That’s no lady

If, in the 1990s, “drag” was shorthand for a guy in bad make-up singing I Will Survive to a half-empty gay bar, now it has become a mainstream obsession. And naturally, darling, it’s fabulous. The stripper heels, the candyfloss hair, the bitch fights, RuPaul pouting “Don’t f*** it up” to contestants lip-synching for their lives, while dishing out beauty advice (hairspray on your face keeps make-up in place). Drag — what’s not to love? Unless you’re a feminist like me, perhaps.

Because, I admit, as a woman, I’m never quite sure where drag sits with me. Is it just a laugh? An excuse to go clubbing with my gay best friends dressed like Beyoncé? Or is it actually laughing at women?

Perhaps the critics who claim drag is a sexist version of blackface are onto something. Or is drag so subversive that it works, not against women, but on their side, to undermine gender stereotypes and prove Judith Butler — who says gender is performance — right? What is most interesting about the new drag scene emerging in Britain is that it’s answering those questions itself.

“In the past six months, it’s been, BOOM! Drag is so hot,” growls Harsh, looking ghetto-fabulous in a side-swept blonde wig, wet-look black jumpsuit and chunky bling. When Harsh, aka Jay Clarke, isn’t producing tracks for Beyoncé, she hosts a club night, Room Service, in London and New York where she DJs, looking like the love child of Iggy Azalea and Dolly Parton.

Conchita on the catwalk for Gaultier (Dominique Charriau)

When I first knew Harsh, in the early Noughties, she was stumbling around Soho with Kate Moss, after getting into drag while studying fashion at Central Saint Martins. Now she has become the grande dame in a new generation of queens reinventing the British scene: creating a nouveau drag distinct from the glitzy perfection on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Sink the Pink has largely been responsible for this, dragging dress-up onto the dancefloor with its gaudily outrageous club nights: a maelstrom of bad wigs, charity-shop clothes, glitter balls and polysexual perversion (in the best possible way), attracting a crowd unwilling to be defined, and straddling the gay/straight club divide.

“In America, they are more about drag in its traditional sense,” says Glynfamous, who started Sink the Pink with his BFF, Amy Zing. “There are rules, a drag tradition, ‘Have you done your eyebrows the right way?’, and so on. We are the opposite of that. RuPaul’s Drag Race is gentrifying drag. It’s making it formulaic, and that’s the opposite of all the things I like about dressing up.” What Sink the Pink has done is inspire a new drag scene in which the audience are encouraged to transform themselves in any way they choose. “One day you could come as a perfectly dressed-up drag queen and the next naked with a bolt through your nose. We give people a place where we don’t just say this is ‘fine’, because I hate that word, but this is fabulous.”

The new scene masterfully taps into drag’s roots. The documentary Paris Is Burning chronicles how drag exploded in underground 1980s New York, where predominantly black and Latino boys in the Bronx created a culture of “balls”. Here, broke kids enamoured of affluent white lifestyles would come together and dress up to emulate their fantasies. Back then, drag as we know it (that is, men dressed as women) was just one category among many in competitive dressing-up competitions in which contestants would walk the runway in classes such as “executive realness” (putting on suits to look like City boys), schoolgirl style and vogue (which Madonna later stole).

Jodie Harsh (Matrix Studios)

The ethos behind balls was fantasy. And escapism. For one night, these kids could forget the racism and economic deprivation constraining them and enjoy — through imitation — their dream existence.

For Harsh, in a similar way, drag provides a sequins-clad fantasy. “It was a bleak life and drag was their escape,” she says. “Now, my position is different to theirs: I’m in a studio producing for Beyoncé, not doing drag to forget about my troubles. But it’s still the same sense of escaping normality.”

Amy Zing thinks the rise of Sink the Pink goes hand-in-hand with the recession. “It came out of club kids and DIY culture, when everyone was, like, ‘I’ve only got £5 to get into a club.’ ”

“The recession was a really dark time, a worrying time,” Glynfamous says. “People want pure escapism when they go out, to get as far away from our daily lives as you can get. In its attitude, drag is a political statement,” he adds. “You’re seeing people living to the extremity of their being, and that’s very political.”

It’s interesting that the rise of nu-drag comes hot on the high heels of a feminist spring (think the Everyday Sexism Project, No More Page 3, Vagenda and Caitlin Moran). For Harsh, that’s no surprise. She sees drag as an extension of feminism, in that it’s a performative discussion of what gender means.

Grand dames: Jonbenet Blonde and Glynfamous

“Drag is a play on the performance of femininity — or masculinity if you’re a drag king — and an exaggeration of it,” she says. “You certainly don’t see me and think, ‘That’s a girl.’ I don’t want to pass as a woman. I don’t change my voice. I don’t wear fake boobs. I’m not kidding anyone. The illusion is in creating an exaggeration and a performance of what society perceives as feminine.”

As such, drag deliberately draws attention to, and riffs on, the gap between biology and socially constructed gender roles. It’s an idea of performance that divas now openly play with: Beyoncé as Sasha Fierce, Stefani Germanotta as Lady Gaga, Katie Price as Jordan.

“Nu-drag and feminism are the same thing,” Zing says. “They’re both about having the freedom to be who you want to be. It’s a celebration of humanity and equality. It’s not about gender — we’re beyond that.”

“I’m a total feminist,” Glynfamous insists. He believes there is a line between performances exploring gender boundaries and those pointlessly mocking women, something Sink the Pink strives to get right. “A good performance encourages debate,” he says.

At a recent Sink the Pink party, one drag queen’s act involved pulling a tampon out of her bleeding “vagina”. Glynfamous thinks it crossed the line. “A lot of girls were offended. It had shock value, but it wasn’t intelligent offensiveness.” He contrasts another STP party where Lucy Fizz, a trans girl, arrived in a dress made out of tampons — a comment on her transition into a woman.

In an age obsessed with image, airbrushing and perfection, nu-drag revels in its own artifice, breaking it down. But for Zing, “before any gender issues, whatever journey it takes you on, the first factor is fun”.

Drag debate

Old
Lacquered beehive wigs held up by scaffolding
Pristine padded bras sprayed with Chanel No 5
Ballroom to Barbra Streisand
Titty le Camp
The old joanna
Lip-synching to Madonna’s Vogue
Soho showguurl
White-wine spritzer with a slice of lemon
Being drawn by Freud
Bob Mackie knockoffs
Cabaret to The Court of King Caractacus

New
Full glitter beards
Jockstraps covered in disco dirt
Breakdancing to Brooke Candy
Trish Fingers
Beatbox
An interpretive dance to a remix of The Little Mermaid
East End exhibitionist
Cans of Red Stripe with a straw
Being shot by Bailey
Pound-shop couture
Naked stage-diving