It has also given queer people an avenue of revenue through entertainment.
Drag is inherently a queer space created by queer people, and it’s a safe space for everyone to explore to discover themselves.
It’s also possible for straight, cis women to be drag kings. So in a sense, it is a privilege to be able to play this exaggerated character today, and be celebrated for it.Īs a non-binary person, I do believe that people of all genders and sexualities can be drag kings and queens. But drag kings persisted, because it was their way of being who they were. It has been a long struggle to get to where we are now, because in the past, there were countries like the United States that deemed impersonating a gender not your own was illegal. In my act, I came on stage wearing an MIT hoodie, but when I heard the song Home by Dick Lee playing, it struck a chord and I started taking off layers of my clothes, and ended with me standing onstage in my underwear and a garland of orchids.Īnother thing that I appreciate about drag is that it’s an art form that has a long history with male impersonators, and is also linked to lesbian and butch history. I saw him as an unpleasant, privileged Chinese boy who had just come home from studying abroad. It took three months of development and intensive workshops under Becca D’Bus and Boston-based burlesque and drag performer Madge of Honour before we performed at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2017, in a burlesque show entitled Foreign Bodies.
While I initially didn’t like the idea of looking hyper feminine while taking off my clothes, I had dreamed of doing burlesque for some years and I saw it as a chance to build a drag king character. When I came back to Singapore, I heard of an open call for the formation of a progressive burlesque troupe called Skin in SIN, the brainchild of Becca D’Bus, a Singaporean drag queen who runs drag revue Riot!. It was so much fun, because I was able to inhabit a different personality and poke fun at hipster tropes. I wore a fedora hat, suit, and gave myself a male name. Participants adopted different personas of poets, so I thought I would impersonate a pretentious, hipster male poet. My first drag performance was in the United Kingdom, where I participated in an ‘Anti-Slam’, which is designed to parody poetry slams.
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