibid.

58

The most cited origin of the term comes from R. W. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and
Sexual Politics (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1987).
59

R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 77.

22
theory, the concept that gender is binary, monolithic, and based on biological determinism.

60

Hegemonic masculinity provides a framework to theorize multiple masculinities as they stand in

relation to hierarchical power relations. Demetriou credits Connell for exposing how class and
race roles are socially-constructed and based on social power differentialswhere biological
determinism has passed off sex roles as natural.61 Hegemonic masculinity illuminates how
gender operates around the systematic practice of the domination of women and the hierarchical
nature of subordinate masculinities tiered by other social factors, such as race and class.62
Reworking Connell's dualism of hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities,
Demetriou groups all masculinities within the masculine bloc.63 This intervention exposes how
grouping all masculinities as cogs within a hegemonic system (the masculine bloc) is the best
possible strategy to reproduce patriarchy.64 This is to suggest that minority masculinities are
part of the hegemonic system that oppresses women and upholds the white, middle to upperclass heterosexual male as the top tier of social power. The masculine bloc adapts to changes to
masculinities and incorporates non-dominant masculinities (gay, non-white, etc.) within its ranks
in order to bolster the system, rather than toppling or exposing the system. He does not address
female masculinity.
Studying the same issues, masculinity scholar Toby Miller (2005) describes the
participation within hegemonic masculinity as a symptom partially explained by race and class
struggles. Miller agrees that hegemonic masculinity, defined as straight, strong, domineering,
functions as gender dominance, but also a hierarchical system tiered by race and class.65 Citing
Messner and Rowe, Miller writes: many men who feel socially weak (the working class,
minorities, and many immigrants) may find the hegemonic model appealing, even though the

60
Demetrakis Z. Demetriou, Connells Concept of Hegemonic Masculinity: A Critique, Theory and Society
30, no. 3 (2001): 338.
61

Ibid.

62

Ibid., 341.

63

Ibid., 355.

64

Ibid., 348.

65

Toby Miller, Masculinity, in A Companion to Gender Studies, ed. Philomena Essed, David Theo
Goldberg, and Audrey Kobayashi (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 114.

23
sources of their powerlessness reside in the monetary and racial economy, not in some need to
struggle against women and gays.66 Here, the adoption of hegemonic masculinity is not
centered necessarily on the domination of only women, but the domination of all others,
especially for men disenfranchised by race and class.
Looking to the interactions between men, Scholar Trevon D. Logan (2010) also discusses
the role of power, masculinity, and sex.67 Logan suggests that gay men cannot access the most
dominant masculinity because it requires heterosexuality; specifically, a heterosexuality marked
by sexual dominance over women.68 Also, he suggests that masculinity is defined by its relation
to physical strength and dominance.69
Despite lacking access to the highest tiers of hegemonic masculinity as a result of
gayness, Logan agrees that gay males operate within the hegemonic system of Demetriou's
masculine bloc. Not only do many gay men reinforce masculine ideals regarding physical
strength and body standards, Logan argues that gay masculinities yield dominant and subordinate
subjects among gay men.70 Overall, Logan concludes that masculinity is not only oppressive to
women, but other men.71 Masculinity is not merely the dialect category opposed to femininity,
but also a system that stratifies varying masculinities. In other words, hegemonic masculinity is
based on a system of dominance and oppression even if women are removed. As Logan removes
women from the situation, he further proves that masculinity stands in direct relation to
domination, not merely as a dialectic category needed for the gender binary opposing femininity.
I use this background to test where drag stands today. I explore the status of female drag
as constituted by social positioning of performers, the cultural location of the performance, and

66

Ibid., 117.

67

Logan acknowledges that men who have sex with men often identify as heterosexual. Men who have sex
with men and men who identify as gay do not necessarily share similar identities nor social privileges on account of
self-identification. For instance, although a man has sex with men, his heterosexual identification and masculine
gender expression grants him heterosexual privilege in ways that a gay-identified man does not retain.
68

Trevon D. Logan, Personal Characteristics, Sexual Behaviors, and Male Sex Work, American Sociological
Review 75, no. 5 (2010): 683684.
69

Ibid.

70

Ibid.

71

Ibid.

24
the influence of current technologies. I offer new perspectives on female drag based on feminist
explorations. I address silences and assumptions that have yet to be centered in drag scholarship.
I challenge specific issues: the feminist potential for the continuing use of female masculinity;
the understanding of female drag both in connection to and outside of gay male culture; and the
influence of current technologies on representations and communications of gender. This thesis
critiques, updates, and expands existing discourses of drag.

25

CHAPTER 3
DRAG AND LGBTQ CONSTITUENCIES
When discussing drag, language is extremely complex. The linguistic categories
homosexual,72 lesbian73 and gay,74 and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer75
(LGBTQ), have complex, intertwined political and social histories.76 This thesis operates
with the understanding that it is socially and theoretically problematic to conflate these terms,
despite their connected history, especially in regard to LGBTQ. Each category represented
in LGBTQ is distinct, while the diversity within each group is non-monolithic. Often, these
categories become blended where they cross binary structures that manage sex, gender, and
72

For more information on the politicized meanings and histories of terms associated with nonheteronormative sexualities, including gay, lesbian, and homosexual see: Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick,
Language and Sexuality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
73

For more information on the specific connections between female sexual inversion and the term lesbian,
see: Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). Also note that Adrienne Rich redefined lesbian via the concept
of the lesbian continuum, in which any woman, regardless of sexual orientation could be defined as a lesbian if
she had woman-identified or -oriented politics. See: Rich, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian
Existence. Generally, texts link lesbianism to subjects who identify as female.
74

Note that the incorporation of lesbian and gay movement as varied from gay movement was a
linguistic marker to promote the visibility and acknowledgment of women, lesbians, in U.S. gay political
movements and organizing. For more information on sociolinguistic issues involving the incorporation of
lesbian into gay and lesbian, see: Tamarah Cohen, Gay and the Disappearing [+Female], The Gay &
Lesbian Review Worldwide 9, no. 6 (2002): 2224.
75

For more information regarding the usage of queer as an umbrella term to denote marginalized
sexualities and its political and historic relationship with gay and lesbian, see: Annamarie Jagose, Queer
Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
76

It is also important to note the contention within these categories, specifically between lesbian and
queer and also lesbian and transgender. In this way, despite the grouping of the LGBTQ, linking peoples
who fall outside of traditional assignments within the heterosexual matrix (Butler, Gender Trouble; Wittig, The
Straight Mind) in terms of sex, gender, and sexuality does not address the diversity of politics, oppressions,
experiences, or material realties of these various identities. For the tensions between queer and lesbian
identities/theories, see: Sheila Jeffreys, The Lesbian Heresy (Melborne: Spinifex Press, 1993). For the tension
between transgender/sexual and lesbian, see: Janice Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the
She-Male (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979); and a counter response: Sandy Stone, The Empire Strikes Back: A
Posttransexual Manifesto, Camera Obscura 10, no. 2 29 (1992): 150176. Additionally, for a spectrum of
lesbian responses to the female-to-male transgender/sexual, see: Zachary Nataf, Lesbians Talk Transgender,
vol. 6, Lesbians Talk Issues (London: Scarlet Press, 1996).

26
sexuality. When possible, I discuss drag performers in relation to their positioning among
and within social categories.
Although human experiences and identities are not easily defined by categorical
distinctions, they are unavoidable for the sake of making sense of social differences. When I
utilize LGBTQ, I evoke groups of people who refuse hetero- and/or gender-normativity.
This thesis operates on the feminist belief that human experience is shaped by intersectional
positioning of each individual. In this way, no one category can accurately define the
experiences, oppressions, and privileges of every person. Conceptualizing and discussing
groups in relation to social categories is one way to understand how power operates.
Homosexual is a medicalized term that has largely been replaced by the monolithic
gay if simply to sever its historic ties with medicalization and pathology. Lesbian has
also been defined and utilized in a multitude of ways that have shifted and adapted over time
depending on the current social climate. In this regard, I define gay men as males who have
primary, sexual, and affectional relationships with other men. I define lesbian and queer
women as women who have primary, sexual, and affectional relationships with other women.
In this regard, lesbian/queer women refuse to live within heteronormative relationships,
devoting their attentions and energies to other women, rather than to male partners. Gay men
and lesbian/queer women challenge gender norms simply by resisting heteronormativity.
The recent incorporation of transgender into LGBTQ combines gender minorities
(non-cisgendered) and sexual identity minorities (gays/lesbians/queers). Despite this, it is
important to recognize that gender identity and sexual identity are not synonymous, nor do
they produce material realities or oppressions synonymously. Although oppressed by
different social systems, gender minorities and sexuality minorities both experience
minoritization because of heteronormativityit enforces binary gender normativity and
heterosexuality. Also, transgender subjectivities possess a diverse array of sexual identities
and expression. It is important to reiterate that gender and sexuality are separate, although
often connected, categories. It is possible that this conflation arises from lesbian identity
being a common transitory stage for female-to-male transgender men.77 Gender nonconformity has often been discussed in relation to same-sex desire.
77

For more detail regarding the connections between FTMs and lesbians, see: Jean Bobby Noble, Sons of

27
Queer theorists have largely treated feminism like an outmoded dinosaur,78
claiming that feminism clings to woman as a springboard to understand how women
experience gendered oppression. Feminism must absolutely retain coherence of woman as
a social category that distributes social agency, where what constitutes the category is also
scrutinized. The claim that feminism is outmoded renders the category women a biological
fiction. It does not offer women, who clearly exist in the world, an option for acquiring
power as women. Gender is a category that determines women's agency.
By centering feminism in this discussion, women in drag offer social critique, where
a female becoming male is much more than a performed aesthetic. Male aesthetics, or
aesthetic masculinity, visually indicates owning power through gendered oppression. Queer
theory may not be actively feminist if it dissolves the category woman and diminishes or
avoids the material realities faced by the people who operate, whether knowingly, willingly,
or not, as members of that category.79
Feminist scholar Nancy Fraser (1992) expresses concern regarding the growth of
queer theory and notes, it will not be a time to speak of postfeminism until we can
legitimately speak of postpatriarchy.80 Dissolving the category women does not dissolve
the material realities of gender oppression inherent within a patriarchal society. Because drag
performance also occurs within patriarchal conditions, I will maintain a sense of coherence in
terms of the importance of the sexed body, gender identity, and sexual orientation. The
varying ways these combinations line up affect social power vis-a-vis drag performance
based on the performers material realities, including sex, gender, sexual orientation, race,
and class.

the Movement: FtMs Risking Incoherence on a Post-Queer Cultural Landscape (Toronto: Womens Press,
2006).
78

Alexandra Winter, Unlikely Alliances? Lesbian-Feminism and Queer Theory, Hecates Australian
Womens Book Reivew 14, no. 1 (2002).
79

For more information regarding the anti-feminist sentiments present in queer theory, see Jeffreys, The
Lesbian Heresy.
80

Nancy Fraser, The Uses and Abuses of French Discourse Theories for Feminist Politics, in Revaluing
French Feminism: Critical Essays on Difference, Agency, and Culture, ed. Nancy Fraser and Sandra Lee Bartky
(Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), 191.

28

WHAT'S LGBTQ GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Drag performance largely holds its most visible presence in the realm of
entertainment, with a long tradition in lesbian and gay constituencies. It has been a gay
cultural staple across the U.S. and creates solidarity among LGBTQ communities. Gay bars
generally provide a safe space for gender parody. More recently, LGBTQ student groups
sponsor drag shows on college campuses. These spaces celebrate, if only momentarily,
gender non-conformity, where performers and viewers can adopt, appropriate, and interpret
gender in ways the real world will not allow. These spaces are unlike the real world that
is policed by heteronormativity, offering a safe space and break from homophobia for many
LGBTQs.
Drag historian Esther Newton (1979) links drag to the homosexual subject via the
inextricable connection between normative gender and heterosexuality. She suggests that
drag, in its historic and most popular understandings, relates to gay male culture, where,
homosexuality is symbolized in American culture by transvestism. The homosexual term for
transvestite is drag queen.81 She defines drag as a noun to mean the clothing of one sex
when worn by the other sex where the ability to 'do drag' is widespread in the gay world.82
At the time she wrote, Newton situated drag within male homosexual culture because the
body of drag scholarship and practice was overwhelmingly focused on gay male performers.
Although Newton recognizes that women can do drag, she admits her general lack of
analysis of females in drag: There are also women who perform as menmale
impersonators ('drag butches'). They are a recognized part of the profession, but there are
very few of them [. . .] The relative scarcity of male impersonation presents important
theoretical problems.83 Drag personas, queens (female-like) and butches (male-like),
directly relate to terms given to male and female homosexuals who represent inversion of

81

Esther Newton, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1979), 3.
82

Ibid.

83

Ibid., 5n13.

29
gender ideals. This phenomenon of the invisibility of lesbian cultures and identities is largely
discussed within lesbian and other queer-identified female scholarship.84
Although drag scholarship presents a kind of monolithic gay subjectivity, it is
important to also review the elements of gender, sexuality, and sexism. Newton explains that
no one but a 'queer' would want to perform as a woman.85 She argues that masculinity
constitutes assertive and dominant sexuality.86 Through their non-normative sexuality, some
gay men represent a non-dominant masculine version of male sexuality that links them to
(heterosexual) women via passive sexuality. In this way, gay men are seen to trouble
masculine claims of natural dominance: they represent a betrayed feminized version of
masculinity.
It is possible that gay men and lesbians have more ease embodying non-hegemonic
gender roles as they do not find romantic, sexual, or emotionally-significant partners within
heteronormative social interactions. Given the enforcement and centering of gender dualism
within heteronormative cultural practices, heterosexual subjectivities may have fewer
freedoms because of heterosexualitys need for dialectic gender expressions. Because of this,
gay, lesbian, and queer subjectivities subvert gender roles that enforce heteronormativity.

HOMOSEXUALS, GENDER DEVIANTS

In her work on transvestism and cross-dressing, scholar Majorie Garber (1992) draws
on historical links between cross-dressing and homosexuality. She suggests that the rise of
sexology in Western medical discourse of the late 1800s represented homosexuality as
pathological inversion.87 The invert, sexologists argued, had a faulty sense of gender

84

The New Orleans Drag King Collection Project operated by the Newcomb College Center for Research
of Women chronicles only fourteen sources dedicated to drag king (what would be the female version of
Newton's drag queen) performance in a bibliography entitled, Building a Core Collection for Drag King
Research. See: Newcomb College Center for Research of Women, Building a Core Collection for Drag King
Research, The New Orleans Drag King Collection Project, accessed July 12, 2012,
http://www.nccrow.tulane.edu/kings.

155.

85

Newton, Mother Camp, 7.

86

Ibid.

87

Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1992),

30
identity; cross-dressing was the mode of assuming the correct gender. Female inverts were
also believed to have internally-inverted genitalia.
Garber credits feminist historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg for exploring the role of
th

19 century sexologists, specifically Richard von Kraft-Ebbing. He linked gender directly to

styles of dress, but also to women who hated dolls and needle work, liked cigars, and
wanted to marry women.88 During the time when the female homosexual was emblematic
of pathological same-sex desire, sexologists linked same-sex desire to cross-dressing and
cross-gendered behavior. Homosexual subjects were considered cross-gendered as mannish
women and effeminate men who were easy to spot and diagnose simply because of
their non-normative behavior and dress.89 Clearly, however, there is a distinction between
women and men who cross-dress in order to express same-sex desire and those who crossdress in performance.
Lesbian historian Lilian Faderman (1992) explained how the U.S. lesbian separatist
movement of the 1970s largely enforced an androgynous look that condemned earlier
lesbian aesthetics, the complementary butch and femme of the 1950s, that they claimed
mimicked heterosexuals.90 Historically, lesbians may be more likely than their straight
counterparts to reject rigid gender roles and aesthetics. Yet, there is a wide array of gender
presentations and no monolithic lesbian gender aesthetic.

CAMPING DRAG
The theatrical style of camp is intricately connected to gay drag performance. Camp
performance utilizes gender exaggeration, where heteronormative practices also exist as
heightened gender dualism. Camp performance historian and scholar Sue Ellen Case (1988)
suggests that camp both articulates the lives of homosexuals through the obtuse tone of
irony and inscribes their oppression with the same device. Likewise, it eradicates the ruling
powers of heterosexist realist modes.91 Here, Case explains that gay drag performers utilize
88

Ibid., 135.

89

Ibid.

90

Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, 264.

91

Sue-Ellen Case, Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic, in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Perfoming
Subject--A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 189.

31
camp to mock heterosexual gender. This validates gay identity as somehow more enlightened
than those of heterosexuals, as gays are less restricted by the ridiculousness of gender
dualisms. Because of this predicament, camp is marked by an element of dark humor. This
dark irony arises because those who perform the ridiculous norms of gender are also those
who are privileged within the system.
Newton defines camp as homosexual humor among the repertoire of
characteristics, including verbal facility and wit, along with the performance of both
glamorous and comic drag.92 Additionally, Newton acknowledges that not all drag
performance is framed with camp. She writes:
The drag queen is concerned with masculine-feminine transformation, while the
camp is concerned with what might be called a philosophy of transformations and
incongruity. Certainly the two roles are intimately related, since to be a feminine
man is by definition incongruous. But strictly speaking, the drag queen simply
expresses the incongruity while the camp actually uses it to achieve a higher
synthesis.93
Here, camp aesthetic or taste is linked to queerness. Camp displaces the sex/gender system
by both presenting ruptures between sex and gender, while also exposing the constructedness
of gender through exaggeration.
Scholars and cultural creators have built upon and critiqued these early definitions of
camp. For example, Bruce LaBruce, an artist based in Toronto, has rewritten Sontags Notes
on Camp.94 He expands the types of camp, analyzes how these categories function in
relation to current cultural artifacts, and refutes Sontags claim that camp is apolitical. He
writes, My perhaps idealized conception of camp is that it is, or was, by its very nature
political, subversive, even revolutionary, at least in its most pure and sophisticated
manifestations.95 As I have argued for the need to recognized distinct genres of drag,
LaBruce creates and defines sixteen categories of camp.96
92

Newton, Mother Camp, 3.

93

Ibid., 105.

94

Bruce LaBruce, Notes on Camp/Anti-Camp, Nat. Brut, no. 3 (April 2013),

http://www.natbrut.com/notes-on-camp-labruce.
95
96

Ibid.

These categories include the following: classic gay camp, bad gay camp, good straight camp, bad
straight camp, high camp, ultra camp, bad ultra camp, quasi-camp, subversive camp, reactionary, liberal camp,

32
He argues that the popularized usage of camp has emptied it of its queer signifying
practices, rendering it easily co-opted, commercialized, and trivialized.97 By separating
bad camp from good camp, he attempts to radicalize camp once again, to harness its
aesthetic and political potentialities in order to make it once more a tool of subversion and
revolution.98 Although he suggests that good straight camp exists, he contends that
good camp is associated to gay subculture, because the qualities of sophistication and
secret signification that were developed out of necessity by the underground or outsider gay
world.99

LAUGHTER AND GAY MELANCHOLIA

Gender roles and gay women and men have a troubled relationship. As drag utilizes
cross-dressing to express the construction of gender in terms of attitude, gait, dress, and a
general physical styling, camp moves the performance into yet another level.
For members of the LGBTQ, camp humor is both funny-haha and funny-ironic.
The humor stems from the shared recognition of the absurdity of gender constructs that
become polarized and policed by the heteronormative matrix. It also comes along with an
element of disempowerment because at the time when the sex/gender system is exposed as
absurd, queer individuals concurrently understand the realness of these systems of
patriarchal and heterosexist oppression in their lived experiences. At the same time that the
joke is on heteronormativity, the joke is also on those who are oppressed by the normative
social structures.
This assertion requires a theoretical view of laughter itself. Novelist Milan Kundera
theoretically explores the role and constitution of laughter in a way that can be applied to
camp humor. Kundera's novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979), most often
categorized within the literary genre of magical realism, interprets the dual experience of
conservative camp, intentional camp, unintentional camp, and good intentional straight camp. He classifies
Lady Gaga as bad gay camp, along with misogynist drag queens, and bad straight camp. Although he
defines bad straight camp, he does not explain what bad gay camp is, nor why Lady Gaga is categorized within
it.
97

LaBruce, Notes on Camp/Anti-Camp.

98

Ibid.

99

Ibid.

