Drag and Popularity

With the drag show happening this week and myself being a participant, I spent a lot of time thinking about the world of drag. With shows such as “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and drag queens being the main source of media attention in the drag world, I find drag, although successfully pushing the margins of male femininity and sexuality, it is still a male-dominated industry. In all of the drag shows I’ve attended, I have only ever seen one drag king perform. When I was searching for inspiration for my drag king character, it was very difficult to even find drag king performances and characters as it’s not as normalized as drag queens. Being the sole drag king performing at this year’s drag show, it is both disheartening and a little sad (and also nerve-wrecking) that no one really portrays a drag king as often as a queen. While it most likely is easier to portray an exuberant, over-the-top queen in comparison to a masculine king, I still feel the imbalance is 90:10.