{"id":17315,"date":"2021-10-26T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T16:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=17315"},"modified":"2021-11-02T17:13:34","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T21:13:34","slug":"what-is-drag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2021\/10\/26\/what-is-drag\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Drag??"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

In starting this new weekly piece for arts, ink, I am aware that this topic may not appeal to everyone. It also may not be something that everyone even knows anything about\u2013 or perhaps, if you do know what the word \u201cdrag\u201d refers to, perhaps its only from Rupaul\u2019s Drag Race or a class on men dressing as women for Shakespeare. So, to properly discuss drag and the culture and world surrounding it, we first <\/span> need to define drag.<\/span><\/p>\n

So: what is Drag?<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Drag is not dressing as a different gender. It is not putting on makeup, or gluing down your eyebrows. Doing drag does not make you trans. It is not something that can only be done by men.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Drag is an art.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s it. That\u2019s the definition. More specifically, it is a visual and performance art inherently (but not necessarily) linked to queerness and often including makeup, hair, outfits, and live (or digital, in the pandemic age) performance. There are different subsets of drag, such as drag queens, kings, and things. Not all drag queens are men dressed as women, some are cis women, or trans women, or nonbinary AFAB and AMAB people. Same goes for kings, and things don\u2019t really have much of a gender to even be connected to in the first place. For someone to be a drag queen or king or thing or simply a drag artist, they simply have to say \u201cI\u2019m a drag queen. This is my drag.\u201d And that\u2019s it! All forms of drag, no matter what they are or in what capacity they appear in, are valid.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Not all of them are good, but hey. We all did bad drag at some point. How else are we supposed to become good drag artists?<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For this weekly column, you\u2019ll mainly be following drag done by one specific artist: me, Pinball McQueen (see image above). The name is a pun on a Pinball Machine (try saying it out loud). I consider myself a drag nuisance (rather than a king or queen) and I often straddle the line of horror, clown, and theatre kid. I\u2019ve been doing drag for about a year now, changing as time goes on, and creating digital performances and looks for a variety of different shows online.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You will not be stuck with me for the entire duration of this column. I will reference, include photos of, and talk about other drag artists that you may or may not know throughout the course of this blog.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This first week, as we focus on defining drag and introducing my drag, I\u2019ve chosen the featured image for the week to be one of my favorite looks from last year. There\u2019s not as much as a clear story or reference I can add to this image other than the fact that it was one of my favorites I\u2019ve ever done. Every week I\u2019ll focus on a more specific topic within my drag or queer culture, such as horror and queerness, dungeons and dragons \/ fantasy tropes, the met gala, trans representation in theatre\u2026 You get the gist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hopefully, this introduction and opening weren\u2019t too boring\u2013 and I promise next week will pick up a lot more. Until then, Pin out!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In starting this new weekly piece for arts, ink, I am aware that this topic may not appeal to everyone. It also may not be something that everyone even knows anything about\u2013 or perhaps, if you do know what the word \u201cdrag\u201d refers to, perhaps its only from Rupaul\u2019s Drag Race or a class on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2247,"featured_media":17759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[330,1757,24,332],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17519,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17315\/revisions\/17519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}