Questions that Intrigue Me

When I watched Drag U's "The Family that Drags together" and Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp," there were certain questions that I couldn't get off my mind. First of all, being gender female in a body that is male assigned at birth seems like a very individual, personal experience. So how true and genuine is the identity of being a drag queen? It seems like people of this description almost seem to morf into a new type of category (drag) as they broke away from categories of the binary system. Do drag queens enjoy this form of expression because they love to dramatize their gender expression? How much of "showing what I am on the inside" is genuine and how much of it is motivated with the intention of shock and drama? Susan Sontag states the "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration." In her writing and in watching confident drag queens stand next to their family members in the Drag U episode I realized how much this concept intrigues me.

I also really enjoyed reading the quote in Sontag's article "One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art" stated by Oscar Wilde. When I watched the drags on the show Drag U such as Raven with her mom, Jujubee with her sister, and Manila Luzon which her sister, I saw a contrast in being a work of art and in wearing a work of art. It made me wonder if from a family member's point of view, the drag queen that is related to them may already represent a work of art to them. I wonder how they feel about their relative putting on a dramatic show in their gender expression.