33
humor. In a 1980 interview, Kundera stated, man uses the same physiologic
manifestationslaughterto express two different metaphysical attitudes.100 Magical
realism, like postmodern and science fiction, utilizes an expansion or re-imagining of
reality in order to expose or critique human societies, politics, and cultures.
Kundera contextualizes the duality of laughter. He states, Someone's hat drops on a
coffin in a freshly dug grave, the funeral loses its meaning and laughter is born [. . .] Human
life is bounded by two chasms: fanaticism on one side, absolute skepticism on the other.101
Laughter begins in a moment that is concurrently very somberthe level of seriousness
becomes laughable. Laugher relates to the way reality presents serious, real, tangible
somberness within human life, yet that height of seriousness becomes ridiculous. In terms of
camp, gender is both ridiculous and sobering. Laughter is a result of both realizing the
constructed nature of heteronormativity and gender normativity, and the laughable
recognition that it also fuels the social institutions that oppress LGBTQs.
It is possible that the LGBTQ audience members react to the camp element in a way
that heteronormative audiences may not. Heteronormative audiences may find a common
bond in the perceived failure of a male or female cross-gendered performance simply
because the level of exaggeration implies impersonation, rather than realness. This
reinforces the sex/gender binary if men and women doing camp are seen to get normative
gender wrong, implying that only real men and real women can embody real versions
of masculinity and femininity. If heteronormative audiences fail to understand the dual nature
of camp it can be read as privilege simply because they cannot conceive of gender as absurd
in the same way as those who do not comply with it.
W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) articulated this dual experience in the context of race as
double consciousness. He wrote: It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this
sense of always looking at ones self through the eyes of others, of measuring ones soul by
the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.102 Perhaps, then, camp
100

Milan Kundera, The Most Original Book of the Season: Philip Roth interviews Milan Kundera, By
Philip Roth, Transcript, November 30, 1980, http://www.kundera.de/english/InfoPoint/Interview_Roth/interview_roth.html.
101
102

Ibid.
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; repr., Rockville, MD: Arc Mannor, 2008), 12.

34
performance is based on the humor shared between communities bounded by similar versions
of double-consciousness.
Privilege, in this context, is not merely socioeconomic, but also emotional. The bearer
of privilege is largely unaware of it, whereas the oppressed subject is constantly aware. In
other words, the manifestations of privilege, both institutional and emotional, are rendered
invisible to the privileged, while the un-privileged subject must have the constant strain of
carrying the weight of the double consciousness (consciousness of oppression).
In addition to the dual existence of the tension and delight of laughter, Butler explains
dualistic tensions as gay melancholia. She discusses Freud's theories on mourning and
melancholia and ties the homosexual subject to the loss felt in giving up or failing to
complete the Freudian marker of adulthood: heterosexuality. She writes, If the assumption
of femininity or the assumption of masculinity proceeds through the accomplishment of an
always tenuous heterosexuality, we might understand the force of this accomplishment as the
mandating of the abandonment of homosexual attachments [...] as unlivable passion and
ungrievable loss.103 Butler uses the tradition of Freudian psychoanalysis to demonstrate the
constant loss felt by the homosexual individual, who must mourn the loss of being a
complete beinga female who retains her own female gender, while accessing the male
gender through heterosexual sex and pairing.
I find this concept to be more useful if read as an analogy of the social constructions
that maintain power, not in terms of psychoanalysis. Here, I take loss to mean more than
eliminating cross-gendered behaviors or desires in the self in order to conform. It yields
wholeness as it allows one to access the opposite gender without becoming the
opposite gender. This model can be re-appropriated for non-psychoanalytical purposes. Gay
melancholia may be experienced by gays and lesbians as a result of internalized
heterosexism, but not homophobia as it is often thought to be. This recognition means giving
up all claims to the normative social structures.
It is possible that drag is both an act of celebration and an act of mourning. It is
celebratory in that another gender can be accessed in the self without heterosexual sex. At
103

Judith Butler, Melancholy Gender/Refused Identification, in Constructing Masculinity, ed. Maurice

Berger, Brian Wallis, and Simon Watson (New York: Routledge, 1995), 24.

35
this same time, though, mourning may arise from the angst felt by giving up heterosexual
attachments that connote heterosexual privilege. The homosexual does not mourn the loss of
losing the attachments to the other gender, but rather, losing the attachments to social
power via normativity and acquiring the emotional distress of double consciousness. A
woman can use drag to temporarily become the other as embodied by the self without
heterosexual intercourse.
It is also possible that it is not the aesthetics of the gender that the subject or
performer is attempting to achieve, but rather, the social privileges and powers associated
with that gender. For a woman in drag, it can temporarily approximate male privilege
through self-assertion, rather than heterosexual intercourse. Drag may allow women to access
male and heterosexual privilege outside of heteronormativity in a society where the
lesbian/queer woman is barred from both.
It is possible that heterosexual audiences who are aware of their privilege in a
heterosexist culture do in fact understand the subversion of gender and sexuality normativity
via the parody of gender as absurd. Although normative audiences should be able to access
camp humor, only LGBTQ audiences can experience the melancholia that accompanies drag.
An element of drag performance retains the idea that the performer moves from his or
her sex to the opposite gender. Butler argues, in imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals
the imitative structure of gender itself.104 In this way, masculinity is authenticated as
natural to the male body and femininity to the female body.105 The difference rests in the
parodic nature of drag performance. Butler suggests that part of the giddiness of drag
performance stems from the radical nature of drag that reascribes masculinity to the female
body or realigns cultural configurations of sex and gender.106

104

Butler, Gender Trouble, 137. Emphasis in original.

105

Butler acknowledges the link between authentic gender and the heteronormative concept that
heterosexuality is natural, rendering homosexuality unnatural. This theory is possibly liberating for the butch
and femme aesthetics or stylings that have been a staple in terms of lesbian visibility because it suggests that the
butch and femme roles are not merely imitations of heterosexual men and women, especially as sexual partners
and/or social couples.
106

Butler, Gender Trouble, 138.

36
The laughter of the drag performance comes from the realization that all along the
original was derived.107 Here, the joke of drag is on multiple subjectivities: the drag
performer through the attempt to become a gender without the social authentication of the
sex/gender system; the heteronormative subject ignorant of his or her coercion to perform as
opposites; and the homosexual who, despite seeing gender and heteronormativity with a
sense of humor, is oppressed by the very system that s/he mocks.
Scholar Kathryn Bond Stockton (2006) has also theorized over the darkness of camp
beyond melancholia. She defines dark camp as the combination of shame and camp.108 She
explains that camp allows queers to explore their power through their shame, where they
become self debasers with a purpose.109 Dark camp illuminates how shame has been
created out of the violent hetero- and gender-normativity that has been normalized within the
U.S. Because of this, the dark humor of camp extends beyond acknowledgement and
acceptance of queer subordination, but rather, to a site of empowerment to critique cultural
violences and oppressions.

DISIDENTIFIED DRAG AS QUEER

If camp is based on acknowledged subordination and parody, disidentification is
another form of performance used for queer resistance. Muoz claims that disidentified drag
is used specifically by queer people for queer audiences in queer spaces to disidentify with
heterosexist dominant discourse experienced in public spaces.110 It is a survival strategy that
is employed by a minority spectator [...] to resist and confound socially prescriptive patterns
of identification.111 Because of this, it can be specifically empowering for women and
people of color. Disidentification resists all dominant models of structural thinking regarding

107

Ibid., 176.

108

Kathryn Bond Stockton, Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where Black Meets Queer (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2006), 205.
109

Ibid., 31.

110

Muoz, Disidentifications, 4.

111

Ibid., 28.

37
sex, gender, and sexuality. It recycles models of dominant thinking that are empowering for
queer subjectivities, while rendered unthinkable by dominant culture.112
It also allows queers of color to resist dominant understandings of gay and lesbian
culture that are perceived as limited to whiteness. Because of this, disidentification is a
utopian survival performance art that allows for self-identification as something other than
queer or racialized.113 It is feminist because is founded on intersectionality and rejects
dominant discourses imbued with racism and sexism.
Muoz argues that disidentified drag can aggressively challenge gender norms in
ways that commercialized drag that has been sanitized and neutralized may not.114 He
discusses drag performer Vaginal Davis, who utilizes terrorist drag to foreground the
interlocking social tensions regarding race, class, gender, and sexuality.115 He suggests that
Davis utilizes aesthetic terrorism that uses ground-level guerrilla representational
strategies to portray some of the nation's most salient popular fantasies. The fantasies she acts
out involve cultural anxieties around miscegenation, communities of color, and the queer
body.116 Terrorist drag centers that passing, gender realness, and beauty are not always
the goals of drag.117
Additionally, disidentification allows queer women to resist the dominant images of
queerness that seek to disempower them. For instance, lesbians are expected and stereotyped
to be unattractive, non-glamorous, and humorless; disidentification means not only resisting
heteronormative roles for women, but also the limits of how dominant thinking casts
lesbians. It refuses all stereotypes and coercive roles that seek to shame women in any way.
No longer a pathetic and abject spectacle that it appears to be in the dominant eyes of
heteronormative culture, a queer woman who disidentifies is able to reconfigure herself as
sexy and glamorous, on her own terms only when performed in queer spaces.118 Because
112

Ibid., 3.

113

Ibid., 95.

114

Ibid., 99.

115

Ibid., 108.

116

Ibid.

117

Ibid.

118

Ibid., 3.

38
lesbian women have often been regarded as the antithesis of sexiness, disidentified drag
allows queer women to explore eroticism and attraction beyond the dominant gaze that
disempowers them. As such, it redefines beauty, eroticism, and representation.

LESBIAN AND QUEER WOMEN, FEMALE MASCULINITY,

AND THE DRAG KING
The drag queen is the in-house female impersonator; the drag king is her counterpart.
The ideological makeup of drag kings' performances vary from the queens' because they
inhabit different locations along the social power spectrum. The butch lesbian is aesthetically
linked to masculinity. As Rupp et al. suggest, Drag kinging is a relatively recent
phenomenon, although there is of course a long history of masculinity associated with female
same-sex desire, including gender-crossing women and butch/fem communities.119 The
butch lesbian and the king share a clear link: the subversion of gender roles and
heteronormativity linked to gay communities and cultural spaces. Although all women have a
stake in subverting gender roles to expose sexism, heterosexual women may have less at
stake than lesbian women in exposing the fault-lines within heteronormativity.
Kings tend to perform seriously. Scholars link this to sexism. Drag scholars Diane
Torr and Stephen Bottoms (2010) suggest that kings offend the power structure of gender
in ways that queens or other male-bodied performers do not.120 Masculinity is not always the
political center for the performance. It is possible that some kings are merely adopting it in
order to momentarily upgrade themselves.121 Yet, this act is also politicized and
transgressive in ways that the queen is not.
The differences between the two are striking: the drag kings [are] serious and overtly
political, the drag queens campy and verging on the outrageous.122 Additionally, kings
trouble gender in ways beyond sexuality, gay identity, and sexual desire. While kings very
consciously and deliberately invoke queer theory and the perspectives of the transgender
119

Rupp, Taylor, and Shapiro, Drag Queens and Drag Kings, 284.

120

Diane Torr and Stephen Bottoms, Sex, Drag, and Male Roles: Investigating Gender as Performance
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 22.
121

Ibid., 10.

122

Rupp, Taylor, and Shapiro, Drag Queens and Drag Kings, 276.

39
movement, raising questions about what is real beneath the costumes the queens play
with categories of gender and sexuality out of their own histories and desires, but they
announce that they are gay men with intact male genitalia.123 Kings do not center or
reference female genitalia in ways that reify dominant ideas of sex, gender, and sexuality.
Because of this, king performances are often more disorienting and challenging.
Additionally, female masculinity of a lesbian/queer king may evoke erotic desire in
female audiences in ways that (straight) femininity may not, which is not only transgressive,
but possibly empowering for the performers. King Christine Martin considers sexual play
as a political act: society has denied that girls could have an erotic attachment to anything
including other girls or other girls dressed as boys, [so] we better start playing.124 Eliciting
female sexual desire on its own is transgressive, but one geared toward women while
displaying masculinity can also be empowering.
Another female drag king, Tracy Blackmer, suggests that evoking traditional
heterosexual masculinity adds an alluring, empowered element: [I] was more interested in
appropriating the kind of heterosexual masculine cool [] Cool is, of course, intrinsically
associated with masculinity, whereas the 'feminine' equivalent is probably allure, and inviting
toward another than a standing back.125 This allows women to be sexy without being
disempowered. They are the agents of their sexiness, rather than the object.
Blackmer also contends that troping off normative masculine sexuality allows women
to become agents of desire not usually granted them:
Men are heartthrobs in a way that women aren'tteenage girls just go nuts over
[certain guys]and I want to get a lot closer to that experience than I'm able to as
a woman. Because even women who know they have sex appeal, they don't feel
like they own it the way men do. Whereas with guys, it belongs to themit's
theirs. I want to be able to take things like that for granted.126
Lesbian/queer women can perform heterosexual male sexuality and offer up their bodies
for sexualization in empowering ways. Additionally, lesbian/queer women extend the erotic

123

Ibid., 287.

124

Torr and Bottoms, Sex, Drag, and Male Roles, 120.

125

Ibid., 124. Emphasis in original.

126

Ibid.

40
inventory beyond traditional notions of macho, hairy, hung, and masculine.127 I wonder,
though, why should we regard this version of sexuality male if it arises among women.

CRITIQUE OF EXTANT THEORY

Despite the growing prevalence of drag kings that started in the 1990s within gay bars
in the U.S.,128 kings continue to be relatively invisible. Halberstam suggests that the lack of
king visibility is partially due to the invisibility of female masculinity in general.129
Halberstam demonstrated that the king is not merely the male version of the drag queen. The
stakes, politics, and constitution are varied based on the differences between the parodies of
masculinity and those of femininity.130 Noble (2006) also links butch lesbians, transgender
men (post- and pre-op), and stone butches to drag kings via female masculinity. He urges the
need to examine drag king performance in relation to cultural and historical context, utilizing
the concept of waves, such as U.S. feminisms, to demonstrate the ways in which drag
kinging is largely based on the cultural climate. He suggests that despite these categorical
and temporal variations, the drag king is traditionally linked to gay and lesbian cultural
landscapes centered around masculinity.131
Despite the empowering uses of masculinity, its popularization does not quell the
need to critique the term. It is possible that lesbian and queer women are resisting femininity
due to its heteronormative categorization. Only in a binary system does the resistance to
femininity equal the adoption of masculinitymoving away from one pole implies moving
toward the other. In this way, female masculinity represents a structural realignment of
existing binary categories, rather than a truly queer third spaceone that does not render
the anti-feminine as synonymous with masculinity. Although the gender expression vibrant
with gay/lesbian/queer communities is expansive, a non-feminine presentation can partly
127

Kathryn Rosenfeld, Drag King Magic: Performing/Becoming the Other, in The Drag King
Anthology, ed. Donna Troka, Kathleen Lebesco, and Jean Noble (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press,
2002), 207.
128

Rupp, Taylor, and Shapiro, Drag Queens and Drag Kings, 276.

129

Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 231.

130

Ibid., 238.

131

Noble, Sons of the Movement, 54. Note: this work relies on research based in Canada, yet much of
Noble's work appears in scholarship published in the U.S.

41
reject heteronormativity. By suggesting that a woman who has same-sex female desire is
masculine, it re-aligns the connection between binary modes of desire. This issue follows the
frequent conflation between sexuality and gender. It is possible that the link is resisting
hegemonic femininity, not adopting non-dominant masculinity. Resisting hegemonic
femininity represents an act of agency, rather than one of settling into a non-dominant
masculinity.
Understanding the limits and problems of female masculinity may be best represented
through an example that does not include gender. Consider female masculinity as a kind of
knock-off product of a Rolex watch. The knock-off will always harken back to the Rolex
because it is the brand that carries the power and prestige. Branding of consumer goods is not
far off from the way gender brands are socially-authenticated and deemed real. Going
along with the economic value of branding, masculinity is only worth the most societal
power when in a male body. Its crafting is celebrated and heralded. Even if the raw goods of
a knock-off product appear indistinguishable, only the dominant societal codes that
authenticate a product will be accepted if the product is the real brand. In our patriarchal
society, the male body is the brand that deems masculinity authentic. This is another reason
to question the usage of female masculinity.
Because of this, it is possible that drag provides a site of validation for female
masculinity in ways that the real world will not. Drag is an art of resistance and survival in
a heterosexist world. Queer and lesbian kings often perform female masculinity in their daily
lives, where the embodiment of masculinity extends beyond the stage. Their stage
performances of female masculinities and their real life female masculinities are often very
similar. This is a significant difference between kings and queens. The drag stage provides a
site for kings to not only parody masculinity, but also celebrate their own non-conformist
gender identities. Drag kings have a higher stake and political charge by performing an
aesthetic that is closer to their daily selves; it is a site of validation of female masculinities.
Despite this, drag bars are not perfect sites to perform female masculinity. Gay bars
are not lesbian bars, and lesbian bars are few. Because most gay bars cater to gay men, so too
do drag shows. Gay men represent a more lucrative market than lesbians and queer women.
On stage, audience members tip drag performers throughout their performances. Kings are
tipped significantly less than queens. Because kings tend to be more political and do not

42
make easy misogynist jokes, their performances tend to garner fewer tips, especially from
gay men. Often, the most popular and lucrative drag shows are fun, not political much
like the climate of gay bars. It is possible that an increase of lesbian spaces could yield an
increased prevalence and popularity of kings.
Another factor contributing to the lack of kings in drag bars is phallocentrism,
specifically referring to a penis, not a signified phallus. Because queens refer to their male
genitalia, phallocentrism (read: peniscentrism) is clearly important to performers and
audiences. Female drag troubles sexuality in ways that are not always welcome, even for gay
audience members. One king suggests that butch kings cause unwanted tension among gay
men: gay men's sexuality is centered in the cult of masculinity and is disrupted when they
feel sexual desire toward drag kings who do not have the plumbing that [they] desire.132
Despite the convincing, erotic performance of masculinity, this suggests that biological sex
does in fact influence gender and desire. Kings trouble the peniscentrism that arises within
gay men's erotic desire of masculinity in ways that are unwelcome. This works against both
Halberstam's and Butler's contentions that gender can be completely detached from the body
as a free-floating artifice. It suggests that biological sex does significantly impact the wearing
of gender in ways that excludes women from masculinity.
Shapiro (2007) reported that many female-bodied performers have come to identify
more with their masculine sides via drag.133 This use demonstrates how female gender
expression in drag performance is bound to the feminine/masculine binary in ways that
betray the supposed queer roots of female masculinity. This also centers it in a masculinist
(read: hegemonic) system that reifies sexism. Halberstam's female masculinity is merely
one of the master's tools disguised as queer binary-breaking.
For FTMs, kinging ushered in a new gender consciousness that was not prevalent for
cis-gender male drag queens. Again, gender privilege is generally unacknowledged by those
who have it. Focusing on one troupe specifically, Rupp et al. noted that some kings entered
with a female gender identity and came to think of themselves as genderqueer or transgender
132
133

Rupp, Taylor, and Shapiro, Drag Queens and Drag Kings, 288.

Eve Shapiro, Drag Kinging and the Transformation of Gender Identities, Gender & Society 21, no. 2
(April 1, 2007): 258.

43
as a process iof performing as kings.134 In these ways, real life gender expression and
identity has a higher stake for females in drag.
Another question arises: does identifying as genderqueer work against the material
realities and oppressions that structure sexism? In other words, is it an aversion to the labels
of womanhood, femininity, and lesbianism that initiates the preference to identify of
genderqueer, or is it the material realities of heterosexism, homophobia, and misogyny?135
Would women identify as masculine or genderqueer if the material realities that oversee
womanhood were informed by feminist politics? It is possible that genderqueer is a
symptomatic survival strategy of labeling to distance oneself from the difficulty of living as a
lesbian or feminist, since both are met with hostility. Additionally, genderqueerness may
not translate into dominant readings of these bodies, meaning that the decoded body
continues to read as female, and most likely, as lesbian. Biological sex continues to be a
material reality that influences gender readings, often in violent ways, despite the ways queer
discourses seek to look past it. Queer boundary breaking is theoretically illuminating, yet
utopic naming strategies may not combat oppressive hegemonic societal rules and ideas that
influence material realities.

ANDROCENTRISM AND MISOGYNY

Camp functions in a sexist society where a man's temporary downgrade into a
female role is humorous, rather than serious (as it is for women). Although Newton links gay
men to drag queening simply because of their feminized sexuality, it is also important to
consider the element of male privilege or assertion of masculinity in gay male camp
performance. Newton suggests, camp is not a thing. Most broadly it signifies a relationship
134
135

Rupp, Taylor, and Shapiro, Drag Queens and Drag Kings, 282.

Scholarship undertakes the debate regarding internalized misogyny, especially in terms of growing
numbers of FTM individuals. Here, I do not seek to negate or invalidate non-cisgender or genderqueer
subjectivities, nor do I agree that these subjectivities are enemies to gay and lesbian communities, feminists,
or women. I direct this point specifically at the concept of the ability of genderqueerness to truly overturn
larger societal systems of sexism and misogyny. It may not works to lift systems of oppression if it does not
validate the lived experiences and material realities faced by genderqueer females, lesbians, and FTMs as
regulated by sexism, misogyny, gender enforcement, and homophobia. It may be difficult for genderqueer to
gain traction against hegemonic forces of the sex/gender system, yet this requires further inquiry. For more on
the lesbian stance on FTMs, both in terms of allies and enemies, see: Zachary I. Nataf, Lesbians Talk
Transgender. For more on the feminist politics and identities of FTMs, see: Jean Bobby Noble, Sons of the
Movement.

