Heads swivel as they step on stage. Decked-out colorful wigs. Faces full of glam. Eccentric costuming. Far from the daily nine-to-five day at work, drag performers thrive in the five-to-nine.
“We’re all born naked and the rest is drag,” quips RuPaul, an entertainer and pioneer in the drag community and host of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
RuPaul takes a bold stance on what drag is — that it is, frankly, everything. If drag is indeed so boundless, what is it? Is it the act of a man dressing as a woman? Or a performer lip-syncing to Beyonce while duck-walking on a runway? Or perhaps the winner of a crown and scepter on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’?
Not exactly. For historian Kathleen Casey, there can never be “a stable meaning of the term drag…Drag is about race, class and sexuality as much as it is about gender. If we focus exclusively on only one of these intersections, we fail to see how drag performances are layered.”
At its core, Drag is a stylized performance that harnesses costuming and makeup as tools to present exaggerated gender expression for entertainment. Drag is an evolving performance that practices the art of subversion, a craft that draws in its audience.
“Drag is taking all of your inner creativity and inspiration to create a character or persona that reflects the most elevated and unique version of yourself. It doesn’t always have to include the swapping of gender, but it often involves creating a character with a different gender than was assigned at birth, if it’s gendered at all,” said drag queen Bella Noche, a storyteller and Communications Coordinator for Drag Story Hour NYC, an organization dedicated to providing children around the city education about drag and the queer identity.
Cross-Dressing and Impersonation: The Roots
Before becoming the art form it is today, drag has always had a disputed history. On one end, drag may have started as a global phenomenon. From 18th-century opera performances in China to 16th-century Elizabethan theater in England, the feminization of masculinity is not exclusive to the modern era. The term ‘drag’ was first used in 1860s Victorian England to describe the way long skirts or petticoats would “drag” across the floor when male actors dressed as women for performance. At this time, female actors were unheard of and all characters, including females, were portrayed by male actors.
This beginning to drag, however, utilizes the simplistic definition of drag solely dependent on female impersonation and cross-dressing.
Then came William Dorsey Swann. Born enslaved in Maryland in 1858, Swann was the first to describe himself as the queen of drag. In mockery to their owners, Swann and other enslaved workers would perform the cakewalk – a dance similar to modern-day voguing. Swann’s gatherings required guests to don satin dresses and men’s top hats.
To queer culture historian and professor at Princeton University Channing Gerard, the definition of drag requires two elements: self-expression and competition. Early drag of the 20th century embodied just that. Its epicenter in Harlem, New York, affirms drag’s roots in the performance of Black and Latinx creatives.
The Harlem Renaissance is commonly known as a period where Black artists — notably Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Claud McKay — thrived in a scene that championed freedom of expression and the revival of Black culture. The Hamilton Lodge was an early ball house that gave entrance for such experimentation in the realms of gender and sexuality as well. “[Drag balls are the] strangest and gaudiest of all Harlem spectacles,” said poet Langston Hughes in his autobiography, The Big Sea.
“And the Category Is…”: The Drag Ball Revolution
From drag’s rise from the likes of impersonation and cross-dressing came the development of popular, pioneering drag artists who expanded drag culture.
One of the original pageant queens is Crystal Labeija. Traditional beauty pageants — typically for cisgender women — are well-known, but drag pageants developed in the 1960s as a platform for queer art in the style of singing, comedy, and costume competition, celebrating community despite stigmatization from mainstream society.
In the 1960s, while homosexuality was considered a mental disorder and millions didn’t publicly flock to Pride parades, a craving for expression followed drag artists around the country. Enter The 1967 Miss All-America Camp Pageant, held at New York City’s Town Hall.
Going into this competition, Labeija was one of the few Black performers to be awarded a “Queen of the Ball” title at white-organized balls, previously winning the title of “Miss Manhattan,” Even in these circles, discrimination followed Labeija. Following fellow queen Rachel Harlow’s win, Labeja remarked, “She won’t make money off of my name, darling. She can make it off of Harlow and all the other fools that will flock to her, but not Crystal, darling. Anybody but her.”
A powerful outcry featured in the 1968 documentary The Queen, this was more than just a read — the drag community’s way of giving a witty verbal insult for the sake of performance — of Labeija. It was a protest against what she believed to be a rigged competition in favor of a white, blonde performer.
Distancing themselves from the pageants, Black and Latinx drag artists created “balls,” their own version of the competition, complete with “walking” in different categories for judges to evaluate. By 1972, Labeija organized her own ball, joining with fellow Black queen Lottie Labeija to form The House of Labeija Ball. Thus, House Culture was born — a network where“mothers” and “fathers” teach their drag “children” makeup, fashion, and performing techniques to guide them through the balls. Today, drag houses are a quintessential tradition in the culture, serving as havens that bring creative mentorship and a sense of belonging.
