A statuesque figure clad in flowing earth tones, broad shoulders
emerging from
suggestive neckline, clicked across the floor in sleek heels. A deep contralto
gave a warm
greeting as a manicured hand slipped a stray hair back into place. An image
of feminine
beauty. A man in woman's clothing. A decade ago, it would have been cause
for scandal. Now,
thanks to a more accepting society and a profusion of drag-related movies,
it has become a
fascination for people everywhere. From birth, when girls are wrapped in
pink blankets and
boys in blue, we are forced into an either/or dichotomy-a polarity in which
the drag queen
has no part. She-an appropriate pronoun, since while in drag these men share
a woman's
gender-has over and over again stuck her manicured fingernail into the heart
of
limited and lim-iting gender expectations, openly flouting convention with
ev-ery stuffed bra
and styled wig.
"It's something I want to experience-I will never know what it's like
to physically be a woman, but I want to know what it's like to be interacted
with like a woman," Temm, a guy trying drag for the first time, said
during our first conversation. He added, "When you say 'drag,' many
people think you're talking about a man in woman's clothes. It's really
more than that. It's a whole different personality." The impulse is
not a new one: "I remember wearing my mom's clothes around the house,"
he reminisced. "When you're a kid, it's okay to dress up and play with
pearls and whatever." This impulse to explore new things is something
stomped out of us as we mature, and flitting around the house in Mom's clothing
when one is, say, 30 is not something in which one might casually engage.
Camp, a loose rubric which encompasses the louder, more Hollywood-ized
forms of drag, has
been in popular view since Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp," which
for the first time attempted
to define this ever-elusive term. Suddenly what had existed as a primarily
homosexual
discourse exploded onto the stage, and anything graced with the stamp of
"Camp"-from
Tiffany lamps to feather boas, "stag movies seen without lust"
to Swan Lake (at least,
according to Sontag)-became en vogue.1 However, the most significant
and easily identifiable
character to clamber into the limelight was and is the drag queen, whose
flamboyance has
elicited extremes of response. Many feminists have expressed utter disgust
for male
crossdressing, condemning it as a malicious parody of femininity, an expression
of self-hatred,
and an empty excuse for excess. Critic George Melly paraphrases this unfair
condemnation: the
queen "conspires rather than excludes, ... is bitchy rather than aggressive...
[S/he] is the Stepin
Fetchit of the leather bars, the Auntie Tom of the denim discos,"and
the total antithesis of the
gay ghetto ethic2. Rather than confronting her antagonists head
on, the drag queen breaks the
embarrassed silence with a shriek of laughter, engaging in social critique
without threatening
the system directly. While seeming to reinforce gender stereotypes by conspicuously
flourishing
that which society has prescribed to be fitting for femininity, the drag
queen's blatant
exaggeration points out what Judith Butler terms the "performative
nature" of gender.3
Because of society's insistence that girls should play with Barbie
while boys run around
building forts, the behavioral attributes connected with each sex has become
second nature, and
has survived unquestioned for centuries. "Gender" is nothing more
than an imposed set of rules
with which we relentlessly bludgeon each other. It has become increasingly
obvious that there
is, as Butler puts it, "no gender identity behind the expressions of
gender; that identity is
performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be
its results...Gender is
the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly
rigid regulatory
frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance."4
How better to critique
this ubiquitous system than to appear to embrace it while all the time proving
its ontological
limitations? Few suspect the drag queen because she furthers her agenda
with such coyness,
couching her social critique in the deceptive innocuousness of her flamboyance.
Drag has two very disparate identities, however. When one mentions
the word, the very
first things that come to most peoples' minds are the glam images snapped
up and marketed by
Hollywood. However, camp's more subtle sister, whose modesty when it comes
to sequins and
boas has kept her out of the popular fancy, also contributes a great deal
to the struggle for
gender equality. I had the good fortune to meet one such person-a man who
wanted, for a night,
to come as close to being a woman as he could, to experience the pains of
makeup, hose, and
heels-trappings still expected of women-the drawn out, daily beauty ritual
that millions of
women undergo every day, and the stares that a woman in public may receive
but never return.
