`` Drag Kings Masculinity And Performance `` By Judith...

Drag queens and kings, are the individuals who represent a very prominent part of marginalized queer culture. They wage war against the formulated category of male and female, which has been fossilized within our society. Using weapons like clothes and makeup, they transform themselves in order to confound, amaze, and deliver a unique and revealing kind of performance. Although, drag queens have fiercely and fabulously strutted themselves into the limelight, their counterpart, the drag king, has remained a more downplayed subculture, which mainstream society is numbly indifferent to. Many have speculated on how men could more successful pull off being women, while women being men remains, according to society, as unauthentic and purely performative. Author of â€Å"Drag Kings: Masculinity and Performance†, Judith Halberstam writes that the reason drag queens have become more accepted is because of the social insistence that masculinity â€Å"just is† and therefore canno t be performed by women, while femininity is inherently artificial and therefore more easily performed and embodied. However, these social perceptions of gender are no more than that, perceptions. The underlying truth to these drag subcultures is that they reveal something unsettling about society and the individuals who live within its social parameters. When drag queens and kings â€Å"imitate† gender, many think it entertaining but nevertheless an imitation, that at the end of the day the queens on stage are men and