As A Drag Artist is it Important For Your audience to Accept and Understand Who You Are and What You Stand For…
Abstract: Drag has been popular in city nightclubs, especially in the LGBT community for decades. These past few years has been very important for this community, becoming main stream on social media. This is the acceptance this community has been seeking for. Does this group that was oppressed finally become glorified by its audience, peers and society?
Drag teaches us to be true to ourselves and accept others for who they are. Drag shows are about beauty and love not hate or “freaks.” If there were all-ages drag shows and more parents that took their children to these shows, children would grow up more accepting and more loving. Drag teaches one to love oneself and others, which is a message that needs to be passed from one generation to another. We owe it to the younger generation to pass that message on.
Terms or phrases used to refer to Drag artist, “chicks with dicks” or “Sluts with nuts” some may present themselves as artist in a dress and some may say they are a men in a dress. Drag is very versatile and is most important to love an accept themselves before caring about the thoughts of others. it is important to point out that not all men who dress as women are drag queens. Other categories include transvestites or cross-dressers, generally straight men who wear women’s clothing for erotic reasons; preoperative male-to-female transsexuals; and transgendered people who display and embrace a gender identity at odds with their biological sex. Queer theory’s views gender as a performative act. To expand many peoples understanding of drag as it is actually practiced by examining drag queens’ self-conceptions with respect to gender and sexuality and by showing how these are shaped by and, in turn, shape their collective identities as drag performers.
Drag also developed out of the use of flamboyant dressing as masquerader disguise that allowed the drag queens to flaunt femininity and embrace gender fluidity by performing a separate identity that they could put on and take off. Now that we can understand drag and the queens and how people see, call it and how the queens perceive themselves I can go more into what the audience think about the drag performances. Do they accept this culture, the community by coming and supporting the shows or is this a way of judgment?
THE PERFORMANCE AND ITS AFFECTS ON THE AUDIENCE
Being a drag performer can be stepping out of that person’s comfort zone and taking a chance at something new. It also may be new to people in the audience causing many different reactions. For whatever reason people may come to these drag shows whether it’s to see the performer or simply for entertainment or a friend invited them, there are many thought going through everyone’s head.
Gender is constituted through interaction, and it is through this interaction that gender is produced as a social achievement and is then seen as natural or essential. How each audience member experiences gender and sexuality will affect the way the performer presents their gender and to what extreme they must go to breach the audience. The audience can greatly affect the performer and his or her gender representation. Drag has an extensive history within the LGBTQIA communities, who may has be a part of the audience and have enhanced expressions of queer identity and queer culture not only for LGBTQIA audiences but for transgendered audiences as well. Audience members often come to be entertained and have their minds broadened in that one must be open-minded to enjoy the artistic expressions of the show. Audience members and performers have both reported their belief that drag can challenge the way people view gender and sexuality in varying ways. It is possible that audience members may be less comfortable with seeing women taking on masculine roles therefore, the audience may be more breached by a king than a queen.
Many audience members love interacting with the performers, while others find it demeaning. The public sexuality of the performances has an effect on the audience in that many will engage in behavior that they would not ordinarily do, such as flirting with the performers and other members of the audience. Even heterosexual desire can be heightened by the sexual nature of the performances. In conclusion like any group of individuals, the performers have formed both their own understandings and as a community an understanding that not everyone will accept what that can not understand or know about. Many performers understand themselves as subversive for audience members and, by extension, against main stream society which is important when asking for other to accept you. At times they are even subversive to themselves, often finding new understandings of themselves and their gender identity through performing.
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https://www.them.us/story/drag-queen-story-timehttps://www.aclu.org
Your blog post was really interesting. On a visual note, I love the different colors of text that are similar to the rainbow PRIDE flag. I agree with earlier comments about how your suggested all age shows and made proposals for how to increase the acceptance of drag. It feels like a call to action rather than a report and I liked that tone. Your choice to look at the way drag queens, the community, and the audience view drag queens was a great choice to reveal the layers and dynamics of drag acceptance.
This blog overall was good. I appreciate the fact that you bring more exposure to all ages, genders, and identities will allow drag to be further recognized and understood by people outside the drag and LGBTQIA community. I believe like any other social or political reform (e.g. race, women, LGBTQIA), drag artists can be equal and accepted in society through education that helps (majority hetersexual) people to understand why people do drag and what is the point of it “beyond dressing like a woman or man” and so forth.
I really enjoyed your post! I think you touched base really well one your topic and how drag is seen by the public. Drags influence in society is really empowering and im glad you explored and shared your topic! I agree that drag shows have this power to break people out of their shells a little bit