I first spoke to Temm in late October when he was just beginning to
formulate his plan, and
was immediately taken by the seriousness with which he approached the whole
project. With
a methodical, carefully-planned strategy, he had begun to scope out makeup
and clothes. "I'm
doing this in steps so that I don't make a fool of myself," he assured
me. "It's a whole process."
From the very beginning, he had no interest in doing "campy drag."
"So many people think that
it's just about putting on a wig and pretending to be a woman. I want to
be a woman. Or, at least
as close I can ever be. I'm even going to go to the ladies room," he
added with a chuckle. "It'll
just be a night out with the guys, except that one of the guys is now a
girl."
When he told his female friends of his plans, he was overwhelmed by
their enthusiasm. A
female co-worker at the Food Lion which he manages immediately began with
the
prerequisites: "We're going to need hose, a bra, panty liners..."
A moment of puzzlement passed
over her face as she reconsidered. "Okay, forget the panty liners!"
The first consideration was,
of course, what to wear. Visiting the department store proved also to be
the most daunting, yet
Temm decided to take it head on rather than pretend he was looking for clothing
for "a friend."
"For me, it was a lot of getting over the embarrassment. Most people,
doing it for the first time,
go into the department store:
'Who's it for?' asks the salesperson.
'My sister.'
'And what's her size?'
'About my size.'
'And what's her color?'
'I don't know, what colors would look good on me?.'
'Oh, I see...'"
Despite his positive attitude, Temm approached the department store
with a great deal of
trepidation. Browsing as inconspicuously as possible, he drifted towards
the women's
department. Because it was two in the afternoon, they were the only customers
in the store and
were therefore mortified when the announcement "Customer needs assistance
in the women's
department" came blaring over the loudspeaker. Refusing to feel ashamed,
Temm marched up
to the counter with a dress. "Do you have this in my size?" he
asked nonchalantly. After some
initial hesitation on the part of the store assistants, they began to help
him. As it became more
obvious what was going on, assistants from other departments migrated over
to watch what
was becoming a spectacle in the otherwise deserted store. Eventually they
selected several
potential outfits, only to be confronted with a new dilemma: which dressing
room? One of the
saleswomen suggested that they cordon off the women's dressing room rather
than have Temm
go to the men's changing room with his wares. After the last woman finished
trying on her
clothes, they closed off the area and Temm went to it. "So I'm walking
around the women's
department in the middle of the day wearing a black dress," the best
of the outfits. Yet even
that, a tried and true favorite, did not quite work. Besides making him
look way too tall (he's
6'1" to begin with), his calves seemed too masculine for him to carry
it off convincingly. He
called me that evening, excited by the day's events: "We decided on
semi-casual. I don't know
how to describe it-black girl chic!" Shoes presented more of a problem.
"The only thing that
scares me to death are the shoes. I just don't understand them. Girdles,
underwear, bras...okay-
but the shoes!?" After much soul searching, he settled on a medium-high
pair of heels, fearing
the potential disasters of anything taller. Six foot one inch without shoes,
he also had to
consider that he would already dwarf most people.
Next came the wig. Temm asked around as to what would look the best,
thinking that he
should go with long hair. "'Don't do it!' they said. 'Never mind drag
queen! They'll say, 'that
bitch's got a weave!''"
The most difficult aspect of drag is the makeup, which can mean the
difference between
looking like a woman and looking like something the cat coughed up. When
preparing for a
night out the process takes hours of careful shaving, plucking, and application.