44
between things, people, and actives or qualities, and homosexuality.136 With this definition,
camp arises from a man becoming a woman. The humor arises from a temporary flirtation
with being a woman, something that looms over gay men's claims to masculinity. As Garber
suggests, the easiest way for a man with stigmatized masculinity to reassert his masculinity is
to put on a dress.137 A way for gay men to reassert their masculinity is to establish the
transition needed to actually become women or perform a feminine role. In this way, gay
men refuse the stigmatization of being a woman by performing as a woman temporarily.
Camp performance among males, then, secures their maleness through temporary femininity.
It is possible that queens who perform drag realness, rather than camp drag, are
paying tribute to women. For instance, gay scholar Blake A. Paxton (2011) suggests that gay
men have an affinity for diva culture. Divas like Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, Cher,
Madonna, Beyonc, and Lady Gaga garner this affinity because of their perceived
inspirational and empowering representations of strong femininity in the face of sexism. He
suggests that gay men identify with divas because they are both linked to femininity in a
misogynist and homophobic culture.138 Because many gay men identify with femininity,
divas are role models that offer ways to feel powerful, despite the negativity surrounding
femininity. It is possible that many queens who take on diva personas do so to celebrate this
bond and offer tribute to women. It is also important to note that they pay tribute to
heterosexual women and find camaraderie because both groups are connected to men as
sexual and romantic partners. The affinity between gay men and straight women is visible in
both pop culture and gay bars.
Despite these connections between camp, drag, and gayness, it is questionable how
lesbian/queer women stand in relation to them. Are they aligned against gay men via the
misogynistic representations of women in camp? Or, are they more closely aligned with gay
men as a result of being part of the gay experience? Because drag scholarship is
androcentric and centered on gayness, these questions are not easily answered.

136

Newton, Mother Camp, 105.

137

Garber, Vested Interests, 295.

138

Blake A. Paxton, My Bad Romance: Exploring the Queer Sublimity of Diva Reception (masters
thesis, University of South Florida, 2011), 13.

45
Within this conversation, scholars often link drag and camp to historic references of
blackface and minstrelsy. In her discussion on the use of cross-dressing on stage, Garber
quotes Robert Toll for his discussion of social power infused into minstrel shows: Women,
like Negroes, provided one of the few stable 'inferiors' that assured white men of their
status.139 Garber argues that women and African Americans were most parodied on stage,
where the humor is clearly one that seeks to intimidate or insult both groups through
dominant stereotypes that evoke white, male power and privilege.140
Garber also argues that drag is a critique of the possibility of 'representation'
itself.141 Minstrel shows allowed white males to insult both women and African Americans
and pass it off as entertainment or comedy. Both groups were barred from the stage to
challenge these representations. White male performers were granted privileged space to
insult these groups. If reversed, it is clear to see how and why normative structures (read:
white, heterosexual men) cannot be parodied: minorities lack the entitlement that justifies the
former's social disempowerment as humor and the privilege of existing in a dominant
social position to create representations of others.
As part of the Kent College of Law Symposium of Unfinished Feminist Business,
Kelly Kleiman (1999) explicitly refuted male drag, straight and gay, as anything but
misogynistic. She asks, Why hasn't our understanding that blackface is insulting extended
itself to drag?142 She links drag to blackface because it allows people in power to insult
disempowered groups through exaggeration, ridicule, and stereotyping, while limiting selfrepresentation. She argues that drag is merely men prescribing women's roles and embodying
139

Robert Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1974), 63. Quoted in Garber, Vested Interests, 277.
140

Garber explains in this section that African American males were emasculated within minstrel
shows. Gender is revealed as inherently based on power differentials in that we have no synonymous word of
emasculation for the disempowerment of women. Power is gendered and gender signals how that power is
accessed and by whom. This demonstrates that women's expected roles are, by default, subordinated. It must be
acknowledged that a disempowered man is emasculated yet there is no similar concept for women. The
stripping of femininity does not imply the removal of power. A woman is assumed to have no dominance or
masculinity to take away, and thus, it is not as much of an offense to subordinate her. It also further
demonstrates how gender is constructed to stratify power for patriarchal gains. As I have argued, masculinity
is more heavily connected to power than it is to classifications of gendered characteristics or biological sex.
141

Garber, Vested Interests, 353.

142

Kelly Kleiman, Drag = Blackface, Chicago Kent Law Review 75, no. 3 (1999): 669. Emphasis in

original.

46
femininity as defined by men based on traditional, not transgressive, feminine roles.143 She
argues that the humor of drag comes from insult: Men who dress up as women and adopt
stereotyped feminine behaviors are comical because of their stereotyped behavior, and the
inference they encourage the audience to draw is not that stereotypes are comical but that
women are; not that social restrictions are foolish but that the people restricted are.144 This
suggests that drag is read as humorous because dominant society welcomes and celebrates
that which insults women and mocks femininity.
Kleiman suggests that theories of drag as transgressive have gotten too far away from
feminism and women's material realities:
When RuPaul says, we're born naked and the rest is drag, he is wrong. He is in
drag because he is a man, and he can stop being a woman whenever it becomes
inconvenient. When being a woman is inconvenient for me, I need to remove the
inconvenience. Male ideas of "femininity" are a major inconvenience to those of
us who are actually women and have to live our lives in that state.145
Kleiman refuses to deem gay male drag acceptable because it injures women.
Despite these critiques, it is still possible that gay men are utilizing drag to mock
heterosexual gender norms, even at the expensive of women. Additionally, lesbian/queer
women perform femininity in drag performance to mock heterosexual gender roles, so it is
not quite accurate to write off drag as a male performance with only misogynistic goals.
The parody of masculinity is limited in ways that the parody of femininity is not.
Assuming that masculinity can be mocked, Bottoms and Torr ask if anything is to be gained
for women. As gay male drag is read a kind of celebratory affirmation of their 'feminized'
marginalization, it makes less obvious senseconverselyfor women to mimic the sex
responsible for their relative disempowerment.146 Interestingly, gay men do not become
their oppressors to illuminate the oppressive structures that bind them. If this were true, they
would directly mock hegemonic masculinity instead of femininity.

143

Ibid., 672.

144

Ibid., 684.

145

Ibid., 675.

146

Torr and Bottoms, Sex, Drag, and Male Roles, 26.

47
It is also noteworthy and troubling that kings embody misogynist attitudes to parody
masculinity. Drag king Mo B. Dick explains that masculinity is constructed as the
naturalness of being male, where the natural becomes much more difficult to embody and
provides less parody. He says, So when we think about what to imitate of maleness, we tend
to fasten upon sexist pigs, for example, to have something to perform,147 because
masculinity is not constructed as a spectacle. If the misogyny prevalent within hegemonic
masculinity transfers as an acceptable or expected practice to female masculinity, those
versions of female masculinities are anti-feminist.
Halberstam and Volcano claim that the increased prevalence and visibility of drag
kings may indicate how thoroughly we as a society have learned to detach masculinity from
men and to defuse the intensity and effect of male authority148 Again, it may be helpful to
read this rise as the women's ability to reject femininity, rather than adopt masculinity. As we
continue to live in a patriarchal society, it is too far-reaching to link female masculinity to
women's freedom and deem masculinity completely detached from its normative relationship
to males.

BEYOND GENDER-CROSSING: RACIALIZED AND

WORKING-CLASS MASCULINITIES
Drag should not only be understood in terms of traversing the gender binary. Just as
some male drag promotes misogyny, some drag king performances use classed and racialized
parody that propagates disempowering stereotypes.149 Again, because drag operates based on
gender constructions, so too does it operate around racialized masculinities. A feminist
analysis must consider race and class issues within cross-dressing. It is crucial to ask if the
humor of drag performance is shaped by mocking racial, gender, and class stereotypes about
minority subjectivities. This perspective also illuminates the co-creation of identities via
intersectionality. Kinging often utilizes non-white, working-class masculinities. These
instances also illuminate issues within real world gender.
147

Volcano and Halberstam, The Drag King Books, 115.

148

Ibid., 150.

149

By centering this discussion on kings, I do not suggest that queens are free of racialized and classbased parody. Scholarship regarding that work is vast and not directly related to issue of drag masculinities.

48
Although king camp is possible, it often derives its exaggerated form from racialized
and working-class masculinities. King camp originates from overt sexual bravado, with
subtle reconfiguration of maleness.150 King K. Bradford suggests, kings have historically
found it a challenge to camp up the performance of masculinity"151 Because of this,
scholarship links the campy king to faggy flamboyance,152 and to non-white and workingclass masculinities. Camp, again, operates around the insult of social minorities.
In terms of class, Bradford associates working-class masculinities with class
misbehavior and levels of rebellious flashiness and noise that is unavailable to conservative
upper-class masculinities: Elvis and Travoltatwo male pop figures who drip with camp
are popular king icons and personas. The raunchy looseness, the greasiness, the toughness
and the foul mouths that make Elvis, Travolta and other campy drag king personas what they
are, spring from the complexity of their working-class masculinities.153 Kings claim that the
suit, a marker of U.S. (white) upper-class masculinity, is merely too boring to imitate.154
Halberstam (1997) argues that white men derive enormous power from assuming
and confirming the nonperformative nature of masculinity where white masculinities must
be rendered theatrical before they can be preformed in ways that masculinities of color do not
require, as they have already been constructed as masculinities that are easily parodied.155 In
other words, a priori to drag, masculinities of color and working class masculinity have
already been ridiculed in ways that they are more easily parodied than white masculinities.

150

Rosenfeld, Drag King Magic, 206.

151

k bradford, Grease Cowboy Fever; or, the Making of Johnny T., in The Drag King Anthology, ed.
Donna Jean Troka, Kathleen LeBesco, and Jean Bobby Noble (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 2002),
18.
152

Ibid.

153

Ibid., 19.

154

Volcano and Halberstam, The Drag King Book, 137.

155

Judith Halberstam, Mackdaddy, Superfly, Rapper: Gender, Race, and Masculinity in the Drag King
Scene, Social Text 52/53 (Autumn-Winter 1997): 112. This article also discusses in detail how race influences
not only the content of the performance, but the tensions and dynamics among drag king performers and
venues. Drag scholarship rarely discusses the intersectional interactions between performers. She explains how
race and class of the performer shape the performance. These issues also establish how intersectional identities
lead to different approaches to performance and how those differences may lead to tension within drag king
communities. This conversation explores how race and class affect lesbian/queer female spaces, such as lesbian
bars.

49
This transcends mere theatrics (that suits do not create a spectacle). There are
underlying racial and working-class issues shaping these masculinities. The masculine bloc
requires the domination of women and minority men. Hence, discourse and stereotypes
elevate white, middle- or upper-class masculinity as the purest, most heralded, and
powerful version. Masculinity scholarship exposes that these class and race divides structure
the masculine bloc in ways that relate to sexual prowess, passion, physicality (rather than
mental faculties), and bloodlust or violence.
Italian-American representation scholars Aaron Baker and Juliann Vitullo describe
dominant representations of Italian American males as a timeless identity characterized by a
seemingly stable form of [American] masculinity.156 They explain that Italian-American
masculinity is the perfect alchemy of race, class, and gender to utilize for entertainment
and visual spectacle: Italian Americans are a good mix because whites are too 'cold' or
'bloodless' and blacks are too 'wild,' so Italians are 'just right.'157 The visual and theatrical
elements of the white, middle-class is not enough of a spectacle to parody.158
Similarly, Hill Collins expanded on the stereotypes of black masculinity as based on
the history of racism and white supremacy in the U.S. She argues that black bodies are
regarded by whites in terms of physicality. The historic link between black men and hard
labor (read: slavery) and the white justification of these conditions required objectifying
their bodies as big, strong, and stupid.159 This physicality is marked as hypermasculine and
sexualized: white supremacy is upheld by promoting fear regarding Black masculinity and its
perceived primal, animal lust and carnal sexuality. Hill Collins writes, White elites reduced
Black men to their bodies, and identified their muscles and their penises as their most

156

Aaron Baker and Juliann Vitullo, Screening the Italian-American Male, in Masculinity: Bodies,
Movies, Culture, ed. Peter Lehman (New York: Routledge, 2001), 213.
157

Ibid., 214.

158

It is important to note how whiteness has been constructed historically in the U.S., especially in
relation to identities including Jews, Irish, Italians, and Hispanics. See: Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of
a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1999).
159

Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New
York: Routledge, 2004), 56. Note: these stereotypes also functioned to easily arrest and convict Black men with
the guise of the paternalistic need to protect white women from Black aggressive, deviant hyper-sexuality.

50
important sites.160 The black body was both heralded and marginalized because of its
hypermasculinity.
Minority masculinities are linked strongly to violence through physicality and
dominance. Ironically, violence also marks an inability to master the wildness and power
of masculinity, as demonstrated by the white, upper-class male (i.e. cool, calm, and collected
at all times despite natural violent urges). Organized crime groups represent this kind of
uncontrolled masculinity, especially in relation to the acceptable Italian-American. Images
of ethnic masculinities linked to organized crime are common within U.S. media.
Although black sexuality is represented as overly-aggressive and dangerous, ItalianAmerican and Latino masculinities tend to be marked with sexual bravado, swagger, and
macho-ness.161 They are represented as both hard in terms of bravado and violence, yet
softened by sensuality. Garber writes, Latino, Hispanic, Italian and presumably other darkcomplected, dark-haired men are deliberately conflated as 'Latin'smooth, seductive,
predatory, irresistible to women. And done again 'hyper-male' and 'feminized' become,
somehow, versions of the same description: these men are too seductive to be 'really'
men.162
Additionally, non-white masculinities tend to be marked by showmanship or loudness
in ways that have been overcome by the hegemonic white, upper-class male; an example
would be the theatrics of verbal accents and language stylings (specifically Italian and
Spanish) prevalent within media representations. Through these too hot, too cold
distinctions, the only correct version of masculinity is amongst white, non-working-class
men. Among working class and minority men, these elements that constitute
hypermasculinity are seen as failings. White upper-class men, conversely, have sociallyevolved beyond animalistic, carnal tendencies.
These are the same codes parodied in drag king performance. It is highly questionable
if these representations are progressive or acceptable, despite being used to transgress

160

Ibid., 57.

161

Sean Nixon, Exhibiting Masculinity, in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying

Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1997), 308.
162

Garber, Vested Interests, 361.

51
heteronormativity. In this way, cross-dressing and drag can present a form of embodied
tourism. Drag is gender tourism, but it can also be race and class tourism. Members of a
higher social position can utilize temporary embodiment to transition into a lower status
based on race, class, or gender for entertainment and fun. Approaching drag as embodied
tourism centers intersectional power differentials and social constructions of identity, while
exposing how and why messages are encoded, decoded, and degrading.
The intersectional complexities of drag performance are often overlooked. Because
drag performance is diverse in terms of how, where, and by whom it is performed, so too
should the definition of drag expand. If we expand our understandings of the rationale and
social criticism beyond traditional understandings of drag, we being to see a clear feminist
intervention of drag as it is occurring today. This leads to an interpretation of how drag
operates for heteronormative women in popular culture. It suggests that drag beyond
sexuality has underexplored implications regarding women, gender, and power.

52

CHAPTER 4
SETTING THE STAGE: WOMEN, POPULAR
CULTURE, AND DRAG
She cross-dresses because she wants to be taken seriously; he generally cross-dresses because
he doesn't.
Kris Kirk and Ed Heath
Men in Frocks
This chapter focuses on the ways women have used camp, cross-dressing, and drag
within popular cultural spaces. It exposes the enforcement of hegemonic femininity and
heteronormativity within pop music performance and the restrictions they impose upon
women. Although these elements have long, complex histories incorporated by numerous
performers, a few major figures, including Mae West, Annie Lennox, and Madonna help
situate Lady Gaga's drag. These women are often compared to each other as each signaled
gender transgressions. They utilize what I call unruly femininity, often marked by hypersexuality and exaggeration, and cross-dressing and drag to lesser degrees. This chapter
explores commonalities and differences of gender manipulation within their acts. Although
they use gender transgression, they often vary from traditional drag kings. These
comparisons reveal prescriptions and limitations of women both on stage and off. They
illuminate how cultural understandings of masculinity and femininity regulate social power.
Womens motivations for and experiences of cross-dressing and drag are blurred
through the dominant link between drag and gay culture. The larger issue is that instances of
female cross-dressing and camp get subsumed within existing frameworks based on gay male
culture. Drag is constituted and deployed differently by straight women in popular culture.
Straight female drag is a distinct genre that reveals specific experiences and limitations of
gender expression. The conflation of drag genres yields faulty misreadings of why straight
women do drag and how it reflects the limitations of femininity with popular culture.
Most straight women's cross-dressing sexualizes masculine attire, where the essence
of gender parody and convincing crossing of genders is lost along with its transgressive

53
politics. Cross-dressing is not always drag, yet they are often read and interpreted
synonymously. In the following examples, cross-dressing, drag, and female camp often
complement and reify heteronormativity. Some are specifically problematic as they
propagate anti-feminist and lesbianphobic sentiments.

WOMEN IN POPULAR CULTURE

Popular culture is not a static medium. It shifts based on available technologies and
cultural attitudes. Too often, it is given less scholarly attention because it is seen as a lowbrow, meaningless collection of profit-based spectacles.163 This assumption is elitist. Since
popular culture is more accessible to larger groups of people, studying it illuminates how
content is created and consumed by mass audiences. It is a sampling site to explore gendered
norms and the ways performers/performances prompt controversy by pushing those
boundaries. Popular culture profits from being tame enough to reach the common
denominator, while also commodifying its transgressions.
U.S. pop culture is comprised of many kinds of media, particularly those shaped by
ever-growing digital technologies. Pop culture scholars Katie Milestone and Anneke Meyer
(2012) define it as an amorphous concept which encompasses an enormous range of cultural
texts and practices, from cinema films to newspaper articles, from designing computer games
to playing music.164 They make the important assertion that Much of popular culture is
media culture; popular culture includes mass media such as radio, the press, film and
television, as well as new media such as the internet or email.165 Because of this, an author
in The Guardian asserted that [pop musicians] have to speak in multi-media tongues.166
Pop culture theorist Angela McRobbie suggests that pop culture is a manifestation of
postmodernity: pop has never signified within one discrete discourse, but instead combines
images with performance, music with film or video, and pin-ups with the magazine form
itself.167 Because it takes on multiple mediums, it is amorphous and multi-layered. As pop
163

Katie Milestone and Anneke Meyer, Gender and Popular Culture (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2012), 4.

164

Ibid., 1.

165

Ibid.

166

Quoted in Angela McRobbie, Postmodernism and Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 14.

167

Ibid.

54
culture intersects with digital technologies, it embodies many characteristics of
postmodernity including subversion of origin, blurring of reality, a focus on technology
rather than nature, and a disbelief of a stable Self.
Pop music and women have an interesting interrelationship through their shared traits
of consumption and spectacle. Pop culture often functions around the idea that sex sells.
Female performers are most visible within pop music compared to other genres. This
establishes that female performers are most prevalent within industries reliant on sexual
commodity, visual spectacle, and meaningless culture. Because of this, I contend that
hegemonic femininity and pop culture often share many pejorative characteristics:
sexualized, commodified, superficial, and unimportant. This suggests that women who
express hegemonic femininity may also be considered superficial and meaningless.
Often, female performers are most valued in music for their consumptive spectacle, not as
skilled musicians and artists. In some instances, they are the currency of popular culture as
they function as commodities rather than as subjects.
The music video personifies this linkage: it commodifies the female body. Feminist
pop culture scholar Rachel Henry Currans-Sheenan writes, In addition to providing fertile
ground for the emergence of female pop music performers, the 1980s brought the birth of
MTV and MTV changed the way the public consumed music. Music was not just for
listening anymore; now it was also for viewing.168 Pop music entered the realm of visual
media that utilizes the sexualized female body to increase consumption.

SUBCULTURAL VISIBILITY/POP COMMODIFICIATION

MTV has a long-standing history of commodification. While it reflects diverse
performers and content, visibility of a minority social code does not always guarantee
improved, non-offensive representations. Although often touted for increasing diversity on
screen, it is questionable if pop culture commodifies non-dominant codes simply for profit.
Displaying otherness may be marketable as spectacle, much like the popular allure of

168

Rachel Currans-Sheehan, From Madonna to Lilith and Back Again: Women, Feminists, and Pop
Music in the United States, in Youve Come A Long Way, Baby: Women, Politics, and Popular Culture, ed.
Lilly J. Goren (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), 59.

