Some say the influence of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” brought us into a golden age of drag, and of queer acceptance. But others point out the inevitable losses that happen when a community that forged itself in the margins of society goes mainstream
“I hate going out the door in drag in the daytime,” confessed Tyra Sanchez, a contestant on the second season of, expressing an anxiety seasoned drag queens are all too familiar with. Being a drag queen before dark has historically been an uncomfortable experience at best, and a dangerous one at worst.
That anxiety seemed far from anyone’s mind on a recent Sunday afternoon in May, as drag queen Victoria Holiday whipped her white hair around to “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” carefully descending from the stage atinto a cheering and tipsy brunch crowd. Spring sunlight streamed in through the windows as she collected tips from a bachelorette party, and soon, invited a woman in her 60s to join her on stage for a drinking game.
Drag brunch, until recently, was almost an oxymoron. For most of the 20th century, drag happened in queer spaces, in the dark, and was created by people who scraped together beauty from whatever they could find. Brunch, until about the 1980s, was conspicuously for the rich, or at least the genteel, an occasion for after church or on Mother’s Day — not one eating too much or getting too drunk. It was an opportunity to be seen looking sharp, at least in the church sense.
But starting around the 1990s, brunch got raucous and, concurrently, drag got mainstream. Movies likefound mass success. RuPaul moved from being a club kid to having. Being seen at a trendy brunch became almost as important as being seen at the right bar the night before.
Meanwhile, though the definition of drag has always been mutable, the art of exaggerated gender-specific dress for performance wasn’t always a part of the counterculture. Drag has its roots in pantomime and vaudeville, and men-dressing-as-women was a popular mainstay of theater. There were also performances like the Jewel Box Revue, a traveling drag show on the
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