Drag Queen - Societal Reception

Societal Reception

Drag has come to be a celebrated aspect of modern gay life. Many gay bars and clubs around the world hold drag shows as special parties. Several "International Drag Day" holidays have been started over the years to promote the shows. Typically, in the U.S. drag is celebrated in early March. This year, "Drag Day" falls on March 6.

On the Logo television network, its most successful program is a drag competition, RuPaul's Drag Race. However, its winners and contestants have yet to receive the same praise as mainstream reality show contestants.

However, within the larger lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) communities drag queens are sometimes criticized for their participation in pride parades and other public events, believing that this projects a limited and harmful image of gay people and impedes a broader social acceptance. In more recent years drag queens have been prominently featured at these same events. A common criticism of drag queens is that they promote harmful stereotypes of women, comparable to blackface portrayal of African-Americans by white performers that was popular in the early 20th century.

Drag queens are sometimes criticized by members of the transgender community — especially, but not exclusively, by many trans women — because of fears that they themselves may be stereotyped as drag queens. Canadian transgender activist Star Maris wrote a song entitled "I'm Not A Fucking Drag Queen" which expresses this viewpoint. The song was featured in the film Better Than Chocolate, performed by a male-to-female transsexual on stage at a gay club. The transsexual character, played by Peter Outerbridge, struggles throughout the movie to fit in with cisgender (non-transgender) women, and partially performs the song as an act of cathartic defiance and self-empowerment. Other transwomen reject those fears in the broader context that drag queens, many of whom are gender-variant and sexuality minorities, are more of an ally than a threat.