55
circus acts and freak shows. Otherness offers a foil spectacle to reify the normalcy of
dominant social categories.
Queer studies scholar Lynda Goldstein suggests that MTV is a hyperkinetic culture
vulture that commodifies destabilized identities, especially queerness that involves
displays of non-normative genders and sexualities.169 She suggests that MTV programming
often utilizes drag to grant heteronormative audiences temporary access to queer style.170
She also argues that queer-friendly sites allowed their participants to temporarily pass for
queer, although within the chic safety zone of MTV-approved youth culture.171 Temporary
performance of queerness by and for heteronormative people is hazardous for real queer
politics and lived realities.172
Feminist scholar bell hooks concurs: meaningless commodification strips these signs
of political integrity and meaning, denying the possibility that they can serve as a catalyst for
concrete political action.173 She suggests that although queer crossover may challenge the
dominant ideas among normative audiences, it largely results in the erasure of queer
identities and politics.174
Halberstam explains how queer subcultures drag king maintains a ghostly,
unacknowledged presence within popular culture. She draws an important distinction
between the ways drag functions in queer subcultural spaces and in heteronormative popular
cultural spaces. She argues that although subcultures are beamed up into popular culture
for capitalist ventures and robbed of their oppositional power, those appropriated
subcultural forms do not simply fade away as soon as they have been mined and plundered
for material.175 She observes that although gay male camp femininities have become visible
169

Lynda Goldstein, Revamping MTV: Passing for Queer Culture in the Video Closet, in Queer Studies:
A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology, ed. Brett Beemyn and Mickey Eliason (New York: New
York University Press, 1996), 264.
170

Ibid., 265.

171

Ibid.

172

Ibid., 264.

173

bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 33.

174

Ibid.

175

Judith Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York:
New York University Press, 2005), 127.

56
within in pop culture, the king masculinities (parodied and mocked masculinities) are much
less visible.176
Similarly in todays current pop culture landscape, male drag queens have broken into
majoritan cultural consumption due largely in part to the Logo networks highly popular
television series about drag queens, RuPauls Drag Race. It is unlikely that a similar show
would center drag kings. Halberstam suggests that this dissonance between parodied
masculinities and parodied femininities within popular culture indicates that The reverse
sexism of the drag king shows has, not surprisingly, simply fail[s] to sell.177 Queer
subcultural spaces, specifically lesbian and queer female spaces, produce performances that
parody masculinities overwhelmingly more than popular cultural spaces. Gay mens parodies
of femininity are much more welcome and visible in pop culture than lesbian/queer womens
parodies of masculinity. This also helps explain the near absence of drag kings from popular
culture.
Halberstam suggests that examining the where, when, and how subcultural forms
are appropriated illuminate how the marginal and the dominant interact.178 Studying drag in
both subcultural LGBTQ spaces and popular cultures dominant spaces elucidates the
politicized elements of queer subculture, which in turn, exposes how heteronormativity
operates within dominant popular culture. As drag traverses both cultural sites, the way it
functions differently between the two demonstrates how gender is understood, represented,
and expressed within queer minoritan and heteronormative majoritan cultural spaces.
In some instances, drag operates as a form of embodied tourism for non-queer
audiences to temporarily entertain themselves with queer styles without fully considering
queer oppressions. This is similar to the ways drag queens represent temporary tourism of
femininity. The embodied tourist can temporarily slum it for entertainment purposes and
return to a higher social status at will. This marks social privilege of heteronormative
subjects, as they can temporarily experience the thrill of queer oppression and queer
subcultural artifacts without taking on the negative feelings and oppressions of non-privilege.
176

Ibid., 129.

177

Ibid., 134.

178

Ibid., 127.

57
The transition out of drag reasserts personal power in real life as the safety-net of privilege
can be reestablished at any moment that the performance is aborted at the performers will.

FEMALE CAMP IN POPULAR CULTURE

Camp performed by women in pop culture varies significantly from traditional drag
kinging, yet coincides with gay male camp in many ways. Instead of considering female and
male camp with oppositional logic (if male camp performance = exaggerated femininity, then
female camp performance = exaggerated masculinity), most mainstream female camp is
based on exaggerated femininity and misogyny. Female camp performed in pop culture
should not be conflated with cross-dressing, even though it shares many similarities with
drag queen camp humor. Female camp performance scholar Pamela Robertson (1996) asserts
that it employs gender parody as does gay male camp, yet the approach is varied.179
The straight female camp performer and the drag king yield discrete if not contrasting
performances. The drag king mocks masculinity while the female camp performer mocks
femininity. Robertson claims that female camp, a la Mae West, allows the performer and
female spectator to imagine her distancing herself from her own image by making fun of,
and out of, that imagewithout losing sight of the real power and that image has over
her.180 Like gay camp, female camp uses exaggeration of stereotypes to distance oneself
from them. Both operate on misogyny, rather than critiquing what oppresses them:
hegemonic masculinity.
It is likely that camp humor for women, like gay camp humor, is only funny
because it is tragic: humor is derived from an acknowledged subordination and distancing
one's real self from pejorative stereotypes. West acknowledged this issue in a Playboy
interview: camp is the kinda [sic] comedy where they imitate me.181 Camp humor is the
kind that makes fun of Mae West and women like her.182 If audiences do not read West's

179

Pamela Robertson, Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna (Durham: Duke
University Press Books, 1996), 10.
180

Ibid.,17.

181

Robert C. Jennings, Mae West: A Candid Conversation with the Indestructible Queen of Vamp and
Camp, Playboy, January 1971, 78. Quoted in Robertson, Guilty Pleasures, 25.
182

Robertson, Guilty Pleasures, 25.

58
performances as a critique on gender roles, she merely reifies stereotypes of women. Again,
parody is only as transgressive as it is read.
Female camp is a form of acknowledged subordination and an attempt to laugh at
oneself as a mode of survival in a hostile culture. The title of June Sochen's biography of
West, She Who Laughs, Lasts suggests women must be able to find humor within their
performances to survive. It is likely that acceptable forms of humor are those that are
compatible with dominant thinking. Female camp performers often represent internalized
misogyny as they mock themselves amidst their oppression. Like gay melancholia, this
version of female camp humor is fueled by female melancholia and self-deprecation.
Robertson also argues that women use feminist camp to claim sexual agency.183
She argues that they garner empowerment by performing as sex subjects, not objects. In this
model, women gain power through normative modes of sexualization. This feminist
camp is one that mocks women's limiting roles and centers femininity in sexual
attractiveness. I argue that feminist camp should not mock women. Nor should female
power originate from being attractive.

UNRULY FEMININITY
The perceived queer aspect of female pop performers often manifests as unruly
femininity.184 Unruly femininity is often indicative of female camp performance. Unruly
femininity demonstrates how heterosexual/heteronormative women can actively resist
hegemonic femininity without being incorrectly deemed queer. Again, the use of unruly
femininity rather than queer more accurately describes how heterosexual women can
transgress femininity without being read or interpreted as queer. It foregrounds gender
rather than sexuality. For instance, while queer genders demonstrate a resistance to
normative sexual identities and expressions, unruly femininity is rooted in gender, not
sexuality. This strategy allows womens genders to be discussed without a rootedness within

183
184

Ibid., 53.

It is important to note that queer femininity is also categorized as unruly, as it disrupts hegemonic
definitions and limitations of femininity as socially submissive and sexually passive. Despite this, I utilize
unruly as an intervention for a popularized usage of queer to explain heteronormative and heterosexual
female camp performances and times when women resist limiting roles of femininity beyond sexuality.

59
sexualityit more clearly detaches gender from sexuality. It allows women to reject the
submissiveness and subordination of traditional femininity outside of sexual resistance.
Unruly femininity involves the destabilization of real femininity as it is pushed to
extremes. This uncontrolled femininity can create uneasiness because it suggests that women
are accepting their subordinated roles and also betraying them by exaggeration. It can also
demonstrate that exaggerated femininity is grotesque and yields spectacle. The connections
between unruly femininity and monstrosity, over-growth, destabilization, and the forsaking
of acceptable femininity are often interpreted as queerness.
Robertson suggests that female camp links many female pop performers. They also
satisfy a taste of commercialism185 as evidenced by the successes between West, Madonna,
and Gaga. These artists push femininity beyond the boundaries of cultural norms into an
exaggerated commodity. West garnered success and notoriety as she utilized vulgarity and
hypersexuality to commodify grotesque femininity.
The performance of grotesque femininity blurs reality by providing representations of
women who are too much to be real. Like West, Madonna and Gaga utilize artificiality,
excess, and consumption. Madonna is the Material Girl and Gaga, the Fame Monster. In
this way, exaggerated femininity pushes it to unnatural limits that expose the construction
of all gender. Gaga no longer represents one version of femininity or self, she represents the
overgrowth of femininity catalyzed by pop culture.

NORMALIZING QUEERNESS
Although camp is utilized by multiple subjectivities, I argue that many female camp
performances are labeled queer incorrectly. Although both gay male camp and female
camp parody femininity, gay male camp does so to subvert heteronormativity. The female
camp performances discussed in this thesis are not queer because they reassert
heteronormativity.
Scholar Katrin Horn best exemplifies how female camp is incorrectly misread as
queer performativity.186 She argues that Gaga performs femininity through irony, parody,
185
186

Robertson, Guilty Pleasures, 120.

Katrin Horn, Camping with the Stars: Queer Performativity, Pop Intertextuality, and Camp in the Pop
Art of Lady Gaga, Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies 11 (2010), http://copas.uni-

60
and artificiality that produces queer camp performance. While these are characteristics of
camp, she makes an imprecise jump that suggests they signify the queerness of gay camp.
These performances often eroticize and fetishize grotesque femininity within heterosexuality,
rather than using it to subvert heteronormativity. This theorizing fails to consider the
differences between discrete genres of performance that utilize camp humor.
Because camp is often theorized in a historical manner that looks to its origin in gay
culture, female camp is consistently labeled queer, even as its crossover into pop culture
dissolves its intention to subvert heteronormativity. Horn acknowledges this: [gay camp
performances] undermine the heterosexual normativity through enacting outrageous
inversions of aesthetic and gender codes.187 She then links Gagas camping of femininity to
queerness simply because of camps history within gay communities. The linear gay origin
narrative used in camp scholarship is a theoretical glossing-over that renders every camp
performance queer and denies the potential for multiple discrete origins. As a concept,
unruly femininity may be used as a sociolinguistic alternative to queer in these cases.
Camp is employed by performers to critique oppressions and material realities
specific to their identities. Glossing over these differences also obscures the specificity of
what is being critiqued, by whom, and for what purpose. The history and specificity of gay
camp as a survival strategy against heterosexism is obscured. It also blurs discrete elements
of female camp that result from specific issues that straight women face, specifically issues
resulting from their lived experiences of femininity in a patriarchal culture.
In this model, female camp has no theoretical or material distance from the gay male
experience. It posits performance as linear, where male camp is the original, unadulterated
form and female camp follows informed by itsomething that only comes to be because
men first paved the way for women to mimic it. Although straight women and gay men
utilize camp to critique gender and sexual norms, they do so from different vantage points
that highlight how their social positioning regulates lived experiences of those norms.
Hill Collins (1990) offers a similar example of how types of art arise out of minority
experiences in order to express and build community based on lived realities. She discusses
regensburg.de/article/view/131/155.
187

Ibid.

61
the significance of blues music within African American communities. She quotes Angela
Davis who linked blues music to individual and group expression that formed a continuum
of struggle which is at once aesthetic and political.188 Davis suggested that the blues arose
out of a need to express internalized oppressions and share common experiences specific to
African Americans. Using this logic, drag functions for LGBTQs in similar ways that blues
function for African Americans. Because of this, heteronormative performers can perform
the aesthetic of drag, but not necessarily its politics. Because of their heterosexual privilege,
it is also unlikely that they feel the same need to utilize drag as a survival tactic within a
heterosexist culture. In the same way that playing the blues does not racialize the white
performer, drag does not queer the heteronormative performer/performance.
In terms of unruly femininity, it is often argued that women who defy gender norms
through overt (hetero)sexuality are queer. Queer theorizing is complex because it often
pertains to three binary systems: sex, gender, and sexuality. Because of this, transgressions of
any of the three binaries (male/female, masculine/feminine, heteronormative/nonheteronormative) are read as queer. Often, specificity of a term is lost as it pertains to
multiple categories. It also signals how sex, gender, and sexuality are inextricable in ways
that dissolve the discreteness of each category. Gender transgressions and sexual
transgressions are all read as queer, even as they happen within heteronormative situations.
This also conflates gender identity and sexuality. Because queer has been appropriated in
heterosexual pop culture and academic theorizing in ways that dissolve its sine quo na, Noble
argues that queer is beginning to become an unusable term.189
Breaking gender norms without overturning heteronormativity does not relate to the
Q in LGBTQ. The women discussed in this thesis are often labeled queer, yet they do
not defy gender outside of heteronormative terms. Instead, they merely demonstrate how
unruly femininity, drag, and cross-dressing can be harmonious with heteronormativity. This
demonstrates the depoliticizing of queerness as it becomes heteronormative.

188

Angela Davis, Women, Culture, and Politics (New York: Random House, 1989), 201. Quoted in
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment,
Rev. 10th Anniversary Edition (New York: Routledge, 2000), 105. Emphasis added.
189

Noble, Sons of the Movement, 9.

62
Madonna has been considered a queer icon. Scholar Carolyn Lea suggests that she
distinguishes herself as queer icon against the ground of commercial pop culture.190 Yet,
because she has been commercially successful for multiple decades and is considered the
Queen of Pop, it is unclear how she stands against commercial pop culture. Although
queers and unruly women may be connected by gender transgression, they do so in different
realms and should not be conflated under a queer umbrella. Extending heteronormativity to
include unruly femininity is not queering femininity, it is merely heterosexualizing it.
When it comes down to the politics of sexuality, LGBTQ constituencies have a
political stake in being queer in the sheets and queer in the streets. Although Madonna
may be seen as sexually transgressive in her pursuit of sexual pleasure, gay scholars
Douglas Crimp and Michael Warner suggest, She can be as queer as she wants to, but only
because we know she's not.191 They suggest that her queerness is only acceptable because
she is known to be heterosexual. Her queer-chic heterosexualizes, neutralizes, and sanitizes
queerness for normative audiences.
This is not to suggest, however, that only non-heterosexual sexualities can be
transgressive. Defying normative limits of sex and gender within the larger framework of
heterosexuality is not queer, but it is transgressive. I argue that women who carve out
additional roles for women within heterosexual social orders can be transgressive, but not
queer. They extend the limits of femininity within heteronormativity through unruly
femininity.
Additionally, the absence of lesbians and queer women within pop culture, outside of
common references to Ellen DeGeneres, is stark. This may be exacerbated due to the increase
of labeling heterosexual women as queer this may cover up the lack of queer women
within pop culture. Another issue is that they may be labeled as queer, but they do not selfidentify as queer. If the unruly heteronormative woman represents the queer female, then
lesbian/queer women may continue to remain largely underrepresented and invisible. This

190

Carolyn Lea, Madonna: Transgression and Reinscription, in Meditated Women: Representations in

Popular Culture, ed. Marian Meyers (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1999), 122.
191

Douglas Crimp and Michael Warner, No Sex in Sex, in Madonnarama: Essays on Sex and Popular
Culture, ed. Lisa Frank and Paul Smith (Pittsburgh, PA: Cleis Press, 1993), 97.

63
issue requires more research regarding how lesbian identities stand in relation to
commercialism, sexualization, and spectacle.

FEMINIST ISSUES
This intersection of visual performance and female pop musicians in the late 1980s
arose in a cultural climate shaped by Second Wave U.S. feminism. Second Wave feminists of
the 1960s and 70s often fought to be taken more seriously politically, economically,
intellectually, and in employment. They also claimed their worth outside of sexuality.
Despite these politics, many pop performers continue to use sexuality to achieve
empowerment. Many of these performers are often represented as feminist icons simply
because of their commercial success, not because they represent feminist politics or identify
as feminist. Because they are perceived as successful women, they are often seen as feminist
role models and spokeswomen for all women. Yet their visibility in pop culture does not
ensure positive representation or feminism. Certainly, most female pop musicians are not
feminists and those who are do not agree on the best practices of representing women's
sexuality.
Both Madonna and Lady Gaga have been called the future of feminism.
Additionally, Lady Gaga is often considered a knock-off of Madonna, while Madonna has
been called a knock-off of Mae West. These generational linkages speak to the ways women
are allowed to exist on stage and their relationship to sexual objectification and agency,
spectacle, and consumption. Copy-catting speaks to the originality of female performers,
where the woman who steps outside current expectations is often considered mimicking
the women who did so before her. Conversely, female performers who conform are not often
named as mimics of other conformists, even as more operate within this model.
Boundary-breaking performers extend the roles and behavior of women, yet they
continue to link womanhood to sex and their physical bodies more than they critique
women's roles. The female performers discussed in this thesis produce new spectacles for
pop culture consumption: the sensual temptress, the artificial monster, and the genderblender. These roles create new kinds of safe femininity that do not radically overturn
larger systems of gender-based oppressions.

64
Sochen explains that West created an additional image of women in the form of
woman as sensual temptress, but combined it with a newer, more audacious onethe
independent woman192 Despite this claim, the independent woman remains dependent
upon men in order to be read as a sensual temptress. This reinforces heterosexualization that
requires women to dial up femininity (read: sexuality) for consumption within a consumerbased pop culture. Despite the boundary breaking that occurs by women being unacceptably
over-sexual, they continue to derive agency and empowerment from their ability to be
sexually attractive to men. Women in pop culture are heavily policed to conform to white,
heterosexual, and able-bodied beauty standards and their commercial success is largely
contingent upon their ability to uphold these standards.
The discourse about Madonna is strikingly similar to Wests. Some observers noted
that Madonna is the postmodern feminist heroine in that she combines unabashed
seductiveness with a gutsy kind of independence.193 Madonna is the sex symbol who
rejects the victimization of objectification, and becomes a sex subject, rather than object.194
She is the true feminist who shows girls how to be attractive, sensual, energetic,
ambitious, aggressive, and funny and loves real men.195 Madonna's feminism may
utilize many elements of self-expression, yet being physically attractive to men remains
vastly important.
Halberstam's book Gaga Feminism (2012) conceptualizes a new feminism based on
certain aspects of Gaga as a performer. She argues that the exaggeration of existing roles of
women subverts gender limitations. It exposes and resists the limiting constructions of
femininity. She utilizes the term gaga to represent what derives from and is epitomized by
Gaga, but is not limited to her.196 She writes, My use of the term gaga feminism does not
simply tie feminism to a person or a set of performances, rather it uses the meteoric rise to
192

June Sochen, Mae West: She Who Laughs, Lasts (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1992), 45.

193

E. Ann Kaplan, Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture
(New York: Methuen, 1987), 122. Quoted in Lea, Madonna: Transgression and Reinscription, 205.
194

Robertson, Guilty Pleasures, 128.

195

Camille Paglia, Sex, Art, and American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1992), 45. Quoted in Lea,
Madonna: Transgression and Reinscription, 206.
196

J. Jack Halberstam, Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Boston: Beacon Press,
2012), xii.

65
fame of Lady Gaga to hint at emerging formulations of gender politics for a new
generation.197
Although Halberstam urges that this brand of feminism is not directly linked to the
person Lady Gaga, it is complicated by the fact that Gaga has stated, Im not a feminist. I
hail men. I love men. I celebrate American male culture198 and then later, I am a feminist. I
reject whole-heartedly how we are taught to perceive women, the beauty of women, how a
woman should act or behave.199 Despite Halberstams attempt to disconnect gaga feminism
from Lady Gaga, her naming of this brand clearly harkens back to Gaga as a symbol of
feminism in ways that challenge the accuracy of the concept. It raises the question of whether
a person who is at odds with feminist identification can be considered a symbol of feminism.
Linking directly to the artificial nature of pop culture, Halberstam defines gaga
feminism as the feminism of the phony, the unreal, and the speculative that is
simultaneously a monstrous outgrowth of the unstable concept of 'woman' in feminist
theory, a celebration of the joining of femininity to artifice, and a refusal of the mushy
sentimentalism that has been siphoned into the category of womanhood.200 Like female
camp, gaga feminism is only powerful if the monstrosity is read as a parody of gender
roles, rather than as a mockery of women.
Halberstam also suggests that gaga feminists are not 'becoming women' in the sense
of coming to consciousness, they are unbecoming women in every sense.201 This logic
yields few options for women. She argues that as women unbecome women, they become
artificial and monstrous. Like female camp, gaga feminism merely accepts the subordination
of femininity and takes that role to the extreme, yet remains limited to that role, even if
conscious of it. Halberstam problematizes the woman, rather than working to resist
hegemonic femininity in ways that can make womanhood more livable.
197

Ibid., xiii.

