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You're born naked and everything you put on after that is drag.
RuPaul (Drag Diaries)
INTRODUCTION
The focus of my thesis is on drag as a major component of camp in relation to gender performance. My position on drag for the purposes of this thesis is that drag's function within camp is about challenging and disrupting normative notions of gender and sexuality. Drag articulates camp's fascination with gender and sexual identity, and disrupts identities bound to traditional notions of gender and sexuality. I am defining drag, a term traditionally conflated and used interchangeably with cross-dressing, beyond sartorial address. Drag encompasses gender play and includes props, costumes, role playing and reversals. Drag moves off strict binaries and into self-aware and self-reflexive discourses, effecting fluid representations of gender and the fragmentation of conventional gender boundaries.
The conflation of the terms drag and cross-dressing hinders drag's potential to move beyond the binary of man and woman and heterosexual sexuality, a binary usually located in the traditional usage of the term cross-dressing. As we see in chapter three on "Female Camp," the inability of some theorists to regard camp as a powerful site at which to articulate feminist and lesbian discourse and subversive gender play is based on their limiting drag to cross-dressing. Drag expands upon the notion of cross-dressing, utilizing the idea of crossing over to something other than what is expected or within the boundaries of a contained self. Within drag, cross-dressing often appears as metaphor, as is exemplified in chapter three, and moves into a notion of post-cross-dressing as shown in chapter four, "Entangled Identities and Cyborg Territories," where issues of fluid identity, gender and sexuality are hyperbolized and exploded.
Chapter One: Gender Performance and Camp
Chapter one will investigate some of the discourses and assumptions around gender performance and performativity. I will explore notions in contemporary critical theory of performance as a metaphor for the constitution of gender. Performance metaphors foreground certain qualities which are shared among theatre, gender and camp but have, even as Judith Butler (1997) now admits, limitations. Problems for the metaphor often arise when it is intertwined with expressive models for gender behaviour and sexual difference. Cross-dressing, for example, is often seen as the literal performance of and answer to the "construction" of gender, by performing gender on the "wrong" body. This chapter begins to introduce the problem of cross-dressing as a tool to subvert normative notions of gender and sexuality. Drag in relation to cross-dressing will be addressed in chapter two.
Readings of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990a) have contributed to certain assumptions which are held in relation to performance metaphors. By addressing her concerns with performance metaphors, specifically models of "expressivity," I situate the way I will be using the notion of gender performance and performativity throughout my thesis.
Judith Butler's work will be applied within a specific framework. Butler does not make the distinction between drag and cross-dressing which complicates even her correctives to certain readings of her work on drag. She notes rightly that there are no more than five paragraphs on drag in her groundbreaking book Gender Trouble (1990a), yet drag has been cited by readers as the example which explains the meaning of performativity. Gender performativity has been read as that which constitutes what gender one is based on what one performs (Butler 1997, 19).[i] She rejects the conclusion that gender can be proliferated beyond the binary of "man and woman" depending on what one performs because this assumption valorizes drag as the paradigm of gender performance and as the means by which heterosexual presumption might be undermined through a strategy of proliferation (19). Heterosexual presumption cannot be undermined through strategies of proliferation in this context because proliferation is tied to expressive models of performance. "Drag," in Butler's corrective to the possibilities for proliferation, is an expressive model which holds that some interior truth is exteriorized in performance. I agree that proliferation is not the answer to the binary positions of man and woman that are upheld in cross-dressing, nor does it undermine heterosexual presumption. As I will show in chapter two however, moving off a model of cross-dressing into a paradigm of drag enables a re-vision of the notion of proliferation. Removed from the arena of cross-dressing, drag entails notions of layering and combining in my analysis. This opens up the possibilities for the proliferation of meanings which challenge normative notions of gender and sexuality. In addition to Butler not making the distinction between cross-dressing and drag, drag is related to "melancholia" for Butler and is constituted as an ungrieved loss for the Other/Object (1997). Based on psychoanalytic models, which I am not using in this thesis, her analysis is entrenched in forms of identification closely tied to those models. My own project looks at the discursive implications for categories of meaning in relation to expressive models (cross-dressing) and models which inhabit the norms to forge resistance (drag). I take Butler's salient points with respect to these ideas to further and elucidate my own argument.
