By Nur Faqihah and Nurul Maghfirah
You’ve heard of drag queens, now get ready for its masculine counterpart: Drag Kings.
Stephanie Chan and Liting Tan dressed up as their own Drag King personas respectively.
PHOTO: Nur Faqihah and Uncle Southside
Imagine yourself in a theatre and a male impersonator comes on. Would you clap and cheer or boo and jeer?
Here’s the harsh reality of the Kings, Uncle Southside (played by Liting Tan) and Aloysius D (played by Stephanie Chan), who are ready to rule in the world of drag but are seemingly held back by a lot of setbacks.
Similar to the Queens, flamboyant outfits, theatrical elements and exaggerated makeup is only a quarter of what it truly means to embody a Drag persona.
“I liked the idea of being on stage and embodying masculinity,” expressed Aloysius D, who goes by the pronouns he/him in character, on his journey as a Drag King.
While Uncle Southside, who also goes by he/him pronouns in character, mentions that “being a king wasn’t something I jumped into but somewhere along the way I thought it was fun,”
Though their drag personas are male, these individuals identify themselves as Assigned Female At Birth (AFAB), a term donned by people who are non-binary, agender, intersex or simply someone who do not identify with the Female gender.
Personas on Stage
Aloysius D in his M.I.T school uniform performing a remix of the song “Home” by Dick Lee on stage back in 2017. PHOTO: Aloysious D
Aloysius D described his persona as a typical Singaporean Chinese rich douchebag who had returned to Singapore from studying overseas and loves showing off his coolness. The reasoning behind using the name "Aloysius" made sense as Stephanie Chan teases that it is a typical name that most Chinese Singaporean boys have.
Heading towards a more raunchy alley, Uncle Southside's character is rather pervy but knows his limits. Liting Tan showcases this by always asking for consent from the audience before doing anything extravagant. Behind this character, there is actually more background and depth towards it as it is expressed to cope with a trauma that Liting Tan had faced in their earlier years.
Drag, Assemble
Aloysius D and Uncle Southside sharing makeup tips and discussing non-binary and queer activism during the first episode of the ‘How to Train Your Drag King’ live podcast on 17 June 2021. PHOTO: Taipei Drag Kings Facebook Live
Though Aloysius D and Uncle Southside are at least 3,000km away from each other, that does not stop them from coming together to talk about all things drag through Uncle Southside’s podcast, ‘How to Train Your Drag King’ which garnered 470 views on Facebook.
Sometime in May 2021, Taipei went into lockdown following the COVID-19 pandemic, halting all performances and shows. Uncle Southside recalled that during that moment, he set up the podcast as he “felt the need to do something drag”.
The podcast started out as something spontaneous, where he first reached out to Drag Kings across Taiwan. Eventually, he began to contact drag kings around Asia - From Thailand to Philippines, India, and Manila.
“The whole idea (of this podcast) is to create a safe space for Drag Kings to connect. Drag has the power to help people. There is something therapeutic that happens when you do Drag, which can be a way to help people through their trauma and look into their own healing,”
To Uncle Southside, Drag has helped him find himself and he hopes to be one of the pillars of strength for other drag kings out there too by giving them speaking opportunities as well as raising awareness on drag to his audiences across Asia.
Featuring on the first episode, Aloysius D expressed that “it was fun to really get deep and talk about issues that affect us and exchange makeup tips.”
Journey to the Kingdom
Aloysius D’s go-to outfit in his everyday life as a Drag King, donning an androgynous style by wearing a harness under the suit to add a queer edge, not being afraid of the judgement from public eyes. PHOTO: Nur Faqihah
“Nobody is born immediately as a drag king - I had to learn”
Being a Drag King is definitely not easy.
Albeit having the term "Drag", being a Drag King is not as glamorous or extravagant as Drag Queens.
Drag Queens showcases typically men who bedazzle themselves with layers of exaggerated feminine makeup - winged eyeliner that goes beyond your brow line, stacking heaps of false lashes together on each eye, that eventually catches the curiosity of the audience.
When you think of Drag Queens, you would mostly picture them like the stars of the American reality TV series "RuPaul's Drag Race". Perhaps, Trixie Mattel?
However, when it comes to Drag Kings, most of these performers are rather reserved in their styling on stage - simple makeup that doesn't include glittery eyeshadows, showing manly contours with chiselled jaws and occasionally a butt-chin. Their outfits would mainly consist of a binder or body tape strapped to their chest underneath to hide their natural curves, if any.
Drag Kings are more diverse in the sense where not all of them look the same or have a similar silhouette when cast as a shadow, some of them having a simpler style with a suit and tie, and some being more glaring with half-naked bodies accompanied with padded muscles to show a more explicit character.
Both Uncle Southside and Aloysius D were never good at makeup in the beginning, even the basic steps, but they had learned their way up as they continued performing Drag.
