CarnalNation

“So, what the hell is a drag king show anyway?"

That was the response I got from many friends and acquaintances when I announced my band Thee Merry Widows would be playing the 2009 SF Drag King Competition. Well, obviously I think everyone sort of knew it would be a show featuring females dressed as men (duh!) but beyond that people didn't seem to have much of a clue as to what to expect.

Even in an "anything-goes" sexual landscape like San Francisco, drag kings remain an extremely underground phenomena. In fact, I myself have only seen drag king shows in tandem with burlesque shows. It seems to me, as a former burlesque performer myself, that the drag king shows I have witnessed are a foil to the over-the-top glamour and overt "feminine" sexuality of traditional burlesque; to push the metaphor, if gender and sexual stage play was the 80's classic TV show The Facts of Life, drag kings would be Jo and traditional burlesque female performers would be Blaire.

Fudgie Frottage (aka Lu Read, aka "The Man with The Biggest Balls in Show Business"), the show's organizer and arguably the face of San Francisco's drag king community says, "The San Francisco Drag King Contest is a mashup of the Miss America Pageant, American Idol, Halloween, and a Monster Truck Show." I'm inclined to agree. There's an element of glamour, meets trashiness, meets pure fantasy which is hard to explain to someone who has not experienced this type of show before.

So what makes a drag king? In comparison to drag queens, who are mostly (but not always) identified as gay biological males, drag kings may be transgendered, they may be biological females who identify as lesbian—and to further complicate things, they may even be straight women who dress as men. As Fudgie says, "It really varies; the current popular term is genderqueer—some of us are trannies, others femmes...all labels are demolished" by the mighty San Francisco Drag King show. As in much of sexual behavior, when examined closely, the lines between drag king and lesbian and transgender seem very murky at best. I was looking forward to seeing what drag kings would have to offer as performers.

My band Thee Merry Widows was slated to perform at the Drag King show and I was curious as to how we fit the picture. None of us are gay, although we are suckers for a good costume. I have BOXES of costumes from my days in burlesque, but after much consideration I decided nothing would be more perfect onstage than Dr. Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In effect, I got to be a woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman! Perfect. The other girls in the band filled out the stage show with their versions of drag: Jenna Ferocious and Mistress Mandy as Elvis and Priscilla, Andrea as Eddie Munster, and Nishone as Joey Ramone.

As we prepared for the show on August 15th at the DNA Lounge, I was keenly interested to experience the backstage atmosphere at the Drag King Competition. For me, it's not such an odd feeling stepping into drag. Having performed as a burlesque dancer, much of my onstage career has been about creating an over-the-top onstage persona using sexual stereotypes. I found the ritual of putting on the makeup and costume to be much the same, as well as the hustle and bustle backstage, which is the same as at a burlesque show or any large scale stage show. Which is to say, there's a million people everywhere, with clothing and costumes and shoes and makeup in every non-occupied area. One small thing which was a marked difference; there was a copious amount of fake mustaches and loose hair to be used on chests.