Musings On: The De-Yassification of Drag
From Wikitionary:
Yassification (countable and uncountable, plural yassifications)
1. (Internet slang, LGBT, neologism) The process of making something LGBTQ+-adjacent.
2. (Internet slang, neologism) The act of applying several beauty filters to a picture using a photo-editing application until the subject becomes almost unrecognizable.
If you still don't think psy-ops are real, look no further than how out of nowhere Drag Queen Story Hour has become a hot button issue, when just a year ago virtually no one was talking about it. If you don't know, Drag Queen Story Hour is when a man who performs burlesque to Nicki Minaj at 21+ clubs or at a suburban women's Bachelorette Party, is then goaded by the same suburban woman to put on their highest high heels and plastic breastplates and read Judith Butler outloud to a group of preschool-aged children who are probably bored out of their mind and just want to go home and watch Cocomelon. Is this something most drag performers even want to do? No, many drag queens have spoken up about how they would rather perform at Chernobyl than in front of kids. So the question is, who exactly is this for? The answer is simple: affluent heterosexual liberals who feel guilty about some homophobic incident they failed to address in their childhood, or who still haven’t grown out of their phrase where their entire personality centers around pissing off their conservative parents.
I feel almost silly writing about it, like I'm someone who's fallen hook line and sinker for the culture war ragebait of the week.
I do have one tinfoil hat conspiracy theory about DQSH, however: I, at least in part believe, that the reason it's being pushed so hard is to muddy the waters and make the medical transition of vulnerable youth, the aspect of the gender identity movement that can cause actual harm, look like something fun and harmless only cranky ol' conservatives would get mad at.
A common smug r/politics response to criticism of gender ideology is that "no child has ever been killed by a drag queen, so why don't you focus on gun control instead, you chud?" To my knowledge, they are correct, there has never been a recorded case of a drag performer killing a child. Several elderly women, yes, but not a child. Getting your panties in a bunch about men in wigs lip-syncing to Janet Jackson is ha-ha silly. What isn't ha-ha silly is the fact that one of the participants in the original Dutch experiment with puberty blockers had their life taken from them when they were only 18 because some Dutchmen got up one day and decided they wanted to play God. (Furthermore, several of the other participants dropped out and refused a follow-up, so for all we know something similar could have happened to them). #Trustthescience, indeed.
But I digress. Although most drag queens nowadays are fierce trans rights advocates (after all, questioning mainstream gender ideology would cause them to become a social pariah in their own community), being a drag queen isn't related to medical transition. So how did drag become so intertwined with the current culture war? To understand, let’s take a step back in time….
How It Started
Rupaul Charles came from humble beginnings. He started his drag career in the Club Kid scene with his good friend and fellow queen Lady Bunny. His drag was originally more androgynous and punk rock-inspired, an aesthetic which he dubbed as "genderfuck".
Eventually, he developed a more conventionally feminine look with his "Supermodel of The World" alter ego. This turned out to be the perfect formula for success: his 1993 single "Supermodel (You Better Work)" became a smash hit and reached #2 on the US dance charts.
Rupaul on the Arsenio Hall Show, just a few years after Arsenio was criticized on-air by activist group Queer Nation for not having any (openly) gay guests on his program.
After a prolific run in the 1990s, a VH1 Talk Show and several cameos in movies and television, Rupaul felt that his career took a slump in the 2000s. But in 2009, he once again put drag on the map when the first season of the reality show Rupaul's Drag Race aired.
The concept of Rupaul’s Drag Race was as followed: several contestants would enter to win the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar, but only one would win the crown. (the exception to this was in 2019, where the show has its first, and so far only, double crowning). The queens would compete in a variety of challenges that tested their skills in areas such as makeup, costume design, dancing, comedy, acting, impersonations, and lip-syncing.
Like Rupaul himself, his eventual hit show also had a modest start. Originally, Drag Race started as a campy parody of reality competition shows such as Project Runway or America's Next Top Model. Season One had the infamous "Vaseline filter", an attempt to hide the show's low production budget and give it more "pizazz".
The show aired on LOGO, a basic cable channel that broadcasted programs aimed at the gay community before the rise of streaming services. This means that unless you had cable or stopped by the local gay bar for a watch-along, the chances you would catch the newest episode were slim. Here's a great episode from the podcast I'm So Popular exploring more in-depth the history of Drag Race and how the brand has changed overtime.
The winners of the first three seasons were Bebe Zehara Benet, Tyra Sanchez (who for a short period of time quit drag and reverted back to using a male name and pronouns after issuing a bomb threat), and former America's Next Top Model makeup artist Raja. All three were known as "fashion queens" or "look queens", whose drag was focused more on the feminine and the stylish as opposed to being campy or gender-bending.
This all changed in Season 4, when Sharon Needles (yes, that's a pun on what you think it is) won the crown. Sharon was a xxxdangerous_rebelxxx, who wasn't interested in being Miss America, he wanted to be a mix between Elvira and Marilyn Manson. He described his drag persona in three words: "spooky, sexy, and stupid."
Oh, and one more thing- Sharon also was...
EDGY!
Rupaul, being from the older, less-PC generation of gays, obviously had no objection to a little bit of shock value. See the 1995 movie To Wong Foo: Thanks For Everything, where he donned a Confederate flag dress and starred as the character "Rachael Tensions".
Meanwhile, Season 5 consisted of an “underdog" storyline, where Pacific Northwesten theater kid Jinkx Monsoon (pictured below) was crowned after being doubted by her peers for her more kooky approach to drag.
So far, so good. But what happened when Season 6 aired?
