Kings, queens, and in-betweens : exploring gender and power through drag performances

Includes bibliographical references (pages 110-118).Drag performance illuminates intersectional issues of social power and gender. This thesis provides a feminist analysis on how drag and gender are structured by heteropatriarchal forces and intersectionality. The drag performer's identity interacts with the performance in terms of methodology, execution, aesthetic, goals, and communicated messages. I focus on drag kings, drag queens, and those who fall somewhere between or outside of those categories. This thesis provides a brief historical review of drag, crossdressing, and camp humor in the U.S. in order to situate drag today. The focus is on LGBTQ constituencies and women in popular culture. I explore how drag functions within U.S. popular culture, with a focus on female performers including Mae West, Madonna, Annie Lennox, and Lady Gaga. Often, what I call "unruly femininity" is mislabeled as "queer." Drag reveals how women are limited and oppressed by dominant views of masculinity and femininity. I question if masculinity is compatible with feminism and review its binary limitations. This thesis explores how drag is changed by digital technologies and the Internet -- what I call "cyberdrag." It reveals how the transfer from the corporeal to the digital affects drag. I use Lady Gaga's drag persona, Jo Calderone, as a case study to update how drag operates in the twenty-first century. Centering intersectionality, I review how cross-dressing in drag performance often crosses more than gender, and how those crossings signify social power. I call these crossings "embodied tourism." I test how various combinations of identity influence drag performance and what those differences illuminate about gender and power