I love drag, always have. Long before “RuPaul’s Drag Race” became a cultural phenomenon, I was going to my local drag bar and enjoying the artistry and entertainment of it all. The art of drag isn’t simply a man using makeup to make himself look like a woman.
Being a drag queen isn’t a one-size-fits-all depiction of femininity. Not all women are done up, dipped in glitter and glammed up 24/7. All drag queens, whether “pageant” or “quirky,” on some level, challenge the conventional notion of gender and feminine beauty. I’ve spent the last few years reading, watching and talking to drag queens and learning about how it’s so much more than “painting.” Drag queens really are changing the way we look at society’s beauty standards.
If you’re unfamiliar with the drag world, some of this might sound foreign. I’ll do my best to break down all the industry and cultural terms. Even though we’ve come a long way in our archaic beauty standards for women, we still have a long way to go. Heck, I literally just wrote a post about how I had to force myself to feel comfortable enough to not wear makeup for a month! But while we were still mastering the “no-makeup makeup” look, drag queens were reinventing the definition of “beauty.”
Drag queens have revolutionized their beauty routines by making themselves outrageously glamorous and over the top. While we have been taught that makeup is a tool to hide imperfections, drag queens use it to enhance the theatrical element of their appearance. It’s rare you look at a drag queen and think “oh my, look at that beautiful young woman.” Why? Because drag queens aren’t held to our conventional idea of beauty. They don’t want to look like a Victoria’s Secret supermodel. They want to be an artist.
Drag queens are using their artistry to expose the unrealistic foundation of the picture-perfect image women are taught to project. Make sure you put a filter on your photo. A little FaceTune will get rid of those lines around your eyes. How many steps do we as women go through before we feel comfortable sharing our “true self” with the world? We do these things out of fear of judgement. It’s one thing if you truly love makeup and products, but it’s another if you’re feeling pressured by an economic beauty industry that’s looking to make a quick buck off your insecurities.
Thorgy Thor, Latrice Royale + Willam
One of my favorite things about the drag world is that size doesn’t matter. There’s no such thing as the “perfect” drag body. You have queens who pad and stuff to get an hourglass shape, and queens that embrace the “boy” aesthetic by bringing a little androgeny to their look. Plus-size queens? The bigger, the better. In our modern society, plus-size women aren’t considered as “marketable” as thin women. That’s a whole other topic for another day, but in the drag world, queens come in all shapes and sizes and their beauty is never questioned based on their size.
Drag queens celebrate all women. What makes them so stunningly beautiful is their confidence. No matter what size, style or age, you’ll be hard pressed to find a drag queen who isn’t swanning around, flipping her hair and lapping up every compliment thrown her way. Can you imagine being around women who did that? We’d call her vain and conceited.
But in drag, beauty comes from the persona you choose to display. You can be whoever you want to be, and make yourself look however you want to look without fear of judgement. Drag is intuitively body positive. They are taking social norms like “you have to have long hair to be feminine” and giving them the middle finger.
We grow up with this idea that we’re only as good as the people who want us since we’re a sexually driven community. Drag queens are teaching us that beauty is an imaginary standard that we have been brainwashed to idolize. They’re disinterested in the box that we live in as a society. The drag community is much more drawn to unique traits than the standard conventional idea of beauty, and most importantly, more fascinated with the human brain and its inner workings than the face and body attached to it.
You might also enjoy: I Went A Month Without Makeup And Here’s What Happened and Pretty Tattoos And The Artists Who Created Them
