November, while recognized as a month dedicated to increasing awareness about men’s health – specifically prostate and testicular cancer – has been a month dedicated to drag queens for me.
In the past two weeks, I’ve been to two drag shows, dressed in drag, watched Paris is Burning, and received drag queen make-up tips from Live Longer. If Tootsie was Drag Queen 101, I’m in the master’s program. From all of these things, I’ve learned you might be a drag queen if you:
- wear high heels
- overline your lips
- draw on your eyebrows
- wear a lot of eye makeup
- have big hair
- own and wear wigs
- own props
- are attracted to men
- are attracted to women
- can dance
- can’t dance
- like being on a stage
The last, and most important trait (second only to appearance), is this:
- you can lip sync
If, however, you cannot lip sync well, or at all, do not fret, it is not a priority. A good portion of the queens we recently watched perform appeared to have learned to lip sync by watching old Chinese movies with English (poorly) dubbed in. For me, this made the performance far more entertaining and kept me on the edge of my seat wondering, “Will they move their mouth at the same time as the lyrics?” Not always, and it didn’t seem to matter.
It got even better when their bottom lip quivered. Lip quivering during a performance is the sign of a skilled lip syncing drag queen – an art learned after years of practice, much like tucking. If you can lip (quiver) sync and tuck, you definitely might be a drag queen. Just like we’re all a little bit country and a little bit rock n’ roll, we’re all probably a little bit drag. As RuPaul so wisely said, “We all came into this world naked. The rest is all drag.”