Jill Dolan in "Geographies of Learning: Theatre Studies, Performance, and the Performative" (1993) says that "performative metaphors get extended into many cultural avenues through cultural studies, but rarely is theatrical performance a site of such extension" (1993). The following chapters do examine sites where gender performance is literally performed as theatrical performance, for example The Greater Toronto Drag King Society (chapter three), where norms which cannot be thrown off at will, but which work, animate, and constrain the gendered subject, are resisted in performances that hyperbolize performativity. Performance becomes aligned with gender play (chapter two), a play upon the norms which are the resources for resistance and which comprise gender performativity.
While it can be said that theatrical performance and the performative are not the same because "performance is a genre with its own history, applications, and cultural uses" (Dolan 1993, 423), the intersection of the body with performances which include qualities so available for appropriation and metaphorization for that body is certainly significant and ripe for critical investigation.
My interest in the performative is in relation to signifying practices. Because I do examine theatrical performances in film and drama which use gender as subject matter and locate sites where gender is actually performed, notions of the performative for analysis will include performances where the "living body is the center of semiotic crossing" and the discursive performative, or the acts of signifying systems themselves (language and the codes of textuality) (Phelan 1993, 15). My project combines both of these notions of the performative to investigate how "thoroughly bodies inhabit signifying systems and how signifying systems are . . . organized as bodies" (Phelan 1993, 15-16). This becomes useful for my analysis of bodies which are traditionally read as essentially male and female, feminine or masculine and informs an understanding of how these bodies signify sex, gender and sexuality (terms which will be defined and elaborated on in the thesis).
My definition for gender performance departs from conventional interpretations which have included notions of choice and follows Butler's in relation to performativity, that is, gender performativity is not a matter of choosing which gender one will be today:
Performativity is a matter of reiterating or repeating the norms by which one is constituted: it is not a radical fabrication of a gendered self. It is a compulsory repetition of prior and subjectivating norms, ones which cannot be thrown off at will, but which work, animate, constraining the gendered subject, and which are also the resources from which resistance, subversion, displacement are to be forged. (Butler 1997, 17)
This definition is important to my thesis as a whole where I maintain and illustrate that it is the very norms located in cross-dressing and expressive models for behaviour which are hyperbolized in drag and camp practice to resist those norms.
Chapter one will explore some of the theory around sexual difference in relation to cross-dressing and move into the contemporary fascination with refashioning the body as "a set of possibilities." Examples from Mae West's banned camp plays Sex (1926) and The Drag (1927) combine several types of improper gender and sexual behaviour exemplifying how unconventional sexuality, like gender, is often met with censure. I look at the components of camp which make it a useful application to counter the mandated "natural" performances for gender and sexuality. With Sky Gilbert's play Lola Starr Builds Her Dream Home (1989), I begin to explore how camp makes performance metaphors and sexual difference hyperbolic by confronting ideas of naturalism in fiction and life self-reflexively. Gilbert's play, however, still retains certain ties to conventional notions of expressivity with respect to his character Tina.
Chapter one serves as an introduction to many of the concepts which circulate in my thesis, many of which are explored more fully in other chapters, the groundwork of which is presented here.
Chapter Two: Drag: An Elementary Fabric of Camp
Chapter one considered certain problems for notions of theatrical performance as a metaphor for the constitution and manifestation of gender identity. Chapter two introduces a notion of gender play which describes the function of drag and camp more aptly than gender performance.
I investigate the more complex layering effect that belongs to the realm of drag, which includes cross-dressing but is not limited to the conventional wisdom and notions surrounding crossed dress (models of expressivity, binary of man and woman, mandatory heterosexuality). Drag includes cross-dressing but is not wholly comprised by it. Cross-dressing alone often appears as parody, and is often based on an essentialist position or expressive model, i.e. that an interior essence can be expressed by dressing as the opposite sex. The traditional conflation of camp with parody resonates with the traditional conflation of drag with cross-dressing all of which problematically culminate as interchangeable signifiers or terms which stand-in for one another. This chapter will show that while camp makes use of parody, parody alone does not signal camp. Similarly, drag makes use of cross-dressing but cross-dressing alone does not signal drag. Certain cinematic forms resonate with conventional notions as the Hollywood films Tootsie (Sidney Pollack, 1982) and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (Beeban Kidron, 1995) will show in critical analysis. Keith Cole's short independent film Nancy Boy vs. Manly Woman (Erwin Abesamis, 1997) illustrates the potential for a doubling of vision in drag and camp, an expansion of the form and hyperbolization of the codes for gender and sexuality.