198

Lady Gaga on Double Standards & Feminism, YouTube video, 1:22, posted by StilettoREVOLT,
August 4, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=habpdmFSTOo.
199

Lady Gaga on Feminism, YouTube video, 1:38, posted by terrabithian2, January 16, 2011,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8skCakDm1sM.
200

Halberstam, Gaga Feminism, xixiii.

201

Ibid., xiv.

66
Another version of perceived gender subversion in pop culture is the blending of
masculinity and femininity. Feminist media scholars Helen A. Shugart and Catherine Egley
Waggoner connect female pop musicians' use of gender blending and juxtaposition to
produce spectacle. Because exaggerated femininity is common within pop culture, they ague
that the mixing of masculine and feminine codes produces a refreshed visual spectacle: this
blend is used to repackage and commodify them as alternative chic rather than politically
resistive.202 Some examples of this entail commanding the stage, wearing baggy,
dominantly masculine-coded attire, and demonstrating a self-satisfying sexuality. All of this
is done while maintaining a recognizably feminine presentation. The spectacle comes from
traditionally feminine women doing traditionally masculine things.
The fact that baggy pants and being physically active on stage are attributed to
masculinity demonstrates that femininity is restrictive. This suggests that any time a female
performer does not perform hegemonic femininity, she is read as performing masculinity.
Similar to female masculinity, this demonstrates how any transgression away from
hegemonic femininity is read as masculinity because it exists as a binary. Because of the
enforcement of hegemonic femininity, some women can be kept in line by the worry of being
labeled masculine. Because female pop performers have a stake in being perceived as
sexy, being read as masculine can be harmful to that image.
This also exposes that what counts as femininity is very limited. If we continue to
name active and empowered performances masculine (i.e. a feminine performance cant
be active or empowered so it must be masculine), the perception of masculinity exhibited by
women largely signals the freedom of expression allowed to men. For example, being
physically-active on stage has nothing to do with the limitations of the female body, it merely
shows that femininity is limited to the inactive. Being active in seen as masculine even
though women can be women and active simultaneously. Gender is a fiction that limits
human expression, especially womens. This signals that perceived femininity is any
characteristic expressed by women that is sexualized, inactive, and bounded.

202

Helene Shugart and Catherine Waggoner, A Bit Much: Spectacle as Discursive Resistance, Feminist
Media Studies 5, no. 1 (2005): 65.

67

GAGA'S GENDER-BENDING PREDECESSORS

Gaga's drag performance is most compared to those of Madonna and Annie Lennox
who both utilize elements of cross-dressing and gender-play on stage. Although the instances
of cross-dressing are vast within pop culture, I choose these examples because they best
demonstrate why female pop musicians utilize drag in response to the limitations of
femininity.
Madonna's song, Express Yourself (1989) best represents her use of sexualized
masculine attire. In the music video and the VMA stage performance of this song, Madonna
wore a double-breasted pinstripe suit with lingerie underneath. She eroticized masculine
attire through its juxtaposition to women's lingerie. She also does not attempt to change her
feminine-coded hair, makeup, or posturing; no significant transformations took place.
She extended female sexualization to masculine attire and her ability to challenge
gender stereotypes fell short. Madonna's transgressive performance is only so if we deem
female sexuality as the highest form of empowerment and female liberation. This politically
neutralizes the use of cross-dressing as means of gender subversion and alternatively recodes
it as heteroerotic.
Express Yourself was misread as a drag dance and disgendering polysexual
display that would deconstruct the 'truths' of sex and gender.203 It is unclear how a woman
in full makeup and lingerie is disgendering. It appears more gendered than ever via this
juxtaposition. The masculine clothing augmented Madonna's feminine body via eroticization
rather than producing a performance of masculinity.
Recall Garber's logic that suggests the best way for a man to establish his masculinity
is to put on a dress. Similarly, the quickest way for Madonna to establish her femininity
(read: sex appeal) was to put on a suit, especially along with women's lingerie, a traditional
female erotic symbol. It is clear that Madonna was not offering a drag performance that
challenged the sex/gender system. Instead, she presented a new aesthetic code of female
eroticism. Although many scholars consider this to be drag, this conflation between
203

Cathy Schwichtenberg, Images of Race and Relgion in Madonnas Video Like a Prayer: Prayer and
Praise, in The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities, and Cultural Theory,
ed. Cathy Schwichtenberg (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 141. Quoted in Lea, Madonna: Transgression and
Reinscription, 206.

68
eroticized masculine attire worn by women and the drag king is extremely problematic as it
glosses over important political differences between these performances.
Annie Lennox also cross-dresses in her pop culture performances. Her use of crossdressing and drag are more complex than Madonna's, although discourse on the topic often
conflates both artists uses of cross-dressing. Lennox restructures femininity through crossdressing and drag kinging. She does not do so to center eroticization. Instead, she utilizes
cross-dressing to avoid the sexualization that accompanies femininity.
Lennox existed in the music world reigned over by the Queen of Pop, Madonna,
whose persona strongly linked female pop musicianship to sex. Currans-Sheehan suggests,
For women musicians who wanted to be taken seriously by the public, Madonna's use of
sexuality was damaging to this effort.204 Interestingly, despite Madonna's eroticization of
masculine-coded clothing, Lennox utilized masculine-coded clothing to produce the reverse
effect. In a 1985 interview, she discussed the reasoning for her gender bending:
When I started wearing mannish clothes on-stage, it was to detract from what people had
come to expect from women singers [...] I felt I couldnt be a sex symbol. Thats not me. So I
tried a way to transcend that emphasis on sexuality [...] I wasnt particularly concerned with
bending genders, I simply wanted to get away from wearing cutesy-pie miniskirts and tacky
cutaway push-ups.205
Lennox did not necessarily subvert gender roles, but she did create a temporary
disavowal of femininity in order to avoid sexualization. This is a pivotal difference between
the reasoning behind male and (heterosexual) female drag.
In addition to defusing sexualization, Lennox attempted to blur the boundaries of her
private and public selves. Popular music scholar Gillian Rodger (2004) extends Goren's
findings and suggests that the music video allowed Lennox to add theatrically to her
performances. Her use of multiple characters was based on a multitude of feminine
stereotypes and archetypes that blurred her real self.206 Because women are offered up for
204

Currans-Sheehan, From Madonna to Lilith, 59.

205

Brant Mewborn, Eurythmics Unmasked, Rolling Stone, October 24, 1985, 42. Quoted in Gillian
Rodger, Drag, Camp and Gender Subversion in the Music and Videos of Annie Lennox, Popular Music 23,
no. 1 (2004): 20.
206

Rodger, Drag, Camp and Gender Subversion, 18.

69
consumption in pop culture, masculine-coded aesthetics may help maintain clear distinctions
between their public and private lives, especially if the performer identifies as feminine in
real life.
Lennox is most often associated with androgyny rather than masculinity. Scholar
George Piggford (1999) suggests that female androgyny functions similarly to drag, yet is
more disorienting as it blends perceived masculinity and femininity. He argues that the
figure that is emblematic of female camp is the female camp androgyne epitomized by
Lennox.207 He argues that female camp androgynes employ a camp sensibilitya code of
appearance and behavior that mocks ironized gender normsin order to undermine the
gender assumptions of their specific cultures.208 Although androgyny is a tool that breaks
down the gender binary and gender essentialism, Piggford overlooks Lennox's reasoning for
her androgyny. She does so to undermine gender assumptions to avoid the sexualization that
accompanies femininity. In this way, it is vital to look at the performer's rationale, not just
scholarly reception and interpretation.
As a side note, Piggford does not address how Lennox's sexual orientation was called
into question through her performances. Homophobia (read: lesbianphobia) informs these
issues. As Lennox continued to gender-bend in her performances, she was known to snap
at interviewers when questioned about her sexuality, stating in one interview: I am very
feminine. I am not gay. But I feel as a woman, sometimes, very masculine, powerful.209 She
assumes femininity is synonymous with heterosexuality and that masculinity among women
implies lesbianism. She also contends that femininity is not powerful. This is perhaps the
most illuminating evidence that links heterosexual women to the pressure to subscribe to
femininity. It is a means to avoid the pejorative connotations of lesbianism propagated within
a homophobic culture. Rodger responds to this:
Lennox's reaction may well have been promoted by homophobia, but it is also
worth considering that the frustration she exhibited may have also been due to the
207

George Piggford, Whos That Girl? Annie Lennox, Woolfs Orlando, and Female Camp
Androgyny, in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject, ed. Fabio Cleto (Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press, 1999), 284.
208
209

Ibid.

Frank W. Oglesbee, Eurythmics: An Alternative to Sexism in Music Videos, Popular Music and
Society 11, no. 2 (1987): 58. Quoted in Rodger, Drag, Camp and Gender Subversion, 21.

70
limits imposed on the array of images available to herif the identity strong
masculine woman was seen as being synonymous with that of the lesbian then it
became unavailable for non-lesbian women.210
This is again a feminist issue: women have internalized lesbianphobia despite the ways it is
clearly linked to misogyny and the limitation of women's lives.
Heterosexual women's lesbianphobia is a patriarchal tool that keeps women in line,
performing hegemonic femininity, and catering to male pleasure and domination. If crossdressing, female masculinity, and androgyny elicit reactions that question a performer's
sexuality, then power issues become centered around sexuality rather than gender. Because
of this, resisting femininity is continuously recast as a sign of lesbianism, rather than as a
defiance of gender roles. This also illuminates possible reasons why female masculinity is
not common among heterosexual women.
Despite the pressure to assimilate to gender norms, Lennox moved beyond androgyny
into full-blown drag performance. At the 1984 Grammys, she did a stage performance of
Sweet Dreams that brought drag to a mainstream audience. Not only was she in full male
attire, she sang the song in a significantly lower register than used in the original recording.
Her gender transformation was convincing: backstage producers and other performers could
not recognize her as Annie Lennox.211
Her masculine-coded costuming included a black suit, black button-down shirt, and a
loose tie around her shirt collar. She wore a black, slicked-back wig typically associated with
the masculine-cool of Danny Zuko with a touch of Elvis' later years. By also sporting
muttonchops, she made it very clear that she was performing male and not her usual
androgyny. Her backup dancers provided a feminine foil that heightened her performance as
masculine. Her body language, dancing, and hand gestures were powerful while she
maintained a charming, yet cool, smile. She ended the number dancing next to her
Eurhythmics bandmate David Stewart. Her masculinity was heightened as she and Stewart
danced similarly at the same heights in a way that connected her more clearly to his stage
presence rather than to the female backup dancers. Additionally, her command of the stage
210
211

Rodger, Drag, Camp and Gender Subversion, 21.

Annie Lennox Looks Back at Drag Grammy Moment, CTV News, last modified February 2, 2009,
http://www.ctvnews.ca/annie-lennox-looks-back-at-drag-grammy-moment-1.366422.

71
was notable. Borrowing a phrase from drag performance artist Diane Torr, Lennox owned
the ground she performed upon while in drag.212
Her drag persona is often described as a take on Elvis Presley, which is a common
persona used within contemporary drag king performance. Despite this connection, it is
possible that any persona Lennox used would have been likened to another male musician or
performer as a way for normative audiences to understand her unsettling performance of
female drag. Drag performances are often compared to mainstream male performers. This
suggests that gender performance supports Butler's warning that drag can be read in ways
that authenticate the embodiment of some genders and negate others. If seen as mimicking
male performers, drag kings give authenticity to real males they are mimicking. In this
case, the comparison to Presley was thin: Lennox's dancing was in no way near his famous
gyrating hips, nor was her voice indicative of his.
Although scholars have discussed gender and drag in relation to Lennox, none have
addressed her recollections of the performance. In a recent interview with The Canadian
Press (2009), she explained how she spent the whole evening in drag.213 Being an
unrecognizable male persona allowed her to feel like a fly on the wall. Not only did she
think performing in drag would be fun, she also wanted to wryly address the whispers
about her so-called androgyny.214 If male queens use drag to assert their real life
masculinity, it is also possible that a male persona allows women to assert their real life
femininity. Because women who do not exhibit hegemonic femininity are aggressively
questioned about their sexual orientation, it becomes clear how Lennox's drag may have
reified heteronormativity rather than subvert it. Not all drag performances may actively resist
or subvert heteronormativity; if the subversion of heteronormativity is assumed as the main
goal of drag, then other issues of why heterosexual women, such as Lennox, are utilizing
drag as a critique of femininity become silenced.

212

Lara Muffley, Diane Torr, Genderqueer Project, accessed April 26, 2013,
http://genderqueerproject.blogspot.com/2006/09/diane-torr.html.
213

Annie Lennox Looks Back.

214

Ibid.

72
She also suggested that, Everything is illusory anyway.215 Although this sentiment
relates directly to the social-construction of gender, the stakes were personal for Lennox. It
made her previously-labeled androgyny appear more feminine when compared to full-blown
drag performance. Like Madonna's queerness, Lennox can get away with drag because we
know she is adamantly heterosexual. Through her frustrations with her questioned sexuality,
she sought to prove that gender-bending and heterosexuality are compatible. In this way, she
heterosexualized drag.
In addition, it is important to note the fun involved in drag for female performers.
Although scholarship is highly analytical regarding gender and drag, adopting a male persona
can yield pleasure. Although Lennox suggests the fun of being someone else,216 it may also
be more fun because it is a temporary escape from the confines of hegemonic femininity,
something that is heavily enforced for female pop musicians. Additionally, Garber suggests
that cross-dressing allows female performers to take up more gender space on stage.217
Existing as multiple egos allows women to not only take up more space, but offer up more
characters for consumption. That allows them to preserve their real selves.

215

Ibid.

216

Ibid.

217

Garber, Vested Interests, 126.

73

CHAPTER 5
JO CALDERONE TAKES CENTER STAGE
Recording and performing artist Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, better known
by her stage name Lady Gaga, sparked a media frenzy when she introduced her male-alter
ego, Jo Calderone, to the world of popular culture.218 Calderone appeared in Vogue Hommes
Japan in September 2010. The magazine featured a photo spread and an interview with the
New Jersey mechanic.219 Calderone was established as a recently-discovered model who
dreamed of owning a car shop and multiple muscle cars. He was not referenced as Gagas
alter-ego. Gaga and Calderone were set up as autonomous people: I met her at a shoot Nick
Knight was doing. Shes fuckin [sic] beautiful, and funny, and interesting [] I took her out
after. The rest is private.220 When Calderone appeared on the fashion website SHOWstudio,
Internet users and media outlets speculated if Calderone was Gaga.221
After a few months of online viral marketing, Gaga released the music video for
You and I, the fourth single from the Born This Way (2011) album that centered a love
story between Calderone and Gaga. In addition to appearing in the music video, Calderone
was the face of the You and I on the single album cover and subsequent publicity, which
was heavily shared on social media and other Internet sources.
His final physical appearance was at the 2011 Music Television (MTV) Video Music
Awards (VMAs). Gaga was Calderone for the entire nighta rare occasion for a drag king
on the pop stage. As he walked the red carpet into the event, he introduced himself: My
name is Jo Calderone.222 He proceeded for the remainder of the night, never breaking
218

Because of its unusual spelling, Jo was most likely derived from Gagas middle name, Joanne.

219

Nick Knight, The Tale of Jo Calderone: Homeboys Dont Smile, Vogue Hommes Japan, September

2010.
220

Jo-Ann Furniss, Jo Calderone Interview, Vogue Hommes Japan, September 2010.

221

Jo Calderone: Lady Gaga In Disguise?, Huffington Post, last modified May 25, 2011,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/30/jo-calderone-lady-gaga-in_n_630435.html#s108199.
222

Music Television, Video Music Awards, MTV broadcast, August 28, 2011.

74
character, to stand-in for Gaga. He established that he was Gagas boyfriend and came in her
place to prove his love for her.223 Gaga expressed that she wanted him to be understood as a
different person and established this narrative that he spoke.224 The press questions were
directed toward Gaga, but he refused to break character. He was Calderone on stage,
backstage, on the red carpet, and in the audience. He was also rumored to have used the
mens restroom throughout the night.225
Because Calderone operates within popular culture, he reaches mass audiences. MTV
reported that this VMA show was record-breaking with 12.4 million total viewers, the
number-one ranking cable telecast among viewers ages 12 to 34, and the number-one nonsports cable telecast.226 This event is complicated by the interconnectedness of pop culture
and social media. Internet and television broadcast simultaneous co-create pop culture
events. Social media meditates this content: the 2011 VMA was the most social of all time
with 10 million visitors and social networks driving 76 percent more traffic than the
previous year.227
This extends Calderones drag to multiple sites of performance: live audiences
physically at the event, viewers watching the live televised event, and the multiple images,
videos, and discourses about Calderone on the Internet. I call this collection of media the
Calderone media event. In the process, Calderone is digitized as his drag performance
transfers from the corporeal stage performance to cyber platforms. Drag is made digital in
various ways that reframe sex, gender, and embodiment as the cyber body displaces the
corporeal body. Because of this, both the body and the performance site are virtual. Virtual
sites have the potential to reach more audiences as they defy physical and temporal
223

Lady Gaga Backstage at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, YouTube video, 2:05, from the
broadcast of the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, posted by losangelestimes, August 28, 2011,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QMchMgokCI.
224
Lady Gaga, Gaga Memorandum No. 4: Remodeling the Model, V Magazine, November 2011,
http://www.vmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/attachment-final.jpg.
225

Hollie McKay, Lady Gaga Took Male Alter-Ego to the Limit By Using Male Restrooms, Fox News
Entertainment, last modified August 29, 2011, http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/08/29/exclusivelady-gaga-took-male-alter-ego-to-limit-by-using-male-restrooms/.
226

Kara Warner, 2011 VMAs Pull Largest Audience in MTV History, MTV.com, last modified August
29, 2011, http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1669953/vma-2011-ratings-history.jhtml.
227

Ibid.

75
limitations. Additionally, the cyberbody is more malleable than the corporeal body because it
alters the digital (computer data) rather than the physical (flesh).
Cyberdrag could be perceived as a liberatory space free from the limitations of
corporeal sex. However, the Internet is occupied by personas that harken back to the real
person. Internet discourse is meditated by crossover of medias of reality, such as videos,
images, and sound clips. Unlike early conceptions of the Internet and computer worlds as
artificial or virtual realities, the Internet remains heavily connected to real life through
social media. The Calderone media event also establishes how real life events circulate on
cyber platforms. The Internet is not fully digital because its content is not completely
separate from the real. Unlike early projections, the Internet is becoming the digitization of
the real, rather than a virtual reality.
Gaga's immense influence within pop culture facilitates this significance: Forbes
notes she is the highest ranking celebrity in the world in terms of both press and social media
influence, while also listed as the fourteenth most influential woman in the world.228 It is
likely that Calderone represents the most-viewed drag king performance in U.S. history.
Despite this level of visibility, its crossover into pop culture endangers its transgressive
politics and potential. Calderone is more closely related to the traditional drag king model
than previous deployments of female cross-dressing, but varies from the king who preforms
in LGBTQ spaces. Also, the reading of Calderone may be subversiveor not.

GAGAS ENCODING: WHY DRAG?

Gaga revealed that her drag performance started as a mischievous experiment of
gender manipulation.229 Although she sought to illuminate the malleability of gender, she
used drag to test how much [she] could get away with.230 She continues, In a culture that
attempts to quantify beauty with a visual paradigm and almost mathematical standard, how
can we fuck with the malleable minds of onlookers and shift the world's perception on what's
228

For Gaga's overall rankings, see: http://www.forbes.com/profile/lady-gaga/. Women outranking Gaga

on this list are not only celebrities, but also politicians and world leaders, including U.S. First Lady Michelle
Obama, Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Secretary of U.S. Homeland Security Janet
Napolitano. See: http://www.forbes.com/power-women/.
229

Gaga, Gaga Memorandum No. 4.

230

Ibid.

76
beautiful? I asked myself this question. And the answer? Drag.231 Calderone is a deliberate
attack on the idea of the [] modern pop singer.232
Here, Gaga indirectly suggested that the female pop singer has a direct and constant
link to the representation and sustenance of beauty. Often, queer drag seeks to do the
opposite because queer politics are oppositional, not assimilationist. Liberal politics extend
beauty, where radical politics refuse the coercive need to be beautiful. Gaga is dealing
in beauty standards, not the explicit subversion of heteronormative gender constructs. This
again demonstrates bell hooks point that crossover into mainstream culture depoliticizes and
tames its messages.
Gaga also utilized drag for very specific personal purposes. As argued earlier, many
drag kings have a stake in making female masculinities more visible on stage because they
also utilize them in real life. Comparatively, Gaga utilized drag to engage with a matter
that strongly affects her lifethe pop singer. Because of this, drag cannot only be discussed
and understood as subversion of heteronormativity. Some versions of kinging function as
performance art meant to change the material realities of drag performers. She utilized drag
to reshape the limits of the modern pop singer that inform her stage performances, not to
subvert heteronormativity as do LGBTQ drag performers.
Womens drag performances often center an unacceptable form as utopic. One goal
of drag is to make acceptable the unacceptable form. En route to that goal, the drag stage
provides a temporary moment of celebration for the existence of an unacceptable persona. It
is often a site that exposes what is unacceptable in real life. Gaga sought to reshape
characteristics of the modern pop performer, while some lesbian drag kings often seek to
carve out space for their real life female masculinities. The utopian drag body is a way to
pave the way to its acceptance, especially if performers are invested in the change personally.
They become the change they want to see in the world.
Muoz illuminates how queer artistic performance can function as a queer utopia.
He suggests that the queer utopian stage carves out queer space by disrupting
heteronormative space. Like his use of disidentification, the queer utopian stage is a mode of
231

Ibid.

