ADDENDUM: RU PAUL’S DRAG RACE
The topic of drag came up while I was reading Germain Greer’s The Female Eunuch. I have a lot of thoughts about the popular television show, Ru Paul’s Drag Race, and wanted to write them down. It isn’t a book, and this isn’t a book review. But the topic seems relevant to my broader feminist project. So here’s what I think of Ru Paul and his “girls”.
Radical feminists have at times criticised drag harshly (and not without reason). But many people including liberal feminists seem to love drag, and view it as positively subversive, rebellious, and progressive. The television show Ru Paul’s Drag Race is worth discussing because it has become so popular, and because it is generally seen as a force for good due to the focus on gay acceptance and pride, yet its effect on women is never discussed. The show is a drag competition, and it is viewable on the popular streaming platform, Netflix. It has quite the following, and is credited with bringing drag to a mainstream audience. The contestants are drag queens—gay men who impersonate women with a great deal of clothing, prosthetics, wigs and makeup. Paradoxically, they often say this product-intensive imitation allows them to be authentically themselves.
Note well: this isn’t a criticism of people who watch the show or enjoy it (clearly, I watched several seasons). Nor is it a commentary on how entertaining or skillful the show is, or on any of its other qualities. This is solely my analysis of whether drag, as done on Ru Paul’s Drag Race, is progressive, or sexist, or a little of both.
The contestants, with very few exceptions, make frequent and unembarrassed use of misogynistic language. They constantly refer to each other as bitches, but also describe themselves as whores, hoes, and sluts, and use the term “fishy” (referring to the alleged smell of women’s genitalia) to compliment drag queens who look very feminine. The acronym “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent” (CUNT) is a favourite term, coined by the creator and main judge of the show, Ru Paul. There is exactly zero reflection on the significance of men using these misogynistic slurs. Perhaps they believe, as some liberal feminists do, that we can “reclaim” such slurs and make them terms of empowerment. But I don’t see the queens taking the same approach to slurs against any other socially disadvantaged group. Why does the “reclaiming” strategy seem to apply mostly to women’s issues? In any case, even those in favour of reclaiming slurs would say it’s not allowed unless you’re a member of the relevant subordinate group. It’s not progressive when men use misogynistic insults for women, regardless of whether those men are straight or gay.
Another harmful aspect of the show is the negative stereotyping of women and girls. The drag queens flippantly depict women as nymphomaniacal prostitutes, parasitic trophy wives, air-headed bimbos, sexy schoolgirls, etc. When non-glamourous or non-sexualised women are portrayed it is almost exclusively for comedic effect. For example, I have seen the contestants play abrasive butch lesbians, nagging middle aged wives, and older women desperately holding on to their fading beauty with botox and plastic surgery. It’s rare for any of these stereotypes to be presented in a way that could prompt critical reflection on our society’s valuation of women, and the contestants never mention any thoughts about what these stereotypes do to women and girls. They don’t think about how the myth of the eager prostitute helps conceal the fact that the vast majority of prostituted women are financially or otherwise coerced, and that what men do to them is exploitative and traumatic, not sexy and fun. They don’t think about what happens to schoolgirls (or indeed any women) when they are regularly portrayed as hypersexualised objects for male consumption. It’s not critical or subversive for men to reproduce sexist stereotypes about women, and it doesn’t somehow become progressive when gay men do it. I’ve heard it argued that such depictions are ironic or critical, but I see no evidence of this. A critical use of stereotypes would be one that prompts the viewer to think about where the stereotype comes from and whom it serves. There would have to be a level of serious engagement underneath the comedy, and there isn’t.
As well as the stereotypes, the show is strongly focused on sexualisation and sexual objectification. The contestants add prosthetic female body parts—such as hips and breasts—and present themselves in a hypersexualised manner for the judges and audience. For example, they once held a “wet t-shirt contest” in which they swung, squeezed, jiggled and slapped their massive fake breasts and poured water over themselves while making orgasmic expressions, for a laughing male audience. One queen was noted for frequently squeezing his fake breast while making a honking noise. (Charming! So respectful of the female form!) There is nothing progressive or liberating about this. It may be fun for men to visit the realm of sexual objectification voluntarily and temporarily, but it is a terrible place for women to live. Women cannot set down the burden of sexual objectification and return to being (hu)man at the end of the day, as the drag queens do. Men continue objectifying us even if we don’t endorse the standards and stereotypes: Worse, the cultural objectification of women undoubtedly has a disinhibitory effect on straight men, making sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour more cognitively and emotionally available to them. It’s not critical or progressive when gay men reinforce the idea that women are sex objects for the consumption of straight men.