The Balls only continued to flourish, the competition style of performance thriving. Picture the 1980s, with queer clubs filled with Black and brown performers. Sweat is rolling down in waves in the heat of the summer as glamorous after glamorous performer struts down the runway in the hope of coveted trophies. Transgender artists parade around a runway, voguing to “Is It All Over My Face” by the Loose Joints (the town hit at the time). Who will reign supreme in the judges’ eyes? Who will achieve exclusive celebrity status with the best look of the night?

Illuminated by the documentary Paris is Burning, the New York City ball scene was the epitome of queer culture — beyond the superficial glamor, drag is ultimately about empowerment. Nonetheless, this unadulterated freedom of flamboyance was not universal. “In the 90s and early 2000s, drag was kind of underground: in the ballroom scene, the club kid scene, it was like you had to know where to go to find it,” said drag queen Bella Noche.
“You Better Werk:” RuPaul’s Drag Race
How is the drag landscape looking nowadays?
Talent flourishes with original music and choreography; stand-up comedy tests reading the judges; design challenges where contestants hand-make full outfits for the runway — each in a day’s work.
RuPaul’s Drag Race expands upon drag in local performances and on television, where a handful of Drag queens compete in a series of fashion, dance, and comedy challenges to become “America’s Next Drag Superstar,” being judged for their execution and artistry by of panel of judges.
“If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?” The booming voice of RuPaul illuminates the stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race (and its many iterations) every Friday to millions of viewers, uttering this phrase to close out the 30 minutes of candid drag.
While high production value and high concept fashion are the norm for Drag Race today, it wasn’t always at this scale. RuPaul established his career in the 1990s and 2000s as an unadulterated performer in the world of drag. But if ventures like creating “A Shade Shady (Now Prance)” or modeling for MAC Cosmetics weren’t enough, he went on to create RuPaul’s Drag Race, having first aired in February of 2009.
“America’s Next Drag Superstar” is not a title taken lightly. Drag Race has become a worldwide phenomenon to embrace the craft of drag, but beyond the glitter and drama, the show has also become a platform for drag visibility. “We, as a community of drag performers, would not be as far along as we are without things like Drag Race,” said Noche. “It’s really pushed the entire art form into pop culture and to audiences who may not have experienced drag.”
The impact for audiences is profound: “Drag queens and kings contribute to the community by just being people who are normalizing queerness to other people. The fact that RuPaul’s Drag Race is such a mainstream TV show, and the fact that people are comfortable with the fact that it exists is a really cool thing,” said Hikmah Ahmed ’25, president of the Gender-Sexuality Alliance (GSA) at Bronx Science.

Drag Race gives a platform for these stars to rise as performers. Look at one of the most well-known drag queens out there: Bianca del Rio. “Trinity (The Tuck) reminds me of a dear friend of mine from New Orleans. She’s dead,” quipped del Rio in a confessional on season six of RuPaul’s Drag Race about fellow contestant, Trinity (The Tuck) Taylor. If it isn’t apparent, del Rio is the epitome of a comedy queen. While del Rio masters in reading her competitors, others find their success in other avenues.
Your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen, Sasha Colby, was a pageant star before going on to win season 15 of RuPaul Drag Race. Despite understanding the world of the more polished, glamor side of drag,
However, it’s worth noting another impact of Drag Race: its commercialization of drag.
Yes, visibility is vital to any art form — yet, drag began in the balls as a way of artistic subversion. It is a form of counterculture that, in certain ways, is being lost. “With the rise of RuPaul’s Drag Race, drag is in the mainstream…It’s everywhere. That’s a double-edged sword…I feel like the commercialization of drag has somewhat diminished the cultural significance of drag,” noted Noche.
“Reading is Fundamental”: Education and Exposure to Drag
“Reading” is a phrase in drag culture to describe the act of confronting, insulting someone with witty remarks. In the actual sense of the word, increasing literacy about the queer experience is also a necessity.
The American Civil Liberties Union currently tracks 532 anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the country. 208 of them are labeled under the issue of Restricting Student and Educator Rights. From curriculum censorships, to forced outings, attacks on queer individuals have always been systemic. National and state-level governments continue to challenge real discussion, resources, and education opportunities.
But the community continues to fight back.