Temm's friend,
Deanne, volunteered to do the makeup, and when we arrived and everybody
settled
comfortably into their seats, it was fairly obvious that the maxim "beauty
is a long, long
process" was especially applicable. Opening his bag with a ceremonious
flourish, Temm spilled
$74 worth of makeup and an electric shaver onto the table. He beamed with
ear-to-ear delight:
"The woman behind the counter asked, 'Are you sure you want to know
how much this all is?' I
said two things: 'Beauty costs, and I got plastic.'" Nails, foundation,
matte powder, eyeliner,
lipstick. He had it all. Noticing our look of disbelief as he announced
the cost of the whole,
shiny assortment, he added with mock terror: "What!? Grocery store
makeup?! Ugh. You buy it
in the grocery store, and it makes you look like you belong in the grocery
store!" With that
established, Deanne began her task of applying the many layers that would
transform his face.
She had her concerns, too. "How do your friends feel about a caucasian
doing your makeup?" she
asked Temm. He giggled: "I just told them you work for Mirabella--Girl,
you've done Naomi
and all of them!" As the hours ticked by, the change became more and
more apparent, both in
his appearance and in his behavior. His gestures became more and more feminine
as he spoke to
us, and there was a marked change in the way in which he interacted with
us. "I find myself
every day looking more closely at women and watching their mannerisms,"
from the more
obvious differences, like the walk, to the minutiae of wiping one's mouth
in a restaurant. In a
process undertaken by all actors, Temm had begun to take months of careful
observation and
develop it into a seamless character. "Did you know there's a whole
different mannerism for
eating?" he asked me incredulously. "This whole Emily Post thing
is kicking my butt!"
After two and a half hours, Temm chuckled in mock frustration: "Hell,
it took Tootie [from
the Facts of Life] only fifteen minutes to do her makeup!" Yet , after
hours of precise makeup
application and outfit coordination, he had a new appreciation for the daily
chore that women
undergo. "There are so many layers involved in 'becoming' a woman.
What I'm doing now is
what most women do every day!"
But what about a name? As with everything else, Temm had already given
it consideration.
"I was soaking in the tub, in my Victoria Secret bubbles and the name
just came to me. Kenya,"
he explained. "K-E-N-Y-A...Okay, so it grows on you." Just then,
a friend phoned Deanne. "I'm
making up a friend. ...Temm...uh, I mean Kenya. Well, tonight anyway."
Thus was Miss Kenya
Tonight christened. All that remained was to dress-a process that, relative
at least to
makeup, took little time. Sitting in the pantsuit that he had brought, Temm
looked the part.
"And I don't even have my boobs on yet!" he quipped. "These
are mine. I was going to do water
balloons, but I was afraid of slow dancing. Sploosh!" For safety's
sake, he settled on rolled up
socks and shoulder pads. (For those of you trying this at home: contrary
to popular belief, the
shoulder pads go on top.) After much tugging and plumping, his cleavage
looked convincingly
perched. It was now time to venture out.
Because it was his first time out, Temm had decided to take Kenya to
a gay bar in downtown
Norfolk rather than attempt to risk it in a restaurant. Composing himself
with a stoically
suave glare, she sauntered through the door. What we had expected was cheers,
whistles-
some kind of recognition that this bar regular had switched the jeans for
hose and heels. But
there was nothing. Not only did no one recognize him, no one took a second
glance. Unlike a
larger city where this indifference might be attributed to the jaded quality
of its inhabitants,
Norfolk has precious few practitioners of drag and they rarely, if ever,
go unnoticed anywhere.
Kenya relished the anonymity for a few minutes, but it was fairly obvious
that bells and
whistles would have been more welcome than nothing at all. Finally, in a
rather hurt voice
straight out of Gone With the Wind, she turned to a friend nearby and pleaded,
"Can't you see
it's me? It's me!" This elicited only a puzzled look until a frown
of recognition finally danced
across his face. Like wildfire the incredulous greetings spread across the
room, and soon almost
everybody was admiring the 6'2" Kenya Tonight. And she didn't mind
at all.
1 Sontag, Susan. "Notes on Camp." Against
Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Doubleday, 1966. 277-278.
2 Melly, George. The introduction to Philip Core's Camp, the
Lie that Tells the Truth. London: Plexus, 1984. 5.
3 Butler, Judith. "Imitation and Gender Insubordination."
Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. Ed. Diana Fuss. New
York: Routledge.
4 Butler.