Drag Kings and Queens
Further information: Drag King, Drag queen, and Faux queenIn gay slang, a "queen" is an effeminate gay man, or a gay man with a specializied quality (e.g. "rice queen," for a non-Asian gay man who prefers Asian men; "snow queen" for a non-caucasian man who likes caucasian men; and "bean queen," for a gay man who prefers Hispanic men). Along with "drag," the term "drag queen" has entered the general lexicon.
Drag queens (first use in print, 1941) are stereotypically viewed to be gay men that dress in drag, either as part of a performance or for personal fulfillment. Though a good portion who wear women's clothing are straight men, the term drag queen distinguishes them from transvestites, transsexuals or transgender people. Doing drag here often includes wearing dramatically heavy makeup, wigs and prosthetic devices as part of the costume. Females are called drag kings; however, drag king also has a much wider range of meanings. It is currently most often used to describe entertainment (singing or lip-synching) in which there is no necessarily firm correlation between a performer's deliberately macho onstage persona and offstage gender identity or sexual orientation, just as biological males who do female drag for the stage may or may not identify as being either gay or female in personal identity. A faux queen is usually a woman doing traditional female drag in the same spirit as men have done.
Read more about this topic: Drag (clothing)
Famous quotes containing the words drag, kings and/or queens:
“Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (17491832)
“Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war?”
—Bible: Hebrew, 2 Kings 18:20.
“The queers of the sixties, like those since, have connived with their repression under a veneer of respectability. Good mannered city queens in suits and pinstripes, so busy establishing themselves, were useless at changing anything.”
—Derek Jarman (b. 1942)