I look at the notion of performance as "play" where performance is aligned with gender play, a play upon the norms which are the resources for resistance and which comprise gender performativity. Gender play repeats and destabilizes rigid notions of femininity and masculinity (using the norms as resources to forge resistance, subversion and displacement) usually located in female and male bodies where femininity and masculinity are assumed to be essential to those bodies. Gender play is manifest in drag and camp texts where the body becomes a set of possibilities.
Theoretical discourses limited to an understanding of drag and camp in films or practices which recuperate notions associated with cross-dressing have limited the ability for some theorists to move beyond definitions of drag and camp outside of conventional cross-dressing and parody. By examining the meanings and forms which hinder gender play, it is possible to understand why the conflation of terms stunts camp's perceived potential to challenge dominant meanings accorded to gender.
Chapter Three: Female Camp
Chapter three focuses on "female camp" and examines certain limiting critical discourses for its potential, such as citations against camp practice in feminist discourse and lesbian critical theory, and some of its stunning possibilities in theory and practice. Camp is problematically bound up with ideas which regard it "as a discourse [which] is both ironically and paradoxically the discourse of hom(m)osexuality, that is male sexuality" (Davy, 243). I will explore misconceptions about camp practice that are based on preconceptions about the gay male tradition of camp, based on a heterosexual paradigm and located in cross-dressing. The obstacles to envisioning a female camp are compounded by the call for a feminist subject position which binds the notion of "femininity" to a "wholistic" and non-negotiable female body paradoxically contested by the terms "feminist" and "femme" which is articulated only in terms of a relation to the privileged and visible "butch." Moving the femme out of the butch-femme economy enables a female camp practice that moves into genders and sexualities. I will explore layering the codes of gender for play in a Drag King camp performance which resists hegemonic and exclusionary interpretations of lesbian and feminist identities and performances.
Chapter Four: Entangled Identities and Cyborg Territories
Chapter three explored the possibilities for notions of gender in camp and drag which expand upon the binaries of man and woman, sexual difference and cross-dressing. Chapter four will focus on hybrid identities and couplings which challenge normative notions of gender and sexuality. Drag is theorized as cross-species-dressing where the emphasis is on notions of fluid identities. I will develop and refashion Donna Haraway's cyborg myth ("A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," 1985) to open up the theoretical possibilities for breached boundaries in drag. Examples from the film Tank Girl (Rachel Talalay, 1995) will illustrate possibilities for the proliferations of identity in species permutations and combinations which undermine the notion of ‘boundaries' as a stable concept. Conventional referents or boundaries are subject to splittings and unconventional meldings. Animals, people and machines are entangled in complex hybrid relationships which explode notions of the organic dimensions of body as self.
Cross-species-dressing in Batman Returns (Tim Burton, 1992) takes place in an arena of sadomasochism (S/M) which offers resistance to the unitary Western subject and makes possible multiple and shifting identities. I examine the sexual practice of consensual S/M as a parodic structuring device in the film and explore the meanings which make S/M a cyborg practice within this context. Resonating with camp and drag excess, the theatrical paraphernalia associated with S/M can be found in forms of leather, vinyl, spiked boots, feathers, fur, whips, masks, costumes and scripts. Animal and human guises, like identity, are unstable and are subject to injury and rupture.
NOTES TO INTRODUCTION
[i] Butler revisits and "corrects" readings of her work in her essay "Critically Queer" (1997).
From chapter 2: k.d. lang and the film Salmonberries
I will use examples from the gender performances of singer, songwriter and actress k.d. lang to illustrate some of the notions I have described. There are many examples from k.d lang’s career in music videos, televised interviews, essays and articles and her performance in the film Salmonberries (1991) which exemplify gender play, self-reflexivity, fluidity and rupture that define drag and camp. I will examine how her body is an unstable signifier for gender, destabilizing the notion of the “true” body said to reside in gender beneath the clothes. Lang occupies a contested territory between culturally “appropriate” positions for femininity and masculinity, between theoretically “appropriate” positions for butch and femme and the critical relationship she has to the way she is perceived. The ideas inherent in conventional cross-dressing, where the referent is the true body beneath the clothes, become destabilized in relation to k.d. lang’s gender performance because of her position in relation to femininity and masculinity, that is, her position as androgyne.