2014 was an interesting year. It's this period that many feel the great "vibe shift" had occurred, when things started to become simultaneously more humorless and more clownish, as well as generally weirder, more politically correct and political, and more divisive. It was also when social media really started to take off, and when the sixth season of Rupaul's Drag Race aired.
By the end of the season, the final three contestants consisted of:
Courtney Act, Australian queen whose specialty was being "fishy", a very controversial term for a drag queen who looks like a biological female (named after what some gay men thinks a woman’s hoo-ha smells like, many have deemed this misogynistic and the Drag Race brand has since retired the word).
Adore Delano, a young, laid-back queen and a fuckin’ Libra who was only 23 when the season aired. Her drag persona was more of a tomboyish character inspired by the grunge and riot grrrll subcultures, and she had plenty of 'tude and quotable one-liners that were perfect for memes and GIFs.
Bianca Del Rio, a seasoned queen who hailed from New Orleans. If Sharon Needles had the looks of Morticia Addams and the personality of an early 2000s 4chan shitposter, Bianca had the looks of Marge Simpson shot with the Makeup Gun with the personality of your drunk Uncle at the family reunion who still calls people of Asian descent "Orientals". Or, as Bianca dubbed herself, "insult comic Don Rickles but in a dress“.
From left to right: Adore, Bianca, and Courtney (coincidentally can also be abbreviated as “ABC”).
Eventually, it was Bianca, with her no-nonsense professionalism, quick wit and knowledge of sewing and costume design who ended winning the crown. But Adore turned out to be a fan favorite, especially with the younger, straighter demographic who discovered the show via social media, especially through Tumblr. In part because of Adore, soon teenage girls all around the country were talking about throwin’ shade, spillin’ the tea, and slayin’ the haus down boots yaass gawd Mawma tongue pop snap your fingers in a Z-formation.
With the show's newfound popularity, as well as the changing political landscape, Drag Race had received a sudden onslaught of both praise and criticism. One aspect of the show that began to garner backlash was the usage of words such as "shemale" and "tr*nny".
Season 6 Episode 4 introduced the mini-challenge "Female or Shemale", where the queens were shown a picture of a celebrity and had to guess if they, to quote Rupaul, were a "biological woman or a psychological woman". Although the "shemales” shown were drag queens, not transsexuals, many were outraged that a show that aimed to lift the LGBT community up would use a word that they deemed to be a vicious slur towards individuals who struggled with their sex identity.
Looking back on the challenge, I don't see much wrong with it. It was a few minutes of of ha-ha silly filler, and nothing malicious. If anything, it's more offensive to the masculine and non-conformist women shown by implying they look like men in drag.
Other aspects of the show that were protested was the usage of Rupaul's song "Tr*nny Chaser", as well as the catchphrase "you've got she-mail". This is why this era of controversy has now been dubbed "She-MailGate".
Eventually, the "Female or Shemale" challenge was cut from future airings of the episode, and Drag Race ceased to use terms that were controversial with trans activists.
This wasn't the last time Rupaul had found himself at the center of controversy with the T in LGBT, however. In 2018, Rupaul confirmed that he would probably not accept queens who have medically transitioned beforehand on his show, and even compared it to athletes using steroids.
The backlash was intense, with several contestants speaking out against these remarks and ensuring that drag was for everyone. How could Rupaul, who once famously said "you're born naked and the rest is drag", turn around and tell an entire segment of the population that their drag wasn't hecking valid?
The contribution to drag history, and gay history in general, towards the once small minority of people who have altered their secondary sex characters tends to be misunderstood. Many people claim that gay rights wouldn't exist with black transwomen, since "a black transwoman named Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick at the 1969 Stonewall Riots". But Marsha P. Johnson did not consider himself to be a woman, and proudly referred to himself as a man who did drag. It's even debatable if he was even at the Stonewall when the riots occurred. And some, such as gay rights veteran and AIDS activist Larry Kramer, openly question how historically significant the Stonewall Riots really were:
“I always hear about the so-called liberation and extraordinary change, and I think a lot of that's just malarkey. I don't think it was, so I think too much has been made of Stonewall as being this great thing that happened and changed the world. It didn't. I remember Stonewall as a small little thing that happened, and most of the gays didn't pay any attention to it, and most of the publicity was pretty awful. It's been made into a myth over the years as some sort of turning point, but it didn't change all that much, as everybody says. We're still in terrible shape, so how can you say things have changed?” - Larry Kramer, 2006
However, what is true at least is that the trans community has been involved within drag culture early on, as documented in the famous 1989 documentary Paris Is Burning.
Still, at the same time, there were queens speaking up about the pressures gender non-conforming individuals faced to transition, and who confidently stated that you can be a man who likes fabulous things, reject the concept of a “gender identity” and be content with your sex.
It took awhile for Rupaul to warm up to trans contestants, however eventually he thawed out and began accepting trans queens, both MTF and FTM on his show. The show’s catchphrase “may the best woman win” was changed to “may the best drag queen win” to be more inclusive. Season 14 had not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE trans contestants (what are the odds?) Spin-off series such as Drag Race UK and Drag Race Germany even included "bio-queens", women who were born as women who dress up and perform in drag style. No drag kings, though, I guess society just isn't ready for that or something.
Oh, by the way, did I mention that Season 14 also had its first straight male contestant?
“A BREEDER? In our vicinity?”
With 16 seasons and a plethora of international spin-offs, many feel that drag and Drag Race has become too saturated, too mainstream, too advertiser-friendly, or, in others words, successfully "de-yassified". The transgressive, politically incorrect edge the show once had has softened. I saw one comment lamenting how the program had devolved into “a gay minstrel show for a straight audience”.
this but unironically
But how has that impacted mainstream culture? Stay tuned to part two of this essay to find out.