Drag Queen - Genres

Genres

• High camp drag queens employ a drag aesthetic based on clown-like values like exaggeration, satire, and ribaldry. Pandora Boxx, Divine, Miss Understood, MiMi Imfurst, Peaches Christ, Hedda Lettuce and Jolene Sugarbaker can be considered examples of camp queens.

• Some drag queens exaggerate in the dimension of elegance and fashion, employing elaborate jewelry and gowns. The Lady Chablis, who can be seen in the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is an example of this type of performer. Many of these drag queens impersonate specific actresses and pop divas such as Britney Spears, Cher, Bette Midler, Madonna, Gilla, Charo, Connie Francis, Donna Summer, Whitney Houston, Céline Dion, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Patti LaBelle, Shirley Bassey, Janet Jackson, Spice Girls, Lady Gaga and others, emulating their high-fashion costuming and jewelry. Drag artist John Epperson has used the persona Lypsinka as a caricature of Joan Crawford, including in his play The Passion of the Crawford.

• Some drag queens primarily perform in pageants, hence the term pageant queen. Pageant queens gear their act toward winning titles and prizes in various contests and pageant systems. Some of these have grand prizes that rival those of pageants such as Miss America; see drag pageantry. These drag queens can be known nationally and many work professionally year-round producing and hosting shows that specialize in drag and celebrity illusionists.

• Post-modernist drag queens; an example would be The Divine David, now appearing as David Hoyle, who regularly performed in London during the 1990s in clubs such as Duckie, in South London. He used an extreme form of presentation, with make-up that was applied roughly and then smeared across his face. His act was designed to make the audience feel extremely uncomfortable about any preconceived ideas of acceptable subject matter for a drag queen to tackle. One show included cutting up a pig's head and throwing the pieces into the audience. As such, the act bore close similarities to performance art of the 1970s. Vaginal Davis, in Los Angeles, has performed as a drag queen for many years; her genderfuck performances, often mixing male and female signifiers (also called "sloppy drag"), and her many appearances in performance art venues since the 1980s attest to her status as a performance artist. Like RuPaul, Davis is indifferent to whether addressed as "he" or "she."