I am defining androgyny as a liminal site (a term which refers to a resistance to fixed positions, marked by a resistance to self-identity) which plays between prescriptions for femininity and masculinity, butch and femme. As a liminal site, androgyny simultaneously includes traditional gender traits (e.g. this woman is read as a woman) and excludes conventional gender traits (e.g. this woman is read as a woman who does not conform to her traditional gender assignment). Androgyny is an intersection which appropriates normative notions of gender, blending them in an unconventional manner and forming an amalgamation which, by virtue of the fact that the boundaries are usually considered mutually exclusive (e.g. the division of male and female, femininity and masculinity), uses the norms to resist them. I am not suggesting that these boundaries play out in binary opposition to one another; the proliferation of meanings enables the potential for further intersections or layering of meanings in relation to gender play.
Normative gender for women in terms of femininity in popular culture often has to negotiate “imperfections” when confronted with uncommon gender play (which itself suggests the inability of the normative gender paradigm to contain itself). Hegemonic strategies abound, as can be seen by lang’s appearance on the cover of Chatelaine, a Canadian woman’s magazine. lang describes an imagined reader of the magazine: “A ‘Miss Chatelaine’ to me is the same thing as an ingenue. It’s an American woman who goes to Paris for the first time and feels very Continental. She’s a naive débutante” (Magnuson, 1992). As an androgyne, lang is an unconventional woman to appear on the cover of a magazine which embodies a “naive” and “debutante” aesthetic.[i] Named Chatelaine’s Woman of the Year in January 1988, lang said,
It was quite a big step for them to put someone like me on the cover, because I’m not a stereotypical woman. . . . I think it’s really cool. . . . I think it’s great because they allowed me to be myself. The only unfortunate thing is that they airbrushed lipstick, but I guess that was their last laugh. (Robertson 1992, 85)
This Magazine commented, “(b)are lips on female singers seems to be too much of a challenge for some” (Robertson 1992, 85). lang is in critical relation with her position as androgynous woman versus debutante or Miss Chatelaine. This resonates theoretically with Trinh T. Minh-ha’s notion of “inappropriate/d others” which does not mean “not to be in relation with,” but rather “means to be in critical, deconstructive relationality – as the means of making a potent connection that exceeds domination” (1986-7). lang is aware that she in not “stereotypical” for her gender and of the “big step” challenges she poses for the perception of women in relation to femininity. The cover of Chatelaine is a liminal site, where meanings of the term Woman (as a Miss Chatelaine) are contested. An amalgamation of the codes on the cover becomes too challenging, and lipstick becomes the dominant weapon of choice to reassert, however unconvincingly, lang’s femininity.[ii]
lang wrote a song, “Miss Chatelaine,” for her album entitled Ingenue in 1992 and made a music video. In the video lang is dressed in a glamorous ball gown as a femme, crossing over from androgyne to hyperbolic femme in female-female impersonator tradition. With the Chatelaine cover as a referent, the parodic recontextualization in the video including the hyperbolic femininity, takes on a camp tone. Over lang’s career, she has played with female-female drag and parodic recontextualization: “In one clip [lang is] sporting a chartreuse brocade suit an elderly lady might wear to a wedding. . . . For another song she turns up in a bouffant 1950’s hairdo and a matronly pink polyester dress” (Bennetts 1993, 98). In the “Miss Chatelaine” video lang croons in a heavily made up face, “I can’t explain why I’ve become Miss Chatelaine.” A Lawrence Welk ambiance and nostalgia are triggered by the appearance of bubbles. The tension between her appearance as androgyne and her video appearance as femme is camp, and unlike the attempt to reassert some feminine value onto lang’s covertly airbrushed face, camp plays upon the normative cues for female gender, in gender play. The video and magazine cover both constitute lang as inappropriate/d other; however the magazine tries to reassert unstable boundaries by trying to naturalize lang’s appearance as feminine (adding lipstick to her photographed bare face) whereas the video plays upon the tension established between the boundaries of feminine, femme and androgyne by heightening feminine qualities self-reflexively. Androgyny is the amalgamation of the boundaries of feminine, femme and butch referents in the video. A review in Interview which tries to liberate lang from the butch references that cannot hide beneath a ball gown into a feminine space, describes lang as “femme” and as “softer” in the video (Fuller 1992, 96-99). “That’s me,” says lang, “I wanted to expose the Lawrence Welk-induced feminine part of my personality” (98). The Lawrence Welk-induced feminine side is a campy and strategic reappropriation of femme codes, not something separate from her androgyny but part of it.