232

Ibid.

77
political resistance. He writes, Heteronormative culture makes queers think that both the
past and the future do not belong to them and through artistic performance the various
shows where I rehearsed and planned a future self, one that is not quite here but always in
process, always becoming, emerging in difference.233 Queer utopian space must be carved
out of heteronormative space, where artistic performance provides a mode in which to
attempt that task. In terms of visibility and cultural production, queer subjects are more
invested than non-queers in making visible queerness stick.
This process disrupts heteronormative space, laying claim to queer existence despite
heteronormativitys attempts to make queerness invisible and incapacitated enough to
prevent claiming space. Drag functions as queer utopian space as it creates queer temporal
and physical space by operating as a hopeful future projection of a time that is not here yet,
a certain futurity, a could be, a should be.234
This relates directly to Halberstams discussion of queer temporalities. She connects
queer time and space to subcultural production. She suggests, Queer subcultures produce
alternative temporalities by allowing their participants to believe that their futures can be
imagined according to logics that lie outside of those paradigmatic markers of life
experiencenamely, birth, marriage, reproduction, and death.235 This suggests that linear
time and life milestones can be profoundly hetero- and gender-normative. As queer
performance, drag disrupts this system, as subjects remake themselves (reproduction of the
self). Also, the oscillation between personas throws off the linearity of heteronormativity.
Because of this, drag performance is a rupture of this linear system and offers a site of
exploration of the ways in which queerness is well suited for performance arts. Like queer
utopia and drag, queer temporality may appear temporary, as it is a projection of queer
futurity.

233

Jos Esteban Muoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York
University Press, 2009), 112.
234

Ibid., 99.

235

Halberstam, Queer Time and Place, 2.

78

THE DECODING PROCESS: RECEPTION AND

INTERPRETATIONS
VMA audience members had a multitude of reactions to Calderone: many had
quizzical expressions, some smiled through their confusion, others appeared relatively
unamused, and some were positively thrilled. Mainstream audiences who lack dragconsciousness and its vocabulary had difficultly interpreting it. Overall, female drag for the
mainstream audience was shocking.
Calderone was considered a rip-off of both Lennox and Madonna.236 This
interpretation demonstrated that female drag and female masculinity are almost non-existent
on the mainstream stage. If Calderone was understood as a rip-off of Lennox's original,
then female drag is not understood for its worth as a reoccurring performance genre. A
subsequent female drag performance has no artistic worth and only the original is
acceptable. This also bolsters the argument that female drag is largely conflated with
heteroerotic cross-dressing, as Madonna's Express Yourself and Calderone were misread as
the same act.
Because Gaga is often pejoratively described as a fame whore,237 many saw
Calderone as a mere publicity stunt. She clearly acknowledges this issue by willingly naming
herself the Fame Monster. Gaga embodies the hyperkinetic artificial postmodernity of
pop culture, yet is disparaged for embodying the epitome of the genre in which she performs.
Male musicians and pop icons are rarely referred to as fame whores.
Beyond shock, Internet discourses swelled with negative critique. For example, ABC
News asked if the publicity stunt was brilliant or creepy.238 Nearly thirty years after
Lennoxs drag king performance, female drag continues to be extremely shocking and
distasteful for mainstream audiences. Lennoxs drag act made it to third place on People's

236

Annie Lennox Ripoff by Lady Gaga?, CBS News, last modified August 30, 2011,
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31749_162-20099555-10391698.html.
237

Boss Lady [pseud.], Wiz & Amber, Lady Gaga The Fame Whore & More: Our Favorite VMA
Highlights, Dr Jays Live, last modified August 29, 2011, http://live.drjays.com/index.php/2011/08/29/wizamber-lady-gaga-the-fame-whore-more-our-favorite-vma-highlights/.
238

Sheila Marikar, Lady Gaga as Jo Calderone: Brilliant or Creepy?, ABC News, last modified August
29, 2011, http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/lady-gaga-jo-calderone-mtv-vmas-brilliant%20creepy/story?id=14405227#.UXoilYLucZc.

79
12 Most Shocking Grammy Moments, and Calderone elicited the same effect. At the 2010
VMAs, one year before her drag performance, Lady Gaga wore a dress made entirely of red
meat, yet her drag performance spurred more Internet headlines than that. Her drag
performance spurred questioned that asked if it had ruined her career239 or was too
much.240 These headlines suggest that gender is not something to crossa meat dress may
not ruin a womans career, but drag certainly could. These expose womens limitations in
popular culture and the negativity regarding female drag. They carry both patriarchal and
heteronormative tones.

HETERONORMATIVE DRAG
Drags crossover into normative space signals several differences. Most notably, nonLGBTQ performers do not utilize gender parody with the goal to subvert heteronormativity.
Even further, female pop drag utilizes homoerotic themes much differently than
lesbian/queer female drag. In the Eurhythmics Whos That Girl241 (1983) and Gagas
You and I242 music videos, both perform in drag in order to enact a sexual relationship with
female partners. Homoeroticism is skewed because the female partners are Gaga and
Lennoxs female-coded selves. Although these performances could be considered
homoerotic, the message is complicated by a peculiar narcissism and self-eroticism. Both
videos use special effects that allow the male and female characters to kiss. The sexualization
of the female pop star has become so heightened in this era that she sexualizes herself.

239

Jaime Hale, Did Lady Gaga Jump The Shark? and Other Questions She Should Be Asking Her
Reflection in the Morning, Knox Road, last updated September 2, 2011, http://www.knoxroad.com/2011/09/
02/hype-hype-hooray-did-lady-gaga-jump-the-shark-and-other-questions-she-should-be-asking-her-reflectionin-the-morning/.
240

Kyle Anderson, Lady Gagas Night as Jo Calderone: Was It Too Much?, Entertainment Weekly, last
modified August 29, 2011, http://music-mix.ew.com/2011/08/29/vmas-lady-gaga-jo-calderone/.
241

Eurhythmics Whos That Girl?, YouTube video, 3:45, from a music video produced by Sony BMG
Music Entertainment Limited in 1983, posted by EurhythmicsVEVO, October 24, 2009,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5iDKWV6Chg.
242

Lady Gaga You and I, YouTube video, 6:22, from a music video produced by Interscope Records
in 2011, posted by LadyGagaVEVO, August 16, 2011,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9YMU0WeBwU.

80
Additionally, although the media surrounding You and I is represented by the face
of Calderone, the lyrics are sung from Gagas perspective. 243 In a third-person voice,
Calderone only delivers two lines in the entire song. If Calderone were singing the song, it
could be an auditory drag performance. A singing drag king could produce similar effects for
listeners. Instead, the song goes back and forth between Gaga and Calderone. This prevents
listeners from placing themselves in the love song, unlike the effect of many love songs
directed at a generic you. This possibly denies the song queer readings. Butler provides a
helpful example: if Aretha Franklin sang, you make me feel like a natural woman to a
woman, or if a drag performer chose this song to lip-sync, the malleable you and I of the
song allows for queer readings.244
Despite the heteronormative tones of the video and song, the multiple sites of the
Calderone media event produce multiple readings. At the VMAs, Calderone presented an
award to pop star Britney Spears. Calderone discussed the adolescent sexual desire he had for
Spears. When she came on stage to accept the award from Calderone, she refused a kiss him,
stating, Ive already done that. In that moment, she referenced the 2003 VMAs in which
she and Madonna shared an on-stage kiss. Although this could be read as a homoerotic
moment between Spears and Calderone (who is female underneath), it is instead a
displacement of homoeroticism, not a celebration or affirmation of it. This engagement
reinforced the taboo nature of homoeroticism between women on the mainstream stage. It
would be acceptable within a gay space, yet on a homophobic stage, the potential of the
homoerotic act was replaced with tension. In gay spaces, audiences typically play along with
drag king and queens, become part of the performances, and validate the performers.

THE COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GAGA AND

LGBTQS
Part of the complexity of Calderones effect stem from Gagas relationship to and
with LGBTQ communities and politics. Many pejorative allegations that she is a
hermaphrodite (read: intersex) or a man have circulated on the Internet and in celebrity

243

The Eurhythmics Whos That Girl? album artwork and lyrics correspond with a near exact reading.

244

Butler, Imitation and Gender Insubordination, 317.

81
tabloids. Her sexuality has also been a source of tension. When questioned, Gaga suggested
that she has fantasized about women while having sex with men and also mentions that she
has had sexual relationships with women.245 Her bisexuality is politically oppositional to
queer when she confirms her heteronormative stance: I want kids, I want a soccer team,
and I want a husband.246 Her bisexuality is framed heavily within heteronormativity that is
problematic for bisexuals and lesbians who work against heteronormative institutions beyond
sexuality.
It also exposes the sociolinguistic problems when the label bisexuality conflates
sexual acts with non-heteronormative politics. Gaga demonstrates bisexual-chic rather than
bisexual politics that could be considered politically subversive. Lesbian blogger Trish
Bendix responded: I'm more interested in her statement that the attraction to women is
purely physicaldoes she mean to say that she does not have any emotional attraction to
women? I would think that has a large part to do with being bisexual versus sexually free.247
This conflation glosses over emotional and political elements of bisexuality.248
Additionally, Gaga often represents her affinity for the LGBTQ community in ways
that suggest alliance, rather than membership. She often discusses her gratefulness for the
gay community. She considers her popularity with gays as a turning point of her
245

[HD] Lady Gaga Barbra Walters Full Interview Admits Bisexual Most Fascinating People Romance
Singer, YouTube video, 8:15, posted by LadyGagaIMAXHD, June 12, 2010,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz6TYQ4Ln8E.
246

Lady Gaga on Marriage and Motherhood Oprahs Next Chapter Oprah Winfrey Network,
YouTube video, 0:57, posted by Oprah Winfrey Network, March 16, 2012,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMmI5mSJmWA.
247

Trish Bendix, Lady Gaga Tops the Rolling Stone Hot List and Talks About Being Bi, AfterEllen,
May 27, 2009, http://www.afterellen.com/blog/trishbendix/lady-gaga-tops-the-rolling-stone-hot-list-and-talksabout-being-bi.
248

This issue exposes the need for more sociolinguistic options to discuss the complexities of politics,
identities, and relationships within LGBTQ communities. A recent reframing of this issue is the use of
affectional orientation instead of or alongside sexual orientation in order to suggest that members who
identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer are recognized beyond their connections to same-sex sexual acts.
Also, it should be noted that as gay and lesbian has been established to move beyond the label
homosexual, few similar linguistic options exist for people who identify as bisexuals. The creation of more
sociolinguistic options beyond extant labels may help to better define subjectivities currently limited to
bisexual. Queer is often used to address these issues, yet its use as an umbrella term also glosses over many
significant differences. The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid is an example of scholarship that attempts to
establish more terms to measure and capture the nuances and multifacetedness of sexual orientation; see: Fritz
Klein, The Bisexual Option, 2nd ed. (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 1993).

82
success.249 Because of this, she is accused of pandering to the gay community, a claim she
finds offensive and one of the most ridiculous statements made about her.250
She often advocates for LGBTQ rights through many public statements. Additionally,
her Born This Way Foundation centers LGBTQ issues on childhood and adolescent bullying.
Gaga often connects herself to the LGBTQ community because of a shared experience of
being different. Gaga has suggested that she wants to liberate and educate her fans in
order to create their own space in the world.251 In her youth, she felt like a freak and
wants to reach out to others who feel or have felt similarly.
I center these issues of identity, sexuality, commercialism, and LGBTQ politics
because they also arose in the discourse surrounding Calderone. At the VMAs, Calderone
accepted the award for Best Video with a Message for her song, Born This Way. The
message of the video celebrated being yourself (read: a social minority). It connected to
LGBTQ constituencies in the lines: No matter gay, straight, or bi / lesbian, or transgender
life / Im on the right track, baby. I was born to survive.252 During her acceptance speech,
she repeated similar sentiments. The song Born This Way, containing the lyrics, Dont be
a drag, just be a queen,253 along with the pro-LGBTQ message and Gaga in drag suggested
both her affiliations and affinity with gay communities, along with her use of its cultural
artifacts.
Gaga both others and normalizes LGBTQs. Gaga promotes and utilizes the gays
are the same but different trope that is used frequently within assimilationist politics. Queer
scholar Lisa Duggan uses the concept of homonormativity to explain how gay and lesbian
liberation has been coopted by neoliberal assimilationist politics.254 She defines
249

Jocelyn Vena, Lady Gaga On Success: The Turning Point For Me Was The Gay Community, last
modified May 7, 2009, http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1610781/lady-gaga-on-success-turning-point-mewas-gay-community.jhtml.
250

Jeremy Kinser, Portrait of a Lady, Advocate.com, last modified July 5, 2011,

http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/music/2011/07/05/portrait-lady.
251

[HD] Lady Gaga Barbra Walters.

252

Lady Gaga, Born This Way, Interscope Records, recorded 2010-2011.

253

Ibid.

254

Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on
Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 50.

83
homonormativity as a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions
and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a
demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in
domesticity and consumption.255 This represents an anti-queer climate as it seeks liberal
assimilation, rather than the radical element of reshaping hetero- and gender-normative
institutions. It neutralizes the radical potential of queerness by eradicating intentional
otherness and replacing it with a seemingly kind and gentile assimilation. Because
Calderone is an attempt to normalize otherness, he represents homonormative drag.
She possesses a political stance that may not be anti-heteronormative, but is not
homophobic. Gaga feels connected to the LGBTQ communities through her freakish
qualities and experiences being different, yet it is not accurate to conflate her experiences
with LGBTQ experiences. She may be queer in its associations to being peculiar, yet not
queer in the non-heteronormative association. In this way, Gaga continues to link LGBTQ to
a version of freakishness without exposing what propels LGBTQ othering. Queer politics
often utilize freakishness to expose oppressive institutions in order to either actively
dissent against them or dismantle them.
Gaga highlighted an essentialist viewpoint of sexuality and gender identitya clear
anti-queer sentiment. In her music and public speaking, her heavy repetition of born this
way discourse dispels the argument that LGBTQ identifications can be political choices and
statements. This kind of discourse represents queers as passive victims of being born into
sexual and gender minority categories. She also takes the position of speaking for members
of the LGBTQ, rather than fostering a discourse where they speak for themselves as active
subjects. Again, she appears as a quasi-queer figure, yet with very non-queer politics. This
discourse attempts to normalize LGBTQs, rather than subverting institutionalized hetero- and
gender-normativity.
She is passionate and reaches vast audiences, yet lacks the social and political
understanding that critiques homophobia and heteronormativity and fosters feminism.
Because of this, she is a questionable spokesperson for LGBTQ issues. It complicates the
idea of who can talk for whom and the fine line between cultural commodification and
255

Ibid.

84
representation. It is possible that Gaga can speak of queer issues so widely and
unapologetically if only because she is not queer.

LGBTQ RESPONSES
Despite these issues, many LGBTQ websites reacted to Calderone positively. After
Ellen, a popular lesbian pop culture blog, suggested that the performance was a refreshing,
pro-gay political statement standing against the spectacle of social conservatism splayed
across the country. 256 Calderone was a marker in mainstream media of serious change.257
Because there are so few lesbians and queer women visible in pop culture, Gaga is a
candidate who can bring the drag king to the mainstream stage. Her stance against
homophobia allows her to utilize queer cultural iconography because she is not concerned,
like Lennox was, about being read as gay. However, the increased visibility of gay cultural
artifacts does not imply the increase of lesbian visibility or self-representation.
Many drag king performers also applauded Gaga for her well-executed drag king
performance. Drag king Murray Hill, well known in drag king communities, suggested:
There is barely any visibility for FTM, drag kings and lesbians on television.
There is a huge imbalance [] For Lady Gaga, the biggest pop star in the world,
to go on TV with millions of people watching in drag as a man and then to
actually say lesbian and transgender live is undeniably powerful and creates
change. She ups the visibility big time and gets the language into the
mainstream.258
Calderone helped to infuse drag consciousness into the mainstream and force[d] people to
deal with [drag] no matter how uncomfortable or exciting it may be.259 Gaga acknowledged
a definitive purpose of drag: the need to trouble ideas vis--vis discomfort that expands

256

drummerdeeds [pseud.],The 2011 MTV Video Music Awards: Jo Calderone Just Glitter-bombed
America, AfterEllen, last modified August 29, 2012, http://www.afterellen.com/tv/2011-mtv-video-musicawards-jo-calderone-just-glitter-bombed-america.
257

Ibid.

258

John Mitchell, Lady Gagas Jo Calderone: LGBT Advocates Weigh In, MTV.com, last modified
August 20, 2011, http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1670014/lady-gaga-jo-calderone-lgbt-vma.jhtml.
259

Noah Michelson, Lady Gaga Discusses Activism, Outing And Reading Her Male Alter Ego, Jo
Calderone, As A Transgender Man, Huffington Post, last modified September 23, 2011,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/23/lady-gaga-jo-calderone-transgender_n_978063.html.

85
awareness. Despite commodification, Calderone extends this drag effect to millions of
viewers.
Through the mainstreaming of drag, the subversive effect of drag is questionable. As
drag kings take the mainstream stage as heteronormative and gender normative women, drag
is linked more closely to entertainment and fun, rather than politics.260 The gap between
the stage and real life is extended as female masculinity becomes more common. By stepping
back into normative sexualities and gender identities after the drag performance is complete,
the political transgressiveness is subsumed by temporary entertainment value. Audiences and
performers enjoy the element of transformation and spectacle of becoming a man, yet do so
in a safe, depoliticized space. Female masculinity is made more visible, yet through a
heteronormative lens. This is very different for the lived realities of people who represent
female masculinities in their daily lives.

CALDERONE AS RACIALIZED AND WORKING-CLASS

Like other drag performances, Gaga utilizes Calderone to cross gender, but also
race/ethnicity and class. In his performance, both in print and on-stage, he was a blue collar
Italian guy from New Jersey.261 To intensify the transition, she utilized stereotypes of Italian
Americans: darkened skin, expressive body language, and an Italian accent.
Not only does Gaga racialize Calderone, he highlighted class stereotypes of Italian
Americans. When he was asked if he is a guido during the VMA press conference, he
snapped back, No. Im not a fucking guido. You dont like Italians? What the fuck is the
matter with you?262 Italian scholar Simona Sangiorgi defines guido as, a derogatory term
referring to working-class Italian Americans. It is usually associated with the highly
stereotyped representation of Italian or Italian-American machos wearing slicked-back hair,

260

For a list and series of photographs of (mostly) straight women in drag, see: Anita Dolce Vita, Our
Favorite Images of Feminine Gender-Benders, dapperQ, last modified August 6, 2012,
http://www.dapperq.com/2012/08/our-favorite-images-of-gender-bending-femmes/.
261

Lisa Robinson, In Lady Gagas Wake, Vanity Fair, January 5, 2012,

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/01/lady-gaga-201201.
262

MTV VMA 2011: Lady Gagas backstage interview (Jo Calderone), YouTube video, 2:12, from a
broadcast of the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, posted by Cytalk Switzerland, September 30, 2011,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmIQaBwYNPg.

86
gold chains, sweat or tracksuits, or also unbuttoned dress shirts.263 Interestingly, Calderone
reproduced stereotypes on two levels: he expressed class-based hostility toward the guido
figure, while utilizing problematic ethnic and class stereotypes. In other words, he both
perpetuated the stereotype and the hostility toward the stereotype.
Calderones stage presence was clearly marked by working-class trouble making.
Throughout the night, he chain-smoked, cursed incessantly, had poor posture, snarled, and
drank whiskey and beer. Because of this, Gaga utilized working-class stereotypes to provide
a spectacle. Additionally, crossing ethnic and class lines allowed her to create more distance
between Calderone and her usual stage persona. The intersectionality of drag personas
exemplifies the effects of race and class upon constructions of masculinities and femininities.
This also correlates with female beauty standards as regulated by pop culture. It
demonstrates that whiteness is preferred among female pop musicians. Most obviously, both
Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) and Madonna (Madonna Louise Ciccone) utilize
stage names that erase their Italian American surnames. Early on in her career, Gaga would
perform with her natural dark brown hair; now, her real self is almost always hidden
away and she commonly wears wigs, often blonde or neon. As well, Madonna further linked
her self to white beauty standards through hair color, especially during her Blond Ambition
tour in the early 1990s. Both musicians use many Catholic themes within their performances
and music, yet largely in provocative ways that challenge and parody its traditions and
reverence. Although both hint at their Italian American heritage, it is largely erased when
they perform femininity in pop culture.

