Three Lessons Drag Queens Taught Me For a Better, Sillier Life
3. Looking Different is Fun as Long as You’re Not Snobby About It
I used to be “not like other girls.” I hated pink, crying, and I kept my One Direction obsession to myself. I thought that made me “deep” and “interesting”, but all it did was turn me into a pretentious bitch with few female friends.
Consuming feminist media made it clear that my “rebellion” wasn’t nearly as productive as I imagined. I learned that the patriarchy had tricked me into thinking that femininity was my enemy! How devious.
Armed with this knowledge, I set on a journey to understand the ideas and pastimes I had judged so harshly. I read every copy of Seventeen magazine at the library and watched countless Youtube makeup tutorials. While this was fun, I felt the looks being marketed towards teenagers were somewhat plain. Was my style objective supposed to be skinny jeans, a graphic tee shirt, and painting my face different shades of pink until further notice?
Enter: drag. Drag draws inspiration from everywhere: fashion of course, but also TV, movies, paintings, music, animals, eras, and even natural disasters. I’ve seen drag costumes made out of shopping bags, playing cards, chicken wire, and window blinds. Drag makeup can be just as wild. The common denominator is that if you feel good in it, it works! Following drag performers has inspired me to do anything I want with my look, regardless of whether some influencer thinks it’s chic. Sometimes that means wearing glossy pink eyeshadow to Target, sometimes it means looking like an extra in an 80s movie, and sometimes it means dying my hair green to look like a swamp creature.
2. Do Whatever and Everything You Want
I went to theatre school (I know), and even though the department required you to try every aspect of theatre, people quickly assumed roles based on their areas of expertise. This frustrated me. I mostly did dramaturgy work in college, but I missed being on stage. My performance chops dwindled, and I hated that I had become “worse” at the thing I loved.
Shortly after moving back home, a voice in my head reminded me that I had always wanted to learn how to play bass. But that voice was quickly met with another: “Your hands are tiny and weak and you’ll probably suck.” Then I thought of all of the times on RuPaul’s Drag Race, my first introduction to drag, where queens pushed through negative voices and did whatever challenge they were assigned. Sometimes their challenges didn’t go well. But it was funny for them! So I decided to practice my bass as much as possible and be okay with messing up because weird noises are funny.
If there’s something you want to learn how to do, you should do it. What’s stopping you? Who cares if you’re bad at the beginning? Failure can teach you even more than success. It can be hilarious too.
1. Life is Short. Enjoy Things.
I truly believe that we can orchestrate the downfall of cisgender white men as we know them today if we embraced silliness a little more.
Think about it! Content centering cis white men struggling makes up most ‘serious’, ‘esteemed’ pop culture today. They struggle to find meaning, control themselves and others, break free of the binds of a misogynistic society, et cetera. Media depicting that struggle is deemed the height of whatever form it is, and cis white men (and those who want to be accepted by them) revere it. Just look at the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movies, Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums of all time, and your high school English curriculum.
Many pieces of media and activities “for” cis white men do mean a lot to me. However, the meaning of what I’m “supposed to” enjoy as a young woman is just as valuable. Anything marketed towards women, especially young women, is seen as “shallow” and “silly”. Fairy tales, boy bands, dolls, movies that pass the Bechdel-Wallace test, you understand. They suggest lowbrow taste: if women enjoy them, it’s because it was meant for our smushy woman brains. It took falling in love with drag for me to realize and move past that.
When I look at drag queens, I see people who embrace all that femininity has to offer: the wigs and the clothes and the makeup, as well as the attitude. Drag queens look like they’re having the best time, no matter what they’re doing. Drag helped me understand that enjoying myself is nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve stopped worrying about whether the shows or music I consume are “cool enough,” and I no longer feel the need to “edit” myself around people in order to seem easygoing. I’m a brightly colored, goofy, unconventional woman. All the drag queens I love are, too.