On Saturday, June 8, YRCAS’ Pride in Community group hosted a drag brunch for our children and youth. Our performers, Carlotta Carlisle and Bella Bimbo, performed pop songs and showed off their incredible dance moves. We appreciate them taking the time to answer our youth’s questions and taking photos after the show!
Drag is an art form that can be vital to affirming and expressing who we are. Drag performers have always been, and continue to be, advocates for themselves and others, and fabulous change-makers!
Thanks largely to the success of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the art form is now seen regularly on mainstream TV channels, magazine covers and is the subject of multiple vlogs and podcasts, but the story of drag goes back much further than that!
Read below to learn more about the fascinating history of Drag packed with surprises and social history!
- Drag began out of necessity! When Shakespearean theatre was shiny and new in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the stage wasn’t just a place of entertainment. It had strong links to the church and with that came rules that only men could tread the boards. If the play you were in featured a few female roles, then it was up to a couple of the men in the cast to dress as members of the opposite sex so the story made sense.
- The word ‘drag’ is believed to have theatrical origins too. The dresses men wore to play female characters would drag along the floor.
- As time went on, drag became more about the individual and the queens built up their own fanbases. One of the biggest stars of the early 20th century was Julian Eltinge. Whereas many drag queens played on the fact they were men in women’s clothing, Eltinge (as she was often known) had many fans convinced she was not a character, but a genuine actress
- After the Second World War, although homosexuality was still frowned upon by society as a whole – even illegal in some cases – there were still drag acts who broke through the negativity and had successful careers.
- The Stonewall Riot of 1969 saw drag queens, most notably Marsha P Johnson, protest police raids on gay bars in New York City and led to the creation of the Gay Liberation Front. The fight for acceptance and equality grew in profile over the 1970s and 1980s, with Harvey Milk becoming the first openly gay man to be voted in to public office in San Francisco in 1977.
- That positive representation gradually bled through into the mainstream. The famed Divine, who died in 1988, appeared in many movies by the director John Waters, which had crossover success (Divine played Edna Turnblad in the original version of Hairspray). And by the early 1990s, RuPaul was on the cusp of global fame, combining a drag persona with a recording career that included a duet with Elton John.
- In 2009, the first series of Drag Race aired. Its mix of challenges, costume creation, skits and impersonations has made it appointment television for a diverse audience