BLURRING REALITY, PRESERVING THE SELF, AND THE

LIMITATIONS OF FEMININITY
Although Gaga had a general awareness of drag before she performed as Calderone,
the transformation brought her to a new level of gender consciousness. Calderone gave Gaga
a new understanding of the constructions of femininity and masculinity as they circulated
within pop culture. Drag illuminated for Gaga how embodied social characteristics (i.e.,

263

Simona Sangiorgi, Fight Stereotypes with Stereotypes: The Case of Italianness, last modified May
20, 2011, http://dyndns.academia.edu/SimonaSangiorgi.

87
gender, class, and race) affect the lived realities of the pop musician. Temporary masculinity
is a foil to reflect upon permanent or habitual femininity.
In Calderones monologue before the VMA performance of You and I, he
acknowledged the fantasy of performance and the performativity of gender. He divulged
Gagas private life through a third-person perspective. His monologue reinforced Gaga as a
performance artist, where all of life is performance and no ego is real. He said, She gets
out of the bed, puts on the heels, she goes into the bathroom, I hear the water go on [] She
comes out of the bathroom dripping wet and she's still got the heels on. And what's with the
hair? At first it was sexy but now I'm just confused. Because he is not real and thus his
account was fictional, Gaga protected her private life by offering up a fictional one.
As he functioned as a mouthpiece for Gaga to set up a fictional private life, he also
framed real life as performative and malleable. He said, When she gets on that stage she
holds nothing back. That spotlight [] follows her everywhere she goes. Sometimes I think
it follows her home. I know it does [] I want her to be real, but she says, Jo, I'm not real.
I'm theater. And you and I . . . this is just rehearsal. He explained how pop culture
commodifies reality in a culture that consumes reality television and the private lives of
celebrities. This monologue blurred boundaries of performance/reality and private/public,
while extending these sentiments to gender performance.
Adopting an alter ego enabled Gaga to demonstrate that all versions of her performed
selves are theater. However, she utilized a male persona in order to expose that none of her
characters are real. This suggests that cross-gendering moves heteronormative women
further away from their real selves. This implies, as Butler suggests, that the self is strictly
born into being at the acknowledgement of a gender: the acknowledgement of gender creates
the I.264 Despite all of her alter-egos, Calderone is the most distant from her real self,
suggesting that gender is the centered element of ego. In this way, Calderone reinforces the
realness or authenticity of the non-drag persona, and thus, authenticates the traditional
sex/gender binary.

264

232.

Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge, 1993.,

88
Gaga utilized Calderone in order to be relatable.265 This suggests that, as a performer,
she must be artificial in order to protect herself from consumption. She has a multitude of
personas she brings to the stage, which add to the element of blurred reality. The alter ego,
especially in drag, protected the real self. She recognized the gendered aspect of this issue:
I felt it necessary to imagine what the public expects of me during [the VMAs . . .] and how
I might destroy this expectation [] On a stage, the laws of fantasy are meant to be broken,
but I have always found it difficult to bring my real pussy out there with me.266 Here, she
directly gendered her private self by suggesting that she refuses to expose her private
genitalia. Although Calderone never mentioned this issue during his performance, Gaga later
discussed that she wore a dildo to perform as Calderone, suggesting that his male body
operated as a protective overlay that shielded her real, private self marked by her female
body. Also, taking a stage name and refusing to be one self or ego on stage allows
female pop musicians to avoid allowing access to all parts of their bodies and lives.
She also acknowledged the ways gender performance exposes the limits of femininity
and the freedoms of masculinity on stage:
I felt permission through him to confess things about myself as a woman, things I
would normally keep hidden. In a way, it seemed that he could get away with a lot
more than I can. He talked about his feelings, wore Brooks Brothers, smoked
Marlboro lights, drank beer on stage, and talked about what I refuse to discuss
publicly: my relationships.267
This statement suggests multiple ideas, yet epitomizes the limitations of femininity on stage.
Masculinity not only grants the shamelessness of bluntly discussing sex in public, it also
suggest that the intimate male self no longer requires protection. Additionally, Calderone
established that accessibly to the stage is gendered, where he was allowed to get away with
more than her female ego could.
She contended that because pop culture forces women to become artificial and
protective of the private, utilizing Calderone allowed her to be even more herself. She
wrote, It was by remodeling myself into something completely foreign, and in some ways

265

Gaga, Gaga Memorandum No. 4.

266

Ibid.

267

Ibid.

89
crafting the anti-pop performance [] For someone known as much for her image as for her
music [] I was still ever-present, and, in fact, more myself than ever.268 Pop culture
renders femininity hyper-artificial, shallow, and meaningless; simultaneously, pop culture is
feminized through its characteristics of sexualization, commodification, and consumption.
Exhibiting masculinity through drag allows female pop stars to reclaim what femininity has
taken away and allows them to inhabit a liberating performance space.
Gaga acknowledged that pop culture shares very similar elements of femininity. She
suggested that Calderone is the anti-pop performance, meaning someone who is allowed to
be real and express authenticity on stage. This sentiment directly contrasts common
understandings of masculinity as limited by subdued and hidden expression and emotions.
Gaga demonstrated, on the contrary, that temporary masculinity allowed her to take up more
space, do more on stage, and be less guarded while doing it. Here, masculinity can be less
apologetic, freer, and more expressive. Because patriarchal society privileges masculinity, its
adoption can grant women more freedoms. Female masculinity brings the limitations of
hegemonic femininity to consciousness.

POPULAR CULTURE AND SOCIAL MEDIA

To understand how drag functions within U.S. popular culture, we must look to new
sites of inquiry that are contingent upon the changing definition and composition of popular
culture itself. Drag is a technology of gender subversion and digital technologies extend that
reach. Social media democratizes popular culture for those who can access it. Additionally,
social media record reception and interpretation of popular culture in real-time, unlike earlier
technological climates. Although it yields an easily-accessible platform to sample for popular
social and political attitudes, the data surrounding social media is complicated as the
demographics of users are often unknown unless self-reported.
Hall addressed this issue, suggesting that a linear model of mass communication may
not accurately define how messages are encoded and decoded. He suggested that we look
beyond the linear model of sender/message/receiver, and instead consider multiple sites of
encoded and encoded messages produced and sustained by production, circulation,
268

Ibid.

90
distribution, consumption, [and] reproduction.269 Social media operate on this model, where
multiple sites of encoding and decoding create the messages surrounding media events.
New technologies complicate drag performance: they allow digital voice-editing and
photo manipulation. Digital bodies no longer require a physical bodyI call this cyberdrag.
The corporeal sexed body no longer exists on cyber platforms as it has no material form; yet,
corporeal realities are projected upon the cyber body. This phenomenon calls up a new site of
scholarly inquiry because drag is now performed and altered in new ways through
technologies located in new sites of performance.
Public interpretations and discussions of media events are extended to new sites
through social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram blogging, etc.). This
section of this thesis utilizes cyber-ethnography, a concept coined in 1997 by
Communications Professor Radhika Gajjala. She defines it as, a study of online interaction.
It is unique mainly because of the nature of online interaction which blurs and complicates
the boundary between broadcast media and print media.270
This model provides a sampling of reactions to the Calderone media event. It allows
for a qualitative sampling of general reactions and cultural understandings, but does not
provide substantial evidence regarding the demographics of online engagement, nor does it
provide quantitative data. It is likely that online interaction was spurred by those who were
reached by the VMA broadcast, either directly or indirectly through peer-interactions via
social media or personal conversation.
Not only is research complicated by the Internet in terms of content creation and
circulation, but its interaction with both digital editing software and social networking sites
heavily influence Internet discourse. Gajjala coined cyber-ethnography in an Internet climate
that predated social networking sites, such as the most popular including Facebook and
MySpace. Originating in the early 2000s, social networking sites, especially Facebook, boast
millions of users and have woven their ways into most websites, computer software, and the

269
270

Hall, Encoding, Decoding, 508.

Radhika Gajjala, Cyberethnography, Internet Archive Wayback Machine, accessed July 11, 2013,
http://web.archive.org/web/20001006004842/http://www.pitt.edu/~gajjala/define.html.

91
mainstream cultural psyche. I utilize cyber-ethnography on social-networking sites and social
media sites to explore how Internet users interacted with the Calderone media event.
In the early versions of the web, it was associated with criminal subculture and
hacking. Culture and technology scholar Anne Balsamo (1996) claims that cyberspace
represented a space for counter-culture, hacking, and rebellion in a virtual reality.271 With the
ways the Web has evolved, social media networking is much more of a hybrid space than a
virtual space. It links the real world self with the cyber-self in ways that were not common
before the growth of social networking. Because of the crossover of social networking and
media between broadcast media, real life, and websites, boundaries between all of these
categories are highly blurred. Social networking provides a cyber forum space in which users
discuss the Calderone media event.
Additionally, social networking via the Internet has changed the ways in which we
communicate and exchange ideas. The division between the real world and the spaces
constructed through the Internet is no longer as clear as in earlier technological climates. A
recent anthology exploring the relation between the Internet and social issues, The Networked
Self (2011), suggests that the Internet and social networking technologies blur the boundaries
between interpersonal and mass communication,272 identity construction and politics are
influenced by Internet engagement,273 and the discourse of mass media is now co-created by
the public.274 This challenges the models of old media in which there is an active creator
and a passive consumer. New technologies bring together mass communication and
interpersonal communication. This site of popular culture and social media now represents
the blurring of public and private.275

271

Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1996), 118.
272

Joseph B. Walther et al., Interaction of Interpersonal, Peer, and Media Influence Sources Online: A
Research Agenda for Technology Convergence, in A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on
Social Network Sites, ed. Zizi A. Papacharissi (New York: Routledge, 2011), 17.
273

Ibid., 19.

274

Danah Boyd, Social Network Sites as Networked Publics, in A Networked Self: Identity, Community,
and Culture on Social Network Sites, ed. Zizi A. Papacharissi (New York: Routledge, 2011), 47.
275

Ibid., 49.

92
Because the Internet has been largely theorized as an artificial or virtual (read:
unreal) platform, its potential to affect real life has been highly ignored or disregarded.
Recently, however, scholarship is beginning to challenge this idea. Social media scholars
also argue, The manner in which most people form and change opinions of politics, style,
and other cultural issues is well-known to involve mass media messages and interpersonal
discussions.276 They also suggest that the study of social media and Internet discourses are
important because Those who had engaged in online political discussion were more likely to
vote and perform civic duties than individuals who did not particulate in the discussions.277
The Internet is not an artificial universe, it is representative of social attitudes and is a
platform in which important discourse originates and is propagated. Internet communications
affect real world issues because the Internet is made and sustained by human interaction.
These technologies influenced the readings of Calderones VMA performance. At the
moment he first appeared on the broadcasted screen, social media and Internet news sites
(read: cyber-tabloids) exploded with questions and comments about Calderone. Social media
became a way for users to co-create the discourse of this event in a cyber setting.
New technologies shape how popular culture is distributed. Calderone came to be not
only on the live red carpet, but also in pictures of the event posted by popular culture news
websites. From there, social media users rapidly redistributed these pictures. As his live
performance exponentially swelled into a media event, meanings and interpretations
accompanied all levels of redistribution: users co-created the story of Jo Calderone.
Social media hosted interpretations, engagements, and replications of Calderone.
Although interpretations of the event demonstrate social understandings and attitudes
regarding drag, the Internet provides a space for identity construction and community
participation. Social media scholar Zizi Papacharisi suggests that social networking sites
provide props that facilitate self-presentation [] centered around public displays of social
connections or friends, which are used to authenticate identity and introduce the self through

276

Walther et al., Interpersonal, Peer, and Media Influence, 19.

277

Ibid., 24.

93
the reflective process of fluid association with social circles.278 In a world hostile to gender
manipulation, the Internet becomes a safe space for this engagement.
Social media researchers Thomas J. Johnson et al. have found that online discourse
may help bring together heterogeneous groups and expose users to new ideas that influence
political opinions. They argue that social media users, especially YouTube users, are
exposed to a heterogeneous online network where other users, content, and opinions reflect
a diversity of political perspectives. This exposure has been linked to increased levels of
political participation and political knowledge (Scheufele, Hardy, Brossard, Waismel-Manor,
& Nisbert, 2006), nurturing dialogue and deliberation (MacKuen, 1990), and fostering
understanding and tolerance (Mutz & Mondak 2006).279 Bringing drag to pop culture
ensured its entrance into social media discussion. This platform may yield greater awareness
of drag, yet it is unclear if it increases consciousness regarding the constructions of gender,
female masculinities, or heteronormativity.
Not only does the Internet increase the drag audiences size, it also provides an
interactive space in which users can explore their own identities in connection to the
performance. Unlike drag that has been typically limited to real-world spaces, it is extended
to anyone who has access to the Internet. As a largely anonymous space, users assume less of
a risk observing and participating in cyberdrag.

Photo Editing
Digital technologies and social medias were used to manipulate the representation
and create new sites of performance for Calderone. These include photo editing, voice over,
and video editing. The Internet is more and more visual, rather than text-based as in previous
years. Often, photo/image editing occurs by utilizing existing images available on the Web,
in this case Calderones, and manipulating the image in various ways.

278

Zizi Papacharissi, Conclusion: A Networked Self, in A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and
Culture on Social Network Sites, ed. Zizi Papacharissi (New York: Routledge, 2011), 3045.
279

Thomas Johnson et al., United We Stand?: Online Social Network Sites and Civil Engagement, in A
Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites, ed. Zizi Papacharissi (New York:
Routledge, 2011), 187.

94
Calderone was a temporary character. Because of this, Internet users utilized photo
editing and social media to sustain his character. Google image searches of Jo Calderone
demonstrate a very basic level of how images are edited and recirculate. The most abundant
images were taken from the VMA broadcast, Vogue Hommes magazine, SHOWstudios
Elegant Mechanics, You and I music video, and the You and I album artwork. With
proliferation and (re)circulation, it is nearly impossible to be certain of the origins of these
images. This issue disrupts copyright law, yet also frees up images to be reworked and
redistributed in ways that more people can access and affect content creation.
Artists of varying mediums utilize Calderone as their subjects. A Google search of
Jo Calderone yields multiple paintings, sketches, digital art, etcetera that sustain his
character. The most common version of these examples utilizes digital photo editing. It is
now much easier to undertake with freeware and shareware (computer software). As this
software becomes more accessible, more people create online visual content.
Many of the images are visual comparisons of Gaga and Calderone side-by-side.
Users extensively describe and point out proof that Gaga is Calderone.280 Interestingly, this
element of layering goes along with Halberstams criteria for drag kings. Layering is
centered in drag because audience reaction changes based on who is doing the
performance.281 Layering demonstrates that gender is read via multiple layers of visual
decoding. Gagas drag performance is so transformative that a woman who is constantly
made into a spectacle was rendered unrecognizable by drag. Because Gagas body is a
constant within both performances, layering demonstrates the constructedness of the persona,
and thus the constructedness and malleability of gender. It also signals the rarity of female
cross-dressing and the overwhelming occurrence of female gender-normativity in pop
culture.
Additionally, many of the comparison images utilized pictures from her pre-Gaga
days as Stefani Germonatta who may have been read as more Italian, making her easier to

280

Alicia Diaz Dennis, Is Jo Calderone Lady Gags Latest Disguise?, Zimbio, last modified June 30,
2010, http://www.zimbio.com/Lady+Gaga/articles/QtahgdELFOq/Jo+Calderone+Lady+Gaga+Latest+Disguise.
281

Halberstam, Female Masculinities, 261.

95
compare to Calderone.282 This also demonstrates how femininity is hyperconstructed for
women in pop culture. Interestingly, because Gaga is hyperconstructed, she now bears very
little resemblance to the pre-Gaga Germonatta. Because the same corporeal person performs
both personas, femininity and masculinity are exposed as constructed and malleable. It
demonstrates that gender performance renders other personas unrecognizable when
presenting as the current persona. This also challenges if her success could have been
possible if presenting as Italian American as Anglo/Caucasian beauty standards rule over
female pop musicians.
Most strikingly, photo editing allows for visual representations of Gaga and
Calderone to exist simultaneously as a couple. These images include the two kissing and
embracing. Users recasted Gaga and Calderone into existing love stories. For instance, Gaga
and Calderone have been edited into the poster artwork of James Camerons Titanic (1999),
replacing the original heterosexual couple.283 In a postmodern fashion, they moved beyond
linear time to recast Calderone and Gaga into Grant Woods iconic American Gothic (1930)
painting.284 It also immortalizes the pair as it links them to iconic Americana. These images
place Calderone within gender binaries as Lord Gaga and Father Monster, juxtaposed to
Lady Gaga and Mother Monster.
Internet users also utilize photo editing to recast Calderones body in normative ways.
Specifically, users pair Calderones head with a body that appears traditionally male. Gender
is renaturalized by sex: the modified image recasts Calderones cyberbody into one that links
the male body to aesthetic masculinity.
Calderone extends beyond the one-time stage performance into multiple sites. There,
Internet users can co-create visual codes of the Calderone media event. While pop culture is
emblematic of postmodernity, it appears that the Internet makes it even more so. When the
Internet and pop culture intersect, many characteristics of postmodern theory arise, including

282

LulzYeah Cdeqz, July 3, 2010, comment on Lady Gaga, DoTa Forums, accessed July 16, 2013,
http://www.playdota.com/forums/showthread.php?t=241531&page=7.
283
284

Gaganic, Tumblr, accessed March 10, 2013, http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/gaganic.

hausofadrew, American GaGa, Deviant Art, last modified May 7, 2012, http://www.
hausofadrew.deviantart.com/art/American-GaGa-289191134.

96
pastiche, lack of origin, non-linear temporalities, blurring of reality, and the creation of
multiple selves.

Voice and Video Editing

YouTube represents a site in which cyberdrag is manipulated through the
intersections of voice-over, image, and video editing. Much like image editing, video editing
and distribution utilized the Calderone media event in order to create new video content that
further proliferated cyberdrag.
Multiple channels on YouTube are devoted to digitally manipulating Gagas existing
music to be performed by Calderone. For example, YouTube channel, Jo Calderone Music
uses manipulated images of Calderone for the visual element of video.285 The user then edits
Gagas voice by dropping the pitch in order to make it sound male. With the pairing of the
image and the audio, Calderone is recast as the performer of Gagas songs. This kind of
cyberdrag harkens back to traditional drag where performers dress up like musicians and lipsync their works.
Because audience participation and interpretation is centered in the effects of drag
performance, the pairing of YouTube and cyberdrag functions as a space that creates a cyber
audience. YouTube allows for commentary on each video and the comments section provides
a site for cyber-ethnographic research regarding the reaction and interpretation of these
videos. Digital technologies paired with social media discourse enable us to view how online
users interact and react to cyberdrag in ways that have not previously existed.
Although cyberdrag videos are extensive and the comments sections include a
multitude of reactions, several common sentiments arise that are very similar to those elicited
within traditional drag audiences. Common themes include: troubled sexual desire, confusion
regarding how to discuss the sex/gender system, discomfort with the performance, confusion
of who Calderone is in relation to Gaga, and yearning for him to be real. Despite this
diversity, it is most commonly a space for female users to express their sexual desire for
Calderone.

285

Telephone Jo Calderone, YouTube video, 3:43, posted by JoCalderoneMusic, May 31, 2011,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w16s1P7EcuQ.

