The History of Drag and Its Influence on Fashion & Beauty

Nov 3

By Abby Noniewicz

Drag is the art of portraying oneself to be particularly masculine or feminine, usually through performance, costuming, and makeup. The art form has a long history and deep ties to modern culture.

Drag balls, which began in the late 1880s but didn’t become popular until the late 1900s, gave drag queens and kings an opportunity to express their style of drag in order to win trophies or prestige. [one sentence succinctly explaining what a drag ball is] One of the earliest pioneers of drag was William Dorsey Swann, a formerly enslaved man in Maryland who would gather other former slaves together to participate in an early version of drag balls. Police would raid these gatherings multiple times a month, and Swann was eventually arrested in 1896 for “running a brothel.” Langston Hughes also wrote about ball culture back in the 1920s, describing women wearing suits and men wearing feathers and gowns. Much of the New York City underground ball scene in the 1960s and onward was organized and ruled by the Black LGBTQ+ community. It gave many queer people a sense of belonging in an unaccepting world, and as a result they created their own culture.

The makeup techniques of drag performers over 50 years ago have been slowly incorporated into the beauty looks we see today. Drag makeup had to be exaggerated for performers to be visible under stage lights, taking advantage of dramatic highlight and contour. These were very industry-only methods, used in theater and perfected by drag queens to give the illusion of a more feminine or masculine facial structure. Contouring was almost exclusive to performances, until social media came into play about a decade ago. The increasing number of TV shows and the rise of social media paved the way for audiences to see these less mainstream techniques.

Nowadays, many people use contouring in their daily makeup routine without knowing its origins of allowing audiences of the past to have a sharp view of a person’s face from the back of the room or theater. The same goes for overlining lips, which many drag performers have done for decades. Modern society subconsciously took the creative and brilliant ideas of these drag performers and incorporated them into the mainstream. Although drag shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race are becoming more popular, drag kings and queens often don’t get specific credit for creating these ideas and techniques, working out the kinks, and paving the way for others to latch onto them.

Richie Rich and Michael Alig, “Club Kids” (1990s) | Photo Credits of GoHakka.com — Richie Rich and Michael Alig, “Club Kids” (1990s) | *Photo Credits of GoHakka.com*

Fashion may be even more influenced by the history of drag balls and the striking outfits that go along with them. Although women ave used shapewear throughout history, many drag performers repopularized the body type of exaggerated curves. Drag was not the beginning of the excitement around defining a woman’s body shape — it dates back to the Victorian era. During this time, there was a similar “ideal” feminine body shape, achieved through cinching the waist with a corset and using a voluptuous skirt to add to the illusion. In the 1920s and later, it became more desirable for women to be slim all around, while still having an unrealistically small waist. This tall, slim look lasted until the early 2000s, even in the drag scene. Padding, which had been used before in drag, nearly became a necessity in achieving the illusion of a “feminine” figure. This happened as the amount of competition for drag performers drastically increased because of the sudden excitement around drag in the mainstream. Performers needed to find new ways to capture audiences’ attention and stand out from their peers on stage. Fake breasts, corsets, and hip padding were used more and more in the drag community to enhance the character or identity that drag performers work hard to achieve.

It is common now to be praised for a curvy body, usually meaning a small waist with large hips. Body shape, however, is starting to become less of one specific ideal, and body positivity is growing in today’s society. This idea reflects drag culture as well, because of the large variety of races, body types, heights, cultures, and more represented by drag performers. Drag queens and kings have created such a diverse and accepting community, and we can only hope that the rest of the world can figure out how to do the same.

Of course, drag is an ever-changing form of art, so these “trends” don’t necessarily apply to everyone in the drag community. For example, many argue that the queens shown on RuPaul’s Drag Race do not embody the true essence of drag, as they compete to satisfy the ideas of just a few judges. The drag scene outside of the show is much more diverse and avant-garde, from the many individuals who ditch the concept and stereotypes of gender altogether, to those who discover their sexual identity through drag. Credit should be given where credit is due, but this principle has unfortunately not been followed in the world of drag.

Drag balls would not have existed the way they did without members of the Black LGBTQ+ community running them, starring in them, winning them, and sharing their tips. While people have often been ridiculed and sometimes arrested throughout history for expressing themselves through drag, society has adopted much of their culture, beauty standards, language, and fashion archetypes with almost no thanks or acknowledgements. On the other hand, so much progress has been made since earlier periods of intolerance, no matter how much further the world has to go. It can go both ways, but one thing is certain — many people you pass on the street or see on your TV screen would not appear the way they do if it had not been for the existence of drag.