Besides the aesthetic area of the art, the beginning of venturing out as a Drag King was not that feasible.
Aloysius D, who was initially (and currently) a Drag Queen under the stage name Polly A Maury, had started out as a Drag King since December 2016, where he had performed as a Drag King for the first time alongside other Drag Queens as the only King. It was surely nerve-wrecking for him to be the only "odd one out" and seeing the crowd experience some sort of culture shock as they were used to only seeing the female counterparts of Drag.
As for Uncle Southside, he visited a drag salon that eventually led him to meeting other people who were Drag Kings.
“I was shaking the whole time”, Uncle Southside chuckled as he reminisced about his first-ever stage as a Drag King.
Uncle Southside performing for T Studio, a Taiwanese LGBT clothing store, in front of a homey crowd last December to celebrate the company’s anniversary.
PHOTO: Uncle Southside
The Struggles Within
Many may confuse doing drag with its correlation to gender identities. To clarify, not all individuals who perform drag are transgender, just like how not all transgenders are Drag performers. To put it simply, Drag is a form of art where performers put on a character of the opposed or preferred gender temporarily.
Performing Drag allows these Kings and Queens to explore a new identity and sometimes gender euphoria - where you feel comfort, joy and excitement with your own body, a term mainly felt by people who don't relate to their own assigned gender.
“I think drag can be a way for people to find gender euphoria, for me I like the idea of transforming into a character I have crafted myself, and being able to express myself with both my body and as a fictional character I created myself”, emphasized by Aloysius D.
"Doing Drag has helped me come to terms with and be comfortable with myself in my own skin”, Uncle Southside muses, as he opens up about the reason why he had started being Drag King and his past experiences.
Uncle Southside finds Drag to be an outlet that expresses and deals with the demons that come with being masculine, as opposed to conforming to the stereotypical feminine individual that society has set.
Being a non-binary AFAB may be hard for not only Drag performers but other individuals who are under the same umbrella - Not knowing where you stand in society, worrying if you aren't masculine enough that nobody takes you seriously because "you look like a woman", being misgendered, facing gender envy and more.
In contrast to gender euphoria, gender envy is the term where non-cisgendered individuals feel the desire or wish they looked like their preferred gender - in this case of Drag Kings, Males.
Aloysius D expressed, "I don't really have gender envy but it has helped me to feel more comfortable and attractive as myself, and more free to experiment with gender expression, aesthetics and performance. I never quite felt good at being either femme or butch/masculine but this has given me a way to play with the extremes of both."
Undoubtedly, Drag has definitely helped both Uncle Southside and Aloysius D cope with their gender image issues by allowing them to express themselves in a different way.
Worthy of the throne
A close-up of Aloysius D’s classic Drag King makeup look consisting of extra large eyebrows, blue eyeshadow and lipstick, and facial hair, adding a more theatrical and less realism element to convey Drag as a ‘larger than life’ fantasy. PHOTO: Nur Faqihah
With the increase of Drag Queens riding high, Uncle Southside credits Drag Queens around the world for paving the way for the art of Drag. However, he could not hide his disappointment when expressing how “queens are more prominent because masculinity is something difficult to perform,” and that “it takes a lot of bravery for one to do it”.
To put into perspective, Uncle Southside compares Drag with how “fathers are traditionally less vocal than mothers,”
As the Drag King scene across Asia is on a smaller scale, Aloysius D has found himself struggling to get performance gigs. With an average of 1-3 gigs a year since 2016, many events are not so open to the idea of having Drag Kings as a form of entertainment.
Evidently, Drag Kings have to work much harder to prove themselves as they tend to face a tougher crowd. Embodying masculinity is not exactly something the audience wants to see at a nightclub, but the use of flashy elements and good choices of theatricals could help.
When those aren’t enough, “I would make my movements bigger and do extra to match my act with the crowd or else the bar manager may not book us anymore. They usually want to see flashy stuff that aren’t too complicated,”
In Singapore, Aloysius D does not get booked frequently as it depends more on the show producers than on the audience demand. Regarding show rates, there is a standard pricing but it usually relies on the show and producers.
"There currently aren't that many events which want to have Drag Kings, and not enough of a Drag King scene to ensure a large enough number of consistent high-quality performers" he sighed as he explained to us the reality of being a Drag King behind the velvet theatre curtains.
The lack of bookings may come with the stereotypes on Drag Kings, commonly heard by Aloysius D in which:
“People think Drag Kings are amateurs and not as good.”
“Drag Kings are not as entertaining, and as flashy as drag queens.”
“They just have to impersonate men - simply any old shirt and jeans, not putting much effort.”
But the truth is, you can actually find various types of flamboyant Drag Kings out there. You just have to give them a chance to show you what they got.
Would you?
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