“A Little More Mascara”

Abstract

This chapter examines the different ways in which drag, homosexuality, and gender have coalesced in three musicals that have drag performers as leading characters: La Cage aux Folles, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Kinky Boots. It discusses celebrate femininity, but only when presented through a male body. Esther Newton agrees; in her classic 1978 study of drag performers, Mother Camp, she argues that “Female impersonators are both performing homosexuals and homosexual performers.” Given Hedwig’s lack of male or female sexual organs, any gender identity is a choice and a performance. Torch Song Trilogy was overtly sexual, including a comic presentation of anal sex in the backroom of a gay bar. In totally separating gender identity from sexuality, Kinky Boots becomes a show about masculinity. One might read this as a manifestation of Harvey Fierstein’s latent misogyny, but the playwright is trying to make the point that gender is irrelevant, at least within the confines of the Broadway musical.