Drag queen
[8] The term female impersonation refers to a type of theatrical performance where a man dresses in women's clothing for the sole purpose of entertaining an audience.
[12] In the twentieth century some gender impersonators, both female and male, in the United States became highly successful performing artists in non-LGBTQ nightclubs and theaters.
Some of the performers were in fact cisgender heterosexual men and women, but others were closeted LGBTQI individuals due to the politics and social environment of the period.
The need to hide and dissociate from queer identity was prevalent among gender impersonators working in non-LGBTQ nightclubs before heteronormative audiences as late as the 1970s.
[15] The second original meaning of drag queen was applied to men who chose to wear women's clothing on the streets, an act which was at that time illegal in New York City.
[16][17] Drag queens were further described as having an attitude of superiority, and commonly courted by heterosexual men who would "not ordinarily participate in homosexual relationships".
Drag kings are women who assume a masculine aesthetic, but this is not always the case, because there are also biokings, bioqueens, and female queens, which are people who perform their own biological sex through a heightened or exaggerated gender presentation.
[41][citation needed] In 1973 the first Canadian play about and starring a drag queen, Hosanna by Michel Tremblay, was performed at Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montreal.
In September 2018, the Supreme Court of India ruled that the application of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to consensual homosexual sex between adults was unconstitutional, "irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary".
The hotel chain of Lalit Groups spaced a franchise of clubs where drag performances are hosted in major cities of India such as Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore.
[59] Drag culture has existed in Lebanon for several decades but gained popularity with the astronomical rise of Bassem Feghali, who came to prominence in the 1990s, becoming a household name for his impersonation of Lebanese female singers.
[67] After homosexual acts were decriminalized in Thailand in 1956, gay clubs and other queer spaces began opening which lead to the first cabaret.
[83] In 1896, Swann was convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail on the false charge of "keeping a disorderly house" (a euphemism for running a brothel).
[84] People went to these nightclubs to play with the boundaries of gender and sexuality and it became a place for the LGBT community, especially gay men, to feel accepted.
The riots are widely considered to be the catalyst for the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.
[94][95] During the summer of 1976, a restaurant in Fire Island Pines, New York, denied entry to a visitor in drag named Terry Warren.
When Warren's friends in Cherry Grove heard what had happened, they dressed up in drag, and, on 4 July 1976, sailed to the Pines by water taxi.
[96] In 1961, drag queen José Sarria ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States.
[97][98] In 1991, drag queen Terence Alan Smith, as Joan Jett Blakk, ran against Richard M. Daley for the office of mayor of Chicago, Illinois.
[121] In 2020 the first West End play to feature an all drag cast, Death Drop, launched at the Garrick Theatre in London.
The show ran for a number of weeks in November and December 2020 before being closed due to a COVID lockdown in London.
Death Drop received 5-star reviews from many publications including Gay Times[122] and Attitude magazine[123] and was widely celebrated for breaking new ground in theatrical drag performance.
[124][125][126] While some male music celebrities wear exaggerated feminine clothing as part of their show, they are not necessarily drag queens.
In one famous sketch, Malone as Frum moderated a debate between Andy Jones as a gay teacher who had been fired from his job for testing HIV-positive and Sexton as Clarabelle Otterhead, the president of an anti-gay lobby group called Citizens Outraged by Weird Sex (or COWS).
[139] In 2018, Celebrity Big Brother featured Queen Shane Jenek (drag name Courtney Act) as one of its contestants, placing first in the season with 49.43% of the public vote.
[140][citation needed] Also in 2018, So You Think You Can Dance featured Jay Jackson (drag name Laganja Estranja) as one of its contestants.
[146] On 15 January 2020, TLC announced that it had given a full season run to Dragnificent!, a new show to be based on the Drag Me Down the Aisle special.
"[155] West feels the art form is "an opportunity for children to get creative and think outside the boxes us silly adults have crafted for them.
"[155] Marti Gould Cummings said something similar when a video of them performing "Baby Shark" at a drag brunch event went viral.
[173][174][175] RuPaul received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the television industry on 16 March 2018, making him the first drag queen to be given such an award.
