Safety In Theatricality & The Therapeutic Qualities of Drag
This section explores how drag can offer relief and safety to those who do not feel they fit within the gender binary, and how it can be an opportunity for personal growth.
Alongside the research and creation of this project, I began trying drag for myself. Partly to immerse myself in the experience and partly out of curiosity about my own identity. I had always shied away from facial hair and had never tried binding my chest, however much I had wanted to in the past. Drag offers a place of exploration through theatricality and characterisation. In her book Queering Drag, scholar Meredith Heller writes:
‘Butler notes a distinction between how a gender-bending stage performer “can compel pleasure and applause” and how a trans or gender-nonconforming person “on the seat next to us on the bus can compel fear, rage, even violence.”’ (2020, p.22).
Several interviewees also spoke about how drag and gender-bending can feel more appropriate or safe in the context of performance. Len Gwyn told me they felt that the performativity of drag gave them permission to perform masculine qualities that they usually found embarrassing, yet also made them feel euphoric (2022). Jamie Miles stated that they enjoyed being able to explore masculine qualities in the context of performance that they would otherwise feel uncomfortable with (2022). This suggests that the safety of theatricality can make it easier to explore gendered traits that one might be too afraid to explore in ‘real’ life, and can therefore be somewhat therapeutic.
Drag queen, writer and filmmaker Amrou Al-Kadhi grew up in a strict Muslim family as a gay, non-binary person, and their identity was the cause of great shame throughout their teenage years (2020). In an article in The Guardian, they said,
‘Drag mirrors the key philosophy of CBT therapy […]: the repeated act of manifesting positive beliefs starts to unshackle the negative ones that tied me down. A decade of performing to audiences in the guise of a Middle Eastern goddess has taken me from fears of burning to rejoicing in the knowledge that I’m a girl on fire.’ (Al-Kadhi, 2019).
This carried over into my own exploration of drag, as the positive reinforcement I experienced from the people around me helped me feel comfortable in masculine presentation. I shaded in a moustache with eye shadow and received so many compliments on how it looked that for the first time in ten years I stopped bleaching the hair on my upper lip.
Drag has the potential to be therapeutic for several different reasons, most being gender-affirming, such as the examples given above. As mentioned in the introduction, I also wanted to know whether drag could be used as a vehicle for gaining confidence both personally and as a performer. Performance artist Diane Torr used to run workshops called Man for a Day in New York, in which women would drag up and walk around town aiming to pass as men. Many of the women who took part in these workshops found it a transformative experience. Through exploring what it felt like to walk around as men, they were able to observe the power structures that gender upholds in society from a different perspective. Participants would often report back saying they had gained newfound confidence by asking themselves what their male persona would do in certain situations, and finding themselves responding with much more confidence. Drag gave them the ability to imagine and embody more confident versions of themselves (Torr & Bottoms, 2010).