In the early days of the gay and lesbian Pride parade in the early 1990s, there was much argument about drag queens. Some felt that they should not have the prominence they were given by reports on the march — newspapers always placed pictures of the most outrageous drags on their front pages.
Critics of the transvestite as image of lesbian and gay protest felt uncomfortable being represented, in the public eye and mind, by those in make-up, feathers, tight skirts, torn stockings and high heels. They wanted images of Pride to show the “ordinary” homosexuals and lesbians, the ones who look just like heterosexuals. This, it was felt, would help normalise homosexuality rather than reinforce the notion that all gay people are freaks who dress up in women’s clothing at the drop of a chapeau.
Now, 22 years later, nobody objects to the drag queens. They sit happily atop floats and cars, or just totter on their heels through the city streets. Their outfits, moreover, seem to have become ever more extravagant. And there is more space, too, nowadays, for other manifestations of freakishness and cartoonish self-representation.
This year’s Jo’burg Pride had a man who marched along cracking a huge whip; it had people dressed up as rather scary clowns; it had men on stilts looming above the crowd. The Factory nightclub’s float looked like a waxwork from a decommissioned Soviet museum repopulated by a handful of hillbillies.
Such images may not always scream “beauty” to the onlooker, but they are a performance of “beauty” — a performance that revalues beauty.
Many drags aim for a semblance of conventional and stylised (female) beauty and glamour, but there are plenty who invest in camp and a (ironic?) celebration of trashiness, or produce a performance of beauty that incorporates ugliness — or at least elements that undercut traditional ideas of beauty.
It’s all part of the fun of Pride; it’s the element of Pride that goes beyond the ordinary. Apart from challenging conventional sexual categories, Pride’s most outrageous performers question the beautiful and, at their best, expand its definition immeasurably.