One is standing outside a restaurant on 1st Avenue called Lucky Cheng's. Chinese lettering and a bulletin board with newspaper clippings hint at what is going on inside the restaurant. Fashionably dressed people are running inside. The anticipation grows. Once inside, the senses go on overload. Many different smells, colors, and noises are in the atmosphere. Welcome to Lucky Cheng's. .
A noticeable color scheme is red. The waitresses are beautiful. They are wearing mini skirts, bikini tops, and sequenced dresses, plat formed shoes, and stilettos. Their hair and makeup is immaculate. One begins to wonder how long it takes these drag queens to get ready. One also wonders how do they feel and what are they trying to portray? "How do these "women" identify themselves? What do they think their clothing choices mean? Do they feel powerful?.
There are some drag queens that have male features and are wearing female clothing. Others have had sex change operations to look more feminine. Issues arise about gender and sex. Biologically, these waitresses are male. However, they identify themselves as females. According to the waitress, Tobell, when he was a child he would like to dress up in his mothers clothing. The clothing choices and accessories promote their identities as being female. The high heels, dresses, and skirts are articles of clothing that females are supposed to wear. According to the class notes on September 19, 2003, "gender is something you do.".
Fashion and culture go hand in hand. Fashion can represent belonging to a certain group. Fashion constitutes social relations. Drag is its own culture. It may be compared to the semiotic model. Semiotics "defines social interaction as that which constitutes the individual as a member of a particular culture or society" (Barnard, p31). There is social interaction by messages. The interactions between two drag queens help make up the gender, culture, and meaning.
Very seldom is there comparison and research on both lesbianism and drag culture. Choosing to research these topics presented a topic that is interesting and not widely discussed in a cultural perspective. In this paper, the two groups will be divided, yet combined to show the comparisons as they bo...
Scott has been entertaining and shocking crowds along with several other drag queens every Friday night at The Paddock Club in Greenville, NC for the past five years. ... "Call the fashion police!... I also learned that some drag queens choose to go full-time and make a career out of entertaining. ... Perhaps the root of my initial inability to understand "drag" rested not in the performance of these "queens", but in the audience's reaction to it. ... The drag queens came out for a final bow and the teary eyed crowd responded as best as it could although the mood was somber for th...
The feathered locks of the Bee Gee's and the large and long hair of Cher were still in fashion, but something much larger, much louder was making its way into the music industry. ... Poison was four quasi talented men who came to extreme fortune with the sensational looks of quite frankly, drag queens. ...
Jess becomes friends with members of other oppressed groups, including and not limiting drag queens and Black students in her high school. ... Lesbians have a long tradition of resisting dominant cultural definitions of female beauty and fashion as a way of separating themselves from heterosexual culture politically, and as a way of signaling their lesbianism to other women in their sub cultural group more specifically, the butch has this phobic reputation of being some brawny specimen dressed in leather and chains. ... Images suggesting homosexuality have appeared fairly extensively in mainst...
David Picou's argument, which can be found in The Social and Economic Impact of Carnival: Seminar Papers, states "the size of the costume is dictated by the fact that they are being shown on a large stage- He adds, "the detailing of the Kings' and Queens' costumes will be totally lost if they were not of a certain scale."" ... Costumes can be easily dragged across the stage for the purpose of show, however this defeats the whole artistic nature of mas. ... As a matter of fact, the character makes his way to the stage in the fashion of a pantomime. ...
In the wake of so many decades of colonial myth rehashed as Australian national identity, Australians were grappling for a self-image, fashioned ou of the colonial imperialism of the past and the uncertainties of the immigration influx of the then-present. ...
Police raids were a very prevalent and often violent occurrence at the time, typically ending up with the arrests of anyone underage, anyone in drag (New York state statute required people to wear a minimum of three pieces of attire "appropriate to ones gender"), and most employees; but this time things were different. ...