The conflation of signs, codes and configurations that pertain to lang as androgyne, is caught in a tension between her body and the prescriptions for signifying that body as female. The expectations for primary identification and original gender are juggled for critics such as Leslie Bennetts who describes her look at a concert:
Not that you’d necessarily know she’s a woman at first sight. Tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a black cutaway coat flecked with gold, black pants, and her favorite steel-toed black rubber shit-kicker work boots . . . she looks more like a cowboy. Her glossy dark hair is full but short, and when she tosses her head and strides across the stage on those long strong legs, you suddenly realize she’s moving with a kind of physical freedom you’ve never seen a female singer display before. (1993, 98)
Later in the article Bennetts reveals, “You can watch her for years and never even be aware she has breasts. She is as different from a female icon like Dolly Parton as if she were another species” (emphasis mine, 98).[iii] The pejorative tone of Bennetts’ description throughout the article gets caught between referents, those which signify lang’s body as female, and those which refer to lang’s unconventional appearance (clothing, gesture, manner) in relation to her body. It is possible here to see how, in popular culture, notions of the body expressing true gender circulate. Bennetts is increasingly mystified, in the article, by lang’s body which confounds description in relation to her gender performance. lang is described in the same article which says one might never be aware she has breasts as displaying, after shedding her jacket at the concert performance, “a loose, flowing white blouse that drapes fluidly over her body, revealing the womanly fullness of her hips. . . . A black bra is just barely visible underneath” (144). The appearance of the body traditionally conflated with gender, cannot signify “appropriately” because lang’s gender performance as androgyne does not resonate with that conflation. The womanly fullness of her hips becomes the unexpected whereas, according to the prescriptions for female gender, there should be no conflict. The sartorial black bra also hints at a femininity which is apparently contradictory to her “cowboy” image. lang has breasts and is considered, nonetheless, to be a different species from Dolly Parton who is herself constructed as excess in terms of large breasts and big hair, two major signifiers for femme performance.[iv] Traditional meanings accorded to gender are destabilized in a recontextualization of the referents of the female body. The contrasting referents, which circulate as part of lang’s androgyny, contribute to the layers of meaning her character Kotzebue acquires in Percy Adlon’s film Salmonberries. That is, in this film, the character resonates with lang’s off screen persona in a manner which shifts the notion of the true body beneath the clothes and expression of identity onto a further playing field of meanings.
lang’s appearance in the film Salmonberries illustrates how androgyny hybridizes her iconicity and character, confounding notions of truth, disguise and identity. lang’s character in the film, Kotzebue, is an Eskimo foundling, a “boundary creature” (Haraway 1991, 23) on a quest to find her true identity. Kotzebue’s identity has been shrouded in mystery from the time she was found as a baby in a package labeled Kotzebue with only two charm necklaces. Her physical appearance as a young adult prompts the people around her to mistake her for a boy.
Kotzebue’s quest for her genealogical identity leads her to a librarian named Roswitha who is on an identity quest of her own, and who calls Kotzebue “boy” and “young man.” After Roswitha’s remarks in the library referring to Kotzebue’s gender, Kotzebue steps behind a bookcase and reemerges undressed. Roswitha stares and turns away just as an aboriginal man, significantly named Butch, enters. Kotzebue quickly vanishes behind the shelves once again, as Butch says “maybe I do read too much at night, I just thought I saw a naked woman.” Notions of true identity and origins parallel the quest for true gender in the film ironically and self-reflexively.
As opposed to the Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992) where the narrative is contingent upon the revelation of the male nude body (thought to be biologically female) towards the end of the film, Kotzebue strips at the beginning of the film. The notion of stripping to reveal a true self beneath a veil of mistaken identity or crossed-dress is fragmented on several levels in Salmonberries. In his essay “Unveiling the Word: Science and Narrative in Transsexual Striptease,” (1992) Meyer establishes drag “as the basic folk performance form for the gay male subculture” (1992, 71). Significantly, the structure applies to Kotzebue’s stripping in the library:
The plots involve the entrance of the hero, who arrives purposefully disguised and therefore unrecognized. After being misidentified by the other characters and/or audience, the hero calls attention to his deception and makes claim to an alternate and supposedly true identity. The hero is then required to submit to a series of tests to verify his claim. (1992, 70-71)
Kotzebue’s nude body, in the film, is supposed to reveal gender deception and claim an alternate and “true” gender identity. She enters, like the hero in the folk theatre example, disguised and unrecognized to Roswitha and the others in the library. She strips, which calls attention to a deception and “makes claim to an alternate and supposedly true identity,” that is, being female.
