‘We’re all born naked and the rest is drag’ : constructing and performing a drag queen self in Malta

Abstract

This study seeks to visualise the art of drag through a sociological lens in an attempt to explore and understand the journey individuals undertake to construct and perform a drag queen self, particularly in Malta, where the existing drag scene is a niche community within an already small-scale local context. Although the process of constructing and performing a drag queen self has received little attention in empirical research, this study basis its framework on sociological contributions related to gender construction and gender performance. In existing literature, scholarly works attribute drag performances to a simultaneous ability to reproduce and contest the gender order in heteronormative societies. To investigate the experiences of drag queens and their efforts in constructing and preforming a drag persona, this research captured the ventures of three Maltese drag queens through in- and out-of-drag interviews. The exploratory data was analysed in a thematic approach to generate a narrative record of the research findings. The latter illustrates how drag facilitates individuals to express inherent fondness for performing and engaging in female attire in a confident manner to reveal their ‘inner drag queen’ on stage. In such settings, drag queens highly value social interactions with audiences who expect hyperbolical exhibitions of gender. In doing so, drag queens simultaneously subvert the heteronormative gender order and reproduce exaggerated and illusionary depictions of heteronormative gender norms. Such ability confirms RuPaul Charles’ (2018) catchphrase which suggests that our perceived reality is an illusion, hence “we’re all born naked and the rest is drag”.