"There'd always been drag mock weddings and local pageants," Jeffreys said, "but Flawless made a circuit of it, which still exists today" in the form of Miss Gay America and other nationwide competitions.
So, you know, drag actually mocks identity.
Drag might mock the idea of static identity, but Drag Race has always chosen to highlight how homophobia and transphobia – the lack of acceptance of how people choose and often don't choose to identify – hurts people in very real ways.
He moonwalks Jacko style, drags a mock "dead leg" across the stage, performs dazzling reverse spins and – in a move that must have involved some very peculiar rehearsals – moonwalks and groin thrusts at the same time.
Johnson later recalled that, at the composer's request, he had dragged a mock-reluctant Puccini from the wings to acknowledge the house's applause.
(Isherwood) 'U.S. DRAG' Gina Gionfriddo mocks our obsession with serial killers in this sly, shaky satire of a sensational celebrity culture where even murder can be turned into entertainment (1 20).
The way drag plays with and mocks identity may resonate particularly well with a generation of millennials and post-millennials with far more fluid definitions of gender and sexual identity.
And while RuPaul isn't immune from criticism from the left – the sixth season's "Shemail" controversy resulted in changes to the show about which RuPaul seemingly remains less than enthusiastic – she sees drag's efforts to "mock identity" as a transformational project, not an oppressional one.
"All the commonplace compromises and conventions were booed, mocked, dragged through the mud," Gros writes.