Following Meyer, Kotzebue’s performance falls into the category of drag because she is a woman in men’s clothes, a female-to-male impersonator. The claim to an alternate and supposedly true identity more closely resonates, however, with conventional notions of cross-dressing, sexual difference and expressivity than drag. What is interesting is the position she takes up as a male impersonator where the audience expects her to reveal the woman underneath the clothes, hence the claim to her “true” gender identity. It is never made apparent in the film that Kotzebue meant to create a deception or disguise or was impersonating a male. Her position as a male impersonator is in question. Likewise, an audience would know that lang is female so that the revelation of the female body should not be a surprise. It is difficult to separate lang from her character during the moment of revelation, where lang’s appropriation of men’s clothing outside the film does not mistakenly construe her as male but as androgynous. lang signifies an androgyne playing an androgyne, where the revelation of the body, while significantly shocking to certain media, does not fix or stabilize gender or reveal the woman underneath. Stripping for the androgyne plays between the referents for male impersonator and the woman beneath the clothes in this scene and breaches the boundaries between lang and her character. That is, the revelation of the “womanly” body does not establish an alternate or truer identity for lang or the character’s androgyny.
While the fictional character’s stripping reveals she is biologically female, lang as star/icon is visually doing likewise. That is, the character and actor each resonate with their own specific meanings about the body and gender identity which play off one another. Jaye Davidson’s biological identity was carefully concealed from the media to ensure the stripping “effect” in The Crying Game. The effect was to reveal that the deceptively female character was biologically male. In Salmonberries the media and most spectators were well aware that lang was a woman, which is why the effect of her unclothed body in the media is significant in its response of “shock” and “wonder.” The knowledge that lang is biologically female does nothing to alter the shock effect of the body, that is, there is still the expectation that some unknown will be revealed. “Her figure is a revelation. . . . Massive and voluptuous, her body has the gravitas of an ancient female fertility figure, all rounded thighs and belly and breasts. There is nothing boyish whatsoever about that body . . .” exclaimed Bennetts about this scene (1993, 143-4). Like the surprise that she has breasts and a “womanly” figure, revelation does nothing to fix or stabilize her gender outside androgyny. While there is “nothing boyish whatsoever about that body,” that body resonates with boyishness. The body resonating with androgyny complicates revelations about true identity. Stripping, in lang’s case, does not reveal the “woman” underneath because identity is torn asunder from the body as a stable signifier for gender. lang’s androgyny destabilizes myths of origin in relation to the body confounding notions of truth, disguise and identity.
[i] In Feminism and Theatre (1988), Sue-Ellen Case relates the common practice of casting blond women as ingenues and brunettes in the secondary vamp roles which is seen as betraying cultural attitudes about innocence, purity and desireability in relation to certain racial features: “The casting of beautiful women in ingenue roles, or the rise of the beautiful stage star, participates in patriarchal prejudices that control the sign system of the representation of women on stage” (117).
[ii] lang’s current status as the makeup spokeswoman for MAC cosmetics along with transgendered RuPaul plays heavily upon the contradictions inherent in their assuming these positions. lang and RuPaul do not conform to the normative prescriptions for makeup spokepersons or models and are always positioned in reference to this incongruity. I attended MAC’s Fashion Cares: Photo Ball 1997 which is a fashion show event to raise money and awareness for HIV and AIDS which lang and RuPaul attended as spokespersons. At the media conference for the show these juxtapositions were in evidence. I asked lang what she liked most about her character on the Ellen Degeneres “coming out” show, which was a goundbreaking show because the lead female character, Ellen, reveals that she is “gay.” lang answered, “My hair. A lot of girls in the mid-west probably thought I never looked so good.” Hair has been a contentious issue with lang throughout her carreer. She once said “When I first got to Nashville . . . I was given a pink handbook on how to be a country-and-western star. Section IA, the first rule of country-and-western stardom, is, ‘The higher the hair, the closer to God.’ I tried, but it just wasn’t me” (Robertson 1992, 78). A reporter asked RuPaul who made his dress. His reply was fashion designer, Todd Oldham. The reporter then asked “and kd?” lang responded, “I’m not wearing a dress.” There was much laughter from the media, lang and RuPaul because she was obviously wearing a “man’s” suit and had to check the label to find out who the designer was. The incongruities inherent in their gender reversals engage the play between notions of ‘inner’ and ‘outward’ appearance.
[iii] The emphasis reflects the notions of “natural species” mentioned in chapter one (Butler, Merleau-Ponty) in contrast to alternate species significations such as the hybridized characters in chapter four.
[iv] Dolly Parton is another excellent example for femme camp performance but not within the scope of this thesis.
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