A last offensive feature of the show is the episodes (several, that I saw) in which contestants imitated pregnant women, or the very act of giving birth. One man made a grotesque facial expression, squatted, and dropped a baby doll covered in red paint from under his skirt. It was crass and ugly, clearly meant to draw laughs rather than express awe for women’s power to create human life, or respect for the considerable sacrifices they make in order to do so. In my view, most of the drag queens are thoughtlessly, ruthlessly mining female experience to extract material for sexual titillation or comedic effect. Although all artists and comedians collect material from real life, what’s hurtful about Ru Paul’s drag queens is their relentless conversion of women’s experiences into stereotypes, mockery and sexual objectification. There is very little respect for women. The men sometimes express love for their mothers (if they are supportive of their drag practice) or admiration for female celebrities (usually in fashion, music, film, etc.). But there’s hardly any serious or respectful reflection on women’s experiences generally, and absolutely zero consideration of how women are impacted by the stereotypes and and constant sexualisation that the drag queens rely on for their fun.
It has been said that drag can undermine patriarchal values by subverting them. If viewed critically, the drag queens demonstrate (perhaps unwittingly) that femininity, beauty and glamour are consumerist and artificial. But I do not think the show is ironic or that its viewers are critical, as I explained above. The show might slightly broaden men’s options for self expression—it is not totally unimaginable these days to see a man with nail polish or a skirt. But the effect on women’s beauty standards has been more thorough. For example, contouring—the use of light and dark makeup to create the illusion of a different facial structure—is now very common for women, though it used to be reserved for drag queens. And the body types created by the prosthetics and corseting seem to be influencing women, as well. One distressing example was guest judge Nicole Richie (a celebrity noted for her alarming thinness) fawning over the body of super-model-shaped contestant Naomi Smalls. He was very tall (6’5”) and very thin, with long, slender legs, visible ribs and no hips or breasts. Richie said he had her “ideal chest”. She saw Smalls’s male body as inspiration for herself, not as a standard for men. In his makeup and dress, he was interpreted as an example of female beauty, not male beauty. (I fear that girls watching the show could learn that the ideal figure for a woman is that of a male giraffe.)
I believe women watching the show apply the depicted beauty standards to themselves, not to their boyfriends. I believe men watching the show will interpret the stereotypes and beauty standards as applying to women, not men. Drag queens enforce standards of womanhood, not manhood, perhaps because they create a visually convincing illusion of femaleness, and because they are given special dispensation by society to be temporarily considered as women. The contestants are called “gentlemen” while out of costume, but “ladies”, “women” and “girls” when in costume. It’s clear that these men define “women” as their own invention, a role they can step into and out of at will. They don’t even have a word for female people who exist independently of their roleplaying.
Drag could potentially be subversive, if the men were to appear in glamorous dress as themselves, as men, but such rebellion is comparatively rare on the show. It has happened a few times, not coincidentally from the men whose drag was less sexualised and more creatively fashionable, but it was discouraged by at least one main judge, who said she didn’t want to see “boy drag”.
I think Ru Paul’s Drag Race is very unnecessarily misogynistic. The constant slurs would be completely unacceptable on any other television show, but I believe that viewers suspend critical judgement because of their desire to be supportive and accepting of gay men (as we should be). No one wants to criticise a poor young man who was bullied for his femininity and homosexuality as a boy, and who tearfully confesses to the cameras that only drag allows him to truly be himself, express himself, find himself, and finally be authentic. Of course, an activity or a costume is not an identity or a self. I suppose that what the contestants really mean when they say such things is that they really, really enjoy roleplaying, performance and dressing up, that it’s their favourite activity, and that it’s painful and distressing to be criticised for it. (Alas, criticising misogynistic practices is what allows me to find myself, express myself and be authentic. I’m just trying to live my best life here, you know?)
Men dressing up as women don’t automatically subvert gender norms. In fact they’re more like to reinforce them, especially when they make efforts to be perceived as female while performing femininity. In addition, there’s a fundamental difference between how standards of femininity affect women and how they affect men. When women do femininity, they are attempting to meet standards that are harmful and limiting, that serve men’s interests and not their own. There is always an element of coercion to these standards, because women are rewarded for conformity, and punished for non-conformity. But when drag queens or transvestites do femininity, they are slipping into the same socially created roles voluntarily and temporarily, while exaggerating them for entertainment and sexual titillation (either their own, or the audience’s). We need to create cultural space for women to be considered fully human, to be admired for their achievements and characters, and to be considered worthy without an effortful, exacting performance of beauty, femininity, sexual availability and objecthood. Drag as performed on Ru Paul’s Drag Race does the opposite—it reinforces the association between women and femininity, and hammers home the message that womanhood is all about glamour, beauty and sexual objectification, all the time, to the max, with no reprieve—unless the queens are impersonating an old or ugly woman for comedic effect as a lesson on what not to be. (Or unless it’s one of the more rare and rebellious queens who appears in creative “boy drag”.) The show as a whole is not subversive. It is a celebration of sexist stereotypes and the sexual objectification of women. In depicting the most exaggerated stereotypes for the sake of erotic and comedic material, Ru Paul’s drag queens help tighten the net of cultural pressures around women and girls. The mere fact that the performance is done by gay men does not reduce the misogyny one iota—it merely engages our empathy for the contestants so that we are reluctant to criticise their behaviour.