"Doin' the Varsity Drag": The Cockettes' Queering of the Mainstream
Thursday, February 13, 2020: 4:20 PM
Astoria Room (Hilton Chicago)
In 1971 the San Francisco-based group The Cockettes issued The Official COCKETTES T.M.: Paper Doll Book. The booklet contained twenty-three paper doll forms of individuals affiliated with the group, along with photographs and drawings depicting optional clothing and accessories. Most of the pages encouraged a genderfuck sensibility; some picture the doll forms in what we could conventionally call “drag” and in many, the costumes and styling allow for a fluid approach to the conscious performance of gender. In appropriating a format popular from the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Cockettes nod to the conventions by which children become acculturated into normative gender roles and invite their
readers to de- and re-construct those very roles. In addition to gender-bending, the Paper Doll Book also queers our understanding of drag, expanding its possibilities to the performance of our social identities more broadly writ. To wit: Martin is pictured alongside the dress-up accessories of a male cheerleader’s uniform, with the caption “Doin’ the varsity drag,” in recognition of the way in which the hippie assumes the attire of a “mainstream” peer. Martin’s page asserts that even rituals of some heteronormative behavior, such as cheerleading, are a form of learned social action and become a costume particular to a
time and place and available to don and shed. Deploying drag as a tool both fun and subversive, the Cockettes reveal the mainstream to be equally “queer” as the margins and offer readers possibilities for re-considering how they too might be "doin' a drag."
readers to de- and re-construct those very roles. In addition to gender-bending, the Paper Doll Book also queers our understanding of drag, expanding its possibilities to the performance of our social identities more broadly writ. To wit: Martin is pictured alongside the dress-up accessories of a male cheerleader’s uniform, with the caption “Doin’ the varsity drag,” in recognition of the way in which the hippie assumes the attire of a “mainstream” peer. Martin’s page asserts that even rituals of some heteronormative behavior, such as cheerleading, are a form of learned social action and become a costume particular to a
time and place and available to don and shed. Deploying drag as a tool both fun and subversive, the Cockettes reveal the mainstream to be equally “queer” as the margins and offer readers possibilities for re-considering how they too might be "doin' a drag."