Drag is when a gender dresses and acts in an excessive way of the other gender. Drag is usually used for entertainment in terms of singing, dancing, lip syncing, etc. Drag is said to date back to ancient times when men took the stage in women¡¯s clothing like in the time of William Shakespeare¡¯s romantic comedy ¡°As You Like It¡± In which Rosalind disguises herself as Ganymede to woo Orlando.?
The origin of the term ¡°drag¡± is possible to have emerged when someone noticed that dresses and petticoats that male actors wore onstage would ¡°drag¡± on the floor. Another possibility seems to be an acronym for the dragging of an actor who dresses in a feminine way.
The New York Harlem neighbourhood is thought by many to be the possible birthplace of the drag balls in the 1860s. During this, Black queer and trans people wore dresses and wigs (mostly the male population) in a safe and creative environment.
Drag is very popular in the recent days. A very big contributor for this seems to be RuPaul who took things further with his reality show ¡°RuPaul¡¯s Drag Race¡± which became an award-winning program making drag explode in popularity.?
Drag performers base their performance of gender fluidity. Gender fluidity is the freedom to be who you want to be without having to conform to the traditional gender roles of ¡°male¡± and ¡°female¡±.
Drag is wrongly assumed by many to be sexual by many people. The people who are anti-drag used nudity to justify their arguments as to why drag should not be allowed. But, drag performers wear more and not less because their objective is to be excessive while expressing the other gender. They may wear fake breasts and show their cleavages more to appear more feminine but they do not dress erotically. Drag is often confused with burlesque in which the performers are dressed erotically in their performances.?
Drag is a form of performance art which is not accepted by many of the traditional families. The anti-drag people accuse the drag performers of negatively influencing their children and grooming them into believing that what drag performers are doing is normal.?
Even though drag performers support the LGBTQ community, the gay men in US have expressed their prejudice against for appearing too gay and for giving the homosexuals a bad name historically. The drag queens are credited for being front-line activists in support of the LGBTQ community.?
Drag performers perform in nightclubs, and theatre shows. Recently, anti-drag performers have been very against the event of the drag story hours and other drag events. The idea of the drag story time is to help the children to study more books through these events. The anti-drag people protest against this saying that they groom children and somehow influence their sexual orientation and gender identity.
Recently more countries are accepting towards the drag culture and they are gaining more popularity through online platforms and through the drag races that happen. Many people are still not very supportive of this as they think that it goes against their religion which is what is seen as the most important by the older generations.