Drag artists in Hong Kong keep things raw with perfectly imperfect shows – forget RuPaul’s Drag Race
- Drag Jam has little of the polish and sheen of RuPaul’s Drag Race but is all about the freedom to experiment and, as members joke, ‘technical difficulties’
We can credit RuPaul’s Drag Race for bringing the art of drag into the mainstream, but what started out as a subversive underground art form has traded much of its grit for glamour, and queens that have made the television show’s cut in recent years often exhibit high-budget costumes, impeccable make-up, large social-media followings and fully formed personal brands.
Some argue that this is something of a departure from drag’s origins as a gathering place for the marginalised, that the televised iteration creates a cookie-cutter mould for an art form that is meant to be about freedom of expression – and it’s not unusual to hear judges on the show tell contestants: “That’s not drag”, reminding them to put on a waist cincher, more make-up, or to correct a “meaty tuck” (ie, do a better job of tucking away their genitals to create the female illusion).
And besides typical drag queens – ie female impersonators – current Jammers include a few drag kings and one bio queen (a colloquial term used for a cisgender female who also presents as female onstage).
Two of the cisgender male performers don’t don wigs; the drag kings don’t present exclusively as male – it’s all a bit ambiguous, and that’s much of the fun.