“Especially in a society that’s trying to ban queer books, and trying to silence queer people, I think it’s important that as a community, as students, and teachers, and faculty, what we should be doing is making queerness normalized within education in the classroom,” said Ahmed ’25.
Just a few decades ago, drag was primarily an underground art form. With a new generation on the rise, the impact of drag is evolving as the art form embraces itself as a learning opportunity. Drag is a powerful catalyst to ongoing education efforts in a program that, quite literally, brings drag to school — Drag Story Hour.

Imagine a storyteller, one that transforms the words on the page into a captivating tale. One that has a flair for the dramatics. One with a warmness and charisma that invites and excites readers of all ages. What if that storyteller also was a drag queen or king? Drag Story Hour holds events hosted by drag artists catered to queer education at schools, libraries, and museums.
“I think that the sooner that a kid discovers what the queer community is — just recognizing that it’s a thing — is important. I know that if I had a program like Drag Story Hour when I was younger, my coming out would have been a lot easier. I probably would have gotten into drag sooner. And it’s just that resource that sometimes one kid needs to see or hear,” said Noche.
Drag Kings and Inclusivity: Drag’s Rejection of the Status Quo
Beyond arguments about the changing culture of drag as a whole, the question of ‘why?’ for these artists remains an important one.

For Bella Noche, it was the freedom of expression. “I grew up in a very conservative family, and their little boy liking mermaids was not exactly ideal. I was very much discouraged from exploring that creativity…[Drag] has really made me become comfortable with myself, even when I don’t have the makeup on.” To many, the drag community is about finding acceptance and familiarity. Identifying as a “drag performer” provides many a new sense of identity.
There is a preconceived notion that drag’s definition is confined to the limits of cross-dressing; a man impersonating a woman to an audience. For others, drag is about boundlessness.
For instance, drag king culture is all about impersonation and playing with the masculine identity. Drag kings may create the gender illusion by drawing on a beard or thickening eyebrows. From satirizing macho men to exploring androgyny, they incorporate more aggressive choreography into performances to play into masculine stereotypes.
It’s no secret, however, that drag kings are less visible. For one, no drag king has ever appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race. “Drag king work I’ve seen is more high concept — things like Kermit the Frog singing from the Jekyll and Hyde musical. Yet, a lot of people don’t even think drag kings exist, but they’re just as valuable to the performance landscape,” said Fiona McLaughlin ’25.
Nonetheless, performers are still pushing boundaries and breaking norms. The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula was the first American reality competition show to feature a drag king, with Landon Cider in Season 3. “I’m a Drag Race fan, but I actually think that Dragula has a lot more of a diverse cast, even though it is in the lens of horror, “ said Noche. “The performers that they cast are very diverse and very informative of what would be considered the underground scene of drag right now…There are so many drag artists and clubs and troops that adamantly push against the commercialized version of drag.”
Then, there’s the possibility that drag opens up. Noche shared with me a memory of a young boy at one of her Drag Story Hours sessions in Brooklyn. After a reading of the book Julian is a Mermaid, fitting for Noche’s own mermaid character, a mother walked up to Noche. Her son had run up to her, exclaiming, “Mommy! I know what I want to be when I grow up! I want to be a mermaid drag queen!” “I saw firsthand that day the magic that Drag Story Hour can bring to a child,” added Noche.
There’s the unapologetic nature of drag that makes it welcoming for all. Take Sasha Colby’s dedication while receiving her crown on Drag Race. “This goes to every trans person, past, present and future, because we’re not going anywhere.”
Drag Today: Continuing Queer Artistry
Today, the art of drag is actively celebrated in almost every corner of entertainment.
Chappell Roan has embraced drag in her artistry. With her surge in popularity this year, she takes inspiration from queens like Sasha Colby and brings drag queens as opening acts for her Midwest Princess Tour.
Drag queens have taken over Broadway with the likes of Jinkx Monsoon starring Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors and the production of Drag: The Musical in development.
“The freedom that someone feels when participating in the art of drag, both in a physical and mental sense, is a freedom that is often truly life-saving, giving a visibility that is integral to one’s self-worth,” added Noche.
The heart and soul of drag lives on through the kids engrossed by drag, through your local king holding a Drag Bingo three blocks away from you, and through you — audiences that support the art of drag.
“Drag is taking all of your inner creativity and inspiration to create a character or persona that reflects the most elevated and unique version of yourself. It doesn’t always have to include the swapping of gender, but it often involves creating a character with a different gender than was assigned at birth, if it’s gendered at all,” said drag queen Bella Noche, a storyteller and Communications Coordinator for Drag Story Hour NYC, an organization dedicated to providing children around the city education about drag and the queer identity.