Men performing as women: Explorations in the world of female impersonators

“She Is Not Acting, She Is”

“…The show relies on drag's self-conscious positioning as an art form-traditionally involving men dressing up as women-which contests the fixity of identity through the appropriation or subversion of gender/sexual norms by way of cross-dressing, transvestitism, or female impersonation. While many scholars rightly observed that drag too has the ability to reproduce traditional understandings of "men's" and "women's" essential natures (Jill Dolan 1985;Marilyn Frye 1983;Steven Schacht 1998;Richard Tewksbury 1993), other scholars have noted that it can simultaneously replicate and disrupt sexual stereotypes (Judith Halberstam 1998;José Esteban Muñ oz 1999;Leila Rupp & Verta Taylor 2003;Eve Shapiro 2007;Verta Taylor, Leila Rupp, & Joshua Gamson 2004).…”

Four renditions of doing female drag: Feminine appearing conceptual variations of a masculine theme

“…I also believe part of this disparity, especially concerning more recent studies, is the result of me assuming a contextual insider role in many drag settings. The drag queens I know strongly resist any notion that their activity is deviant (consistent with Tewksbury, 1993), nor are they treated as stigmatized individuals in the various venues they perform.…”

“…As the transgendered directly applies to drag queens, such individuals are not only often framed as subversive agents of gender, but perhaps because of this, they are also frequently presented as being stigmatized and peripheral in the both the larger cultural milieu and their own communities (Tewksbury, 1993(Tewksbury, , 1994Baker, 1994;Ekins & King, 1996;Perkins, 1996). Esther Newton's (1979) Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America, the only other ethnographic account of drag queens that I am aware of, is very representative of the approach of viewing drag queens as stigmatized outsiders.…”

“…Unlike the female impersonators interviewed by Tewksbury (1993Tewksbury ( , 1994, who rejected the label of "drag queens," in almost every drag context I have been involved, participants have used these terms interchangeably, as I do in this chapter. Even in the setting of the Baton (to be discussed shortly) where on stage they call themselves "female illusionists," in informal discussions I have had with various performers, they have also frequently referred to themselves as "queens" and "drag queens."…”

Fantastical body narratives : cosplay, performance, and gender diversity.

“…So on one hand, both drag and cosplay seem to manifest subversive potentials because the performance readily depicts ways in which gender would not be seen in the everyday (Butler 1990(Butler , 1993Lorber, 1994;Munoz, 1999;Rupp, Taylor & Shapiro 2010). Yet on the other hand, these performances are also not completely subversive because their gender displays rely on traditional and institutionalized forms of heteronormative gender norms (Gagne & Tewksbury, 1996;Schacht, 1998Schacht, , 2000Tewksbury, 1993). Cosplay adds the extra complication of cosplayers who do perform traditional heteronormative gender through being of a certain sex and cosplaying characters of the traditionally accepted corresponding gender.…”