97
Often, female users interpreted their reactions to Calderone as homosexual desires for
Gaga.286 These responses include: Oh God. I think Im turning lesbian for Jo Calderone;287
I don't care if this makes me a lesbian, or not.... Jo is hottt;288 I am soooo glad that I am
not the only straight girl out there that thinks Gaga as a man is hot;289 and i thought i was
the only girl who thought lady gaga looked good as a guy, lol i feel better now;290 he's
actually... hot... I'd do him...What's wrong with me?291 They express worry or fear about
their lesbian desire toward Gaga as Calderone. These responses signal the prevalence of
homophobia and heteronormativity, and also the association between the drag king and
lesbianism. Most commenters express relief, thinking that before their online engagement
that they were alone in their troubled desires. These views also demonstrate that the
interpretation of sexual desire is based on biological sex, even when blurred by gender.
Despite the utopic views that gender can be delinked from the body, these responses show
that dominant audiences continue to authenticate gender based on normative sex
characteristics (read: genitalia).
Despite the suggestion that female sexual desire toward Calderone is lesbian, many
users discuss Calderone as a man. This is most commonly represented by the use of male
pronouns. This suggests that some users are able to understand drag as the embodiment of
cross-gendered performance. However, many users tend to use Jo commonly in a way that
avoids gendered pronouns altogether. I have observed this issue often: when people are
uncertain about how to utilize gender pronouns for individuals who fall outside of traditional
286

Often, many users utilize avatars and usernames that represent gender. However, I largely based my
observations based on how users discussed themselves. Thought these comments sections, users often clearly
identified their own genders as they were discussing their responses to the videos. Although there are many
instances where gender cannot be determined, these comment sections were vastly gendered. This is unlike
many other YouTube comments sections. I believe this issue is heightened among the videos discussed here
because drag specifically challenges the perceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality of audiences. Because of this,
users often were self-reflexive of their own genders in their comments. If I could not ascertain the gender of the
user, I did not use it in their comments in my analysis for the points that required it.
287

Azure Williams, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone), YouTube video, 4:35,
posted by ItsFredricK, July 5, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8DEztCLCQo.
288

uknowntomadmodachi, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone).

289

ImAtDeathsDoor, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone).

290

Tanya Bribiesca, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone).

291

missytaterhead, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone).

98
sex/gender binaries, often first names or they are used in order to avoid their anxiety or
difficulties navigating gender pronouns for non-normative people. This occurrence highlights
that users had difficulties with gender pronouns in ways that are not often challenged. Also,
although Jo could be read as the feminized version of Joe, it is important to note it is
the correct spelling that Gaga uses and is likely derived from her middle name, Joanne. Users
often misspell his name as Joe, suggesting further that he is often discussed as male.
Cyberdrag videos elicit responses that suggest yearning for him to be real. For
example: Gaga looks amazing in drag, especially at the VMA's but damn here I'm breathless
why can't "Jo" be a real man!;292 A Guy like this could never be straight. I'd marry Jo if he
was straight. And not to mention real;293 ...wishin that was a real person!!!294 What is
interesting here is that users do not recognize the realness of Calderone, even though he is
as much a persona as any other made real by Gaga. This may provide supporting evidence
for the potential of lesbian and queer king performance, where the character of sexual desire
is real, and thus accessible, both onstage and off. The erotic desire manifested for the king
is satisfied by the realness of the lesbian/queer performer. On the other hand, however, it is
questionable if users would express their desire for the female performer with the knowledge
that she was a lesbian or queer. Again, because Gaga is heteronormative in real life, it is
possible that users feel less fear expressing their sexual desire toward her. Realness here can
be read as desire for a real man that is both biologically male and aesthetically masculine.
It can also be read as the yearning for Calderone to exist autonomously from Gaga as his own
person.
Some male commenters react negatively to positive reactions. These responses
include: why the fuck do girls think lady gaga dressed as a man looks hot?;295 OMG I
HATE JOE CALDERONE HE IS A DIPSHIT AND HE IS UGLY!296 Although many react
negatively, male commenters also express positive reactions: Im a guy and Im in love with
292

EdwardandCedric1, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone).

293

ThatsWhatsCrazy, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone).

294

Destineyfaith, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone).

295

daburg412, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone).

296

xCARSARESEXY, 2012, comment on Jo Calderone Scheibe (AUDIO), YouTube video, 3:41,

posted by poiszontv, September 25, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzlYi9JiJP8.

99
Jo.297 With the negative reactions from men, it is possible that the drag king challenges male
claims to masculinity, especially when female commenters are overwhelmingly discussing
their sexual desire for him. At the same time, many male commenters admit they too feel
sexual desire. Overwhelmingly, however, Calderone elicits more troubled desires among
female commenters. Cyberdrag troubles sexual desire among a majority of viewers, much
like its intended goal on the traditional LGBTQ space.
These discussions also yield consciousness-raising as confused users engage with
other users who are more knowledgeable about drag. Often, users express confusion about
who Calderone is and his relation to Gaga: Is that actually a chick up on stage? I seriously
have no idea what's going on...298 Users responded with various answers to this confusion:
Actually it's not Lady Gaga... Jo Calderone is the one at the VMAs...299 or jo is gaga.300
Overall, however, drag, the term itself, is notably absent from these discussions.
They also explain how Gaga may have hidden her breasts and other issues that arise
with gender performance. For instance, users responded in the following ways They have
this stuff like goss but it is wider and you wrap it around your chest to hide your boobs;301
Trans guys and crossdressers use binding all the time;302 and She was probably wearing a
binder under her tank top. They're generally built like a special bra or like a tank with a panel
for compression. Some drag kings also bind with ace bandages.303 It is a safe space for users
ask questions, express confusion, and learn about gender performance.

297

Eric Hodkinson, 2012, comment on Edge of glory Jo Calderone, YouTube video, 5:21, posted by
TaylaMaytee, August 19, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWTh9JO7jA8.
298

Patrick Calwell, 2012, comment on Lady Gaga backstage at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards,
YouTube video, 2:05, from the broadcast of the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, posted by losangelestimes,
August 28, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QMchMgokCI.
299

Shelsy Taveras, 2012, comment on Lady Gaga backstage at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards.

300

raven290930, 2012, comment on Jo Calderone You and I, YouTube video, 5:01, Nacho
Bornthisway, August 19, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVcJBGt9zlc.
301

HopeHeartzVevo, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone).

302

ForkInTheToaster, 2012, comment on Alejandro Lord Gaga (Jo Calderone).

303

Shay Brauchler, 2013, comment on Jo Calderone (Lady Gaga) You and I Live VMAs 2011,
YouTube video, 8:34, posted by RobertCamachoVEVO, August 24, 2011,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWoA25V4tQ.

100
It is important to keep in mind that these commenters sought out these videos.
Because of this, these reactions are skewed by a bias of interest. Despite this, many of the
comments in reaction to the news webpages that would be read by a wider audience
present similar reactions. These forums allow people to find more content of Calderone to
consume, while also interacting and discussing the event with other users. These reactions
demonstrate that drag is socially exciting.
Cyberdrag videos and media editing demonstrate the ability to reconstruct what has
typically been conceived of as naturalthe sexed body. Unlike corporeal drag, cyberdrag
allows for both gender and sex manipulation. Elements considered definitive of sexual
dimorphism are now malleable, including musculature, male-chest construction, height, and
voice pitch. While this can be seen as destabilizing sex and gender, it is also problematic
because it typically utilizes technologies to get closer to normative ways of thinking of
these categories. For instance, Calderone is given the sex characteristics that are traditionally
thought of as the natural basis of masculinity. He is then cast with Gaga in ways that present
them as a very normative couple based on sex, gender, and sexuality. In ways that
heteronormative women have heterosexualized cross-dressing and some drag
performances, digital technologies reify the normative links between sex, gender, and
sexuality of the dragged body in ways that depoliticize its boundary-breaking. In a way,
cyberdrag can set the corporeal drag body straight.

Recreating Calderone, (Re)creating Drag

Earlier understandings of the Internet deemed it completely anonymous, but social
networking has given authenticity to online identities, especially Facebook. Facebook users
generally display their real names, network with people whom they know in real life, and
utilize their profiles to create online personas of their actual selves. Social networking sites
allow for the persona to become digitized as an extension of the corporeal self.
Multiple Jo Calderones exist on Facebook. Because it is unclear if the several Jo
Calderone profiles on Facebook were created by Gaga or a member of her staff, his social
networking presence is very postmodern: there is no real Jo, as he was only temporary and
because anyone can take on his persona. Looking to the most popular Jo Calderone

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Facebook page, users can interact with him as if he is a real person.304 Even though most
users acknowledge that he is an alter ego of Gaga, they continue to interact with his profile
and one another as if he were a real person. With the amount of comments that discuss that
Calderone is Gaga, it is unlikely that users believe Calderone is an autonomous person, yet it
is possible. Despite this speculation, users set aside the need for authenticity in order to
interact with Calderone. This demonstrates how severely blurred reality has become with
the interaction between pop culture, digital editing, and social networking.
The Facebook profile page allows users to upload several pictures of themselves
dressed as Calderone to the page. The Calderone media hype carried on from August into
October 2011. For Halloween of the same year, many users posted pictures of themselves as
Calderone. Additionally, many YouTube users have posted tutorials on how to become Jo
Calderone.305 Calderone demonstrates to audiences that cross-dressing and gender
manipulation is accessible. His lead encourages others to also do drag. Although drags
crossover into pop culture may weaken its connections to the subversion of gender
normativity and heteronormativity and is often met with copious amounts of hostility, it
directly illuminates the malleability of gender through the practice of drag. Calderone is a
safe character to emulate because Gaga is a heteronormative performer on a pop culture
stage. Because of this, normative audiences may not be deterred by homophobia to attempt
drag after it crosses over into the mainstream.
By emulating Calderone, users do drag. It is questionable if emulators are conscious
of their gender manipulation and that they are doing drag. It is also possible that the
messages of gender subversion and the politics of the drag king are lost as users emulate a
drag performance. Using a common comparison, the copy of a copy and so on tends to lose
coherency and meaning, where the original intentions of drag performance become lost. The
drag king is resituated within the realm of entertainment and holiday costuming fun, rather
than as people who are oppressed by living outside of traditional sex, gender, and sexuality
304

Jo Calderones Facebook page, accessed January 15, 2013, https://www.facebook.com/pages/JoCalderone/105965446123117?fref=ts.

305

For one example of this, see: Jo Calderone (Lady Gaga Alter-Ego) Speed Makeup Tutorial), YouTube
video, 6:06, posted by CrazyHappy08, September 14, 2011,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNRNhTOTJ1w.

102
categories. Yet, because Gaga and other drag performers express the multitude of ways that
drag transformed their own perceptions, it is possible that consciousness extends to these
users during their drag performances.

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CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR
FURTHER STUDY
When I began this project I had no idea how complex drag performance would prove
to be. Gender is comprised of multiple material and theoretical labyrinths influenced by the
complexities of sex, race, ethnicity, and class. These categories interlock and change over
time. I suggest that a helpful way to understand drag is to interpret each performance as a
snapshot of how identity, goals, location, responses, power, and culture function together to
illuminate larger issues of sex and gender during a specific location in time.
Despite many findings, this project faced limitations: these issues arose from a few
characteristics of Internet and social media discourses. Social media on Internet platforms are
not stable sites: text often disappears, links are broken, and content is taken off websites.
Because of this, using Internet discourse for research purposes requires acknowledging what
content is significant as it is being created and archiving that data in some way to be used in
the future. I was fortunate to have documented much of this discourse as it happened with
intentions to use it for further academic exploration.
Another issue is that cyber-ethnography may not provide quantifiable data to identify
the demographics of people who interact with social media. Because of this, future studies
would be needed to link Internet discourse to real life demographics in order to understand
how identity factors affect receptions and interpretations of drag. Despite these limitations,
the sites I explored yielded qualitative data. These results suggest that more needs to be done
to further scholarly research methods when using Internet discourses, especially as media
consumption and social interactions travel to new sites.
Although this thesis covers many issues, I will highlight a few points I consider the
most important. First, drag performances are too diverse to be grouped together in ways that
dissolve their differences. Drag performers do drag for vastly different reasons, produce
different performances, and receive different receptions based on the site of performance. I

104
urge the use of drag genres rather than the continued use of drag as one genre of
performance art.
Secondly, performances based on gender-crossing rarely cross gender alone; the
crossings of race, ethnicity, and class must also be considered. Drag gives way to embodied
tourism, where people traverse various social categories marked by the body in order to
experience how society interacts with those corporeal markings. These crossing are most
easily accessed by those who already have various forms of social privilege, while crossing
up is political and challenges barriers of social power. For the oppressed, drag offers a way
to temporarily access places of social privilege in order to provide social critiques of them. It
can also be a site of validated self-expression. It may also provide a space for the privileged
to reify minority stereotypes and assert dominance. Because drag is a performance of social
markings of the body (digital and corporeal), it demonstrates that the body is an important
text to continue to use in social and political theorizing.
Third, drag performances by social minorities are not free from reproducing
oppressive stereotypes. Drag often becomes a way to deflect and temporarily disavow
personal oppressions by embodying stereotypes that mock other social groups. Specifically,
although gay men are oppressed by heteronormativity, their misogyny is no more
acceptable than that of straight men and they continue to retain some amount of male
privilege, especially vis--vis women. A woman utilizing camp humor to make fun of a
woman like that not a woman like me operates around the acceptance of subordination
and promotes misogyny; and a lesbian drag king who utilizes humor based on race and class
stereotypes indicates that our society is largely hostile to non-whites and the working class.
Also, performances that are perceived as entertainment should not be written-off as lacking
academic worth. They often operate around humor based on social inequalities and require
further scholarly attention. Explorations of drag expose the vast amount of social hostility in
U.S. culture.
Fourth, drag is now digital and produces cyberdrag. With that change, drag
performances reach larger audiences in innovative ways, yet may reify normative ideas when
in the hands of normative performers and audiences. It also allows people to experience
various crossings of social locations as tourists. Visibility is not always the best way to
ensure more and better representation of minority groups. Also, technology changes the ways

105
we communicate while it also changes the way sex, gender, and sexuality operate vis--vis
the digital body. Real world issues cross over into cyberspaces because they are created by
real people. In this process, real life becomes digitized; virtual reality is not completely
separate from real life.
This thesis has uncovered several areas of further study. Most of all, it demonstrates
that we have reached a time when gender can no longer be bound to the units of masculine
and feminine because there is no consensus regarding their meaning. They also change
significantly when considered alongside race, class, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and
ability, not to mention how they change over time and across cultures. Simply put,
masculinity and femininity cannot be used to signify a series of stable traits; they are unstable
terms. Continuing to ask what gender is at multiple sites of human experiences will expose
its deeply constructed roots. As those illusory layers erode, I also believe gendered
characteristics will be revealed as profoundly patriarchal. Gender studies demonstrate that the
more we uncover, the more gender seems to have less to do with the natural functions of
sex differences and more to do with maintaining white heteropatriarchy.
I suggest the need to separate gender in terms of both aesthetic and psychosocial
issues. We need to explore what gender looks like, but also how those looks regulate social
power and the ways we move in the world. We also need to explore how gender aesthetics
detach from the psychosocial to explore how gender operates on both levels. This area will
help illuminate if aesthetic masculinity can be detached from psychosocial masculinity
enough to be feminist. This may also help the sexed body recenter into these discussions
without reifying normative binaries of gender embodiment. As these are separated, we may
also find new words to describe aesthetic genders that do not carry the same psychological
issues depending on the sex of the person.
Also, we are at odds with how the materiality of sex intersects with the materiality of
gender. Often, queer theories will dissolve the sexed body in these conversations that then do
not address how corporeal sex influences gender. Simultaneously, normative theories center
sex as the determining factor of gender. Often, because queer theories do not address the
sexed body enough to satisfy normative thinkers, those theories lose their ability to
produce real-world changes. The polarization of this conversation complicates finding
solutions to the sex/gender binary. I suggest that we look to a middle ground where sex does

106
not reify normative binaries of gender, yet sex is recognized in the ways it informs gender.
Sex does not have to be dissolved in discussions that seek to move beyond the sex/gender
system.
Gender has no form without the sexed body. Because of this, we need to situate the
body back into these explorations. Gender may be a free-floating artifice yet the materiality
of sex gives shape to the surface upon which the gender artifice rests. For many people
whose bodies do not allow them to signify their desired gender, the body as shaped by sex
characteristics absolutely affect gender. We continue to live in a culture that privileges
subjects who comply with the sex/gender system, so we need to identify how to ease those
limitations and tensions. The sexed body often determines the legibility of gender and
authenticates it.
On a personal note, I do not know one female-bodied person trying to present a
masculine appearance (FTM, butch lesbian, masculine-of-center genderqueer) who has not
expressed frustrations with the ability to signify masculinity. They express many concerns
regarding how their sexed bodies stand in the way of achieving the readability of
masculinity: the inability to find mens pants that fit over hips, the difficulty of breast-biding
while exercising, buying tampons, being called sir until a verbal interaction reveals a
female voice, and the list goes on and on. For people attempting to transcend the
sex/gender binary, sex characteristics often doom the body to the systems regulations.
Suggesting that gender is an artifice that can be equally achieved by any body is merely a
utopic theoretical attempt to cover up the fact that it usually cannot.
One way to address this would be to find ways for various genders to be more
wearable by diverse bodies. Again, social privilege goes unacknowledged by those who have
it; most men have privileged access to aesthetic masculinity in ways that most females do
not. It is time to address how we can reconcile how sex affects gender, yet do so in ways that
yield solutions rather than barriers to those divides. How can we acknowledge the ways sex
characteristics shape access to gender in ways that do not reify normative ways of thinking?
Possible pitfalls to be avoided include: gender essentialism, the exclusion of trans* identities
from gender authenticity, and placing differences of embodiment on a hierarchy that upholds
the sex/gender binary. Additionally, it is important to address how women who began with
female bodies and women who began with male bodies are often faced with different

107
lived experiences; this acknowledgement should not validate only cisgender women, but
rather, highlight the multiple ways womanhood is experienced by cisgender and trans*
women. This expands the narrative of womanhood, while also acknowledging the diversity
of lived experiences within it. Because feminist theories largely incorporate
multidimensional material realities and lived experiences, I find it to be a good way to
approach these topics.
Scholarship often attempts to represent sex, gender, and sexuality as discrete
categories, but it is also important to examine how they remain largely contingent upon each
other. Instead of understanding them as discrete, it is helpful to study why they have become
so connected. For instance, future studies could explore why gender expression seems to be
more diverse among non-heterosexual people. We must also uncover the social systems that
keep people in line and contributing to white, bourgeois heteropatriarchy. For instance, how
lesbianphobia is used to keep women in line and performing hegemonic femininity that
reinforces heteropatriarchy. It is interesting how homophobia is commonly used to enforce
gender normativity, and how often gender non-conformity signals perceived gay and lesbian
identification. Because of this, we need to explore further why people perform gender, why
the reproduction of the sex/gender system is largely coerced in regard to sexuality, and in
what directions gender can extend beyond our current understandings of masculinity and
femininity.
Along these lines, to continue to use the word queer and have it mean anything, it
must be defined when it is used in order to maintain its theoretical coherency. Instead of
labeling any transgression of sex, gender, and/or sexuality queer, it may be more helpful to
explain the specific characteristics of a situation that lead an author to want to use queer.
This may help to uncover the various ways that queer can be used, while also being clear
about what exactly is queer about the subject at hand. To regain coherency, a deployment
of queer should accompany an explanation of what queerness means in that specific
usage. This is a way to allow a broad usage that avoids exclusion but maintains specificity. I
argue that queer should not be used in ways that reify normative social institutions. When
it does, we should arrange for new vocabularies to explain those instances as they arise. The
overgrowth of queer is not a linguistic solution to accurately discuss those issues and it
produces imprecise scholarship, especially in discourses where women are concerned.

108
Additionally, much more work is needed to capture how drag functions across
various cultures and times. This thesis is limited to the West, mostly the U.S., and to the near
past and present. Because of these limited parameters, future work should focus on other
locations of drag as shaped by larger social structures undoubtedly specific to culture and
time. This approach could help explain discourses of sex, gender, and sexuality in relation to
nationalist, transnational, diasporic, global, and post-colonial politics. This work would help
illuminate the social conditions from which drag performances arise globally.
I believe that we can do better in the ways we have come to understand sex and
gender. Because gender is a social construction, new ideas that loosen its oppressive binds
are possible. The variances of gender subvert the power of rigid gender systems. When the
variances of gender are not celebrated, we should ask ourselves why.
Despite the ways drag often reflects social oppressions and melancholic expression, it
also often demonstrates celebration and joy. Drag represents resistance to the rigid roles that
limit human expression; the transcendence of those roles can yield triumphant joyfulness. It
allows people to take internal and personal desires and release them outward to be shared
with others around them. Drag is a defiant act that allows people who feel oppressed by
genders binds to find liberation, even more so as the gender oppressions of real life loom
overhead. It can function as a celebration of the persistence of the human spirit. Despite the
importance of identity upon drag, it may also function as a bridge between groups that draws
them together, rather than dividing them. Drag yields and celebrates new ways of being.
Above all, drag demonstrates that gender is far from being understood, where
unknowingness yields space for interpretation and change. Drag transforms the realities of
sex and gender into sites of malleable artistic expression. Oscar Wilde wrote, It is through
Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through Art, and through Art
only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.306 Drag allows
the non-normative form to manifest as perfection. The intention is not to normalize nonnormative expressions, but rather, to celebration the non-normative form. As an art, the
dimensions of gender are endless and liberation is achievable, if only temporarily. Drag often
306

Cited in Richard Ellman, ed., The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1969), 380.

109
operates on the hope that the temporary utopian form may improve upon the material realities
of our gendered lives.

110

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