I'm a big fan of
RuPaul's Drag Race -- a competition for drag queens that's equal parts
America's Next Top Model,
Project Runway (at least during seasons one and two where the queens designed a lot of their wardrobe themselves), and maybe a soupcon of
Bad Girls Club. Reality shows are a dime a dozen (almost literally -- one of the reasons reality shows proliferate tv todays is that they cost almost nothing to produce), but Drag Race has a level of self-awareness and cheeky humor not usually seen n television. Oh yeah, and the queens themselves. Drag subculture is rarely, if ever, featured on television. So needless to say I was excited when I first got wind of
RuPaul's Drag U, which is now in its second season. Except when I heard that veteran queens from the original
Drag Race would be putting cis women in drag (note: the show uses the word "bio woman" which I think is a tad insensitive) I mistakenly thought they'd be making women into drag kings. Instead,
Drag U is a standard makeover show -- albeit one with the same tongue-in-cheek fun as Drag Race and drag queens taking the place of New York stylists -- glamming up haggard housewives and renewing their confidence. Color me disappointed.
Is there something about women dressed as men that's inherently more dangerous -- less palatable to the tv audience -- than the inverse? Aside from Murray Hill, I can't name a "famous" drag king. Oh, Lady Gaga's drag alter-ego,
Jo Calderone, brought male drag into the spotlight for about five minutes, but when usually what comes to mind is a kind of hyper-femininity parodied by male drag performers.
In popular media, women in drag is usually limited to women adopting a male identity for some sort of gain. On his blog recently, Michael Musto asked his audience to name the
greatest drag king in movies . His favorites, and the responses given by his readers didn't deviate much from the trope, and said a lot about the paucity of examples of women in drag in movies, listing
Barbara Streisand in Yentl , and 80s cult movie,
Just One of the Guys .
So what do you think? Could a Drag U with actual drag kings be as much of a runaway hit as the original?
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