A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men , and have been a part of gay culture. People do drag for reasons ranging from self-expression to mainstream performance. Drag shows frequently include lip-syncing , live singing, and dancing.
Drag queens vary by type, culture, and dedication, from professionals who star in films and spend a lot of their time in their drag personas, to people who do drag only occasionally. Women who dress as men and entertain by imitating them are called drag kings.
Those who do occasional drag may be from other backgrounds than the LGBT community. There is a long history of folkloric and theatrical crossdressing that involves people of all orientations. Not everyone who does drag at some point in their lives is a drag queen or a drag king. The term "drag" has evolved over time. Traditional definitions of the term drag utilized a gender binary which used a sex-based definition of drag where a person would be considered "in drag" if they were wearing the clothes of the opposite sex for the purposes of entertainment.
However, with new paradigms of gender identity and the embrace of non-binary gender , newer definitions of drag have abandoned this binary framework in favor of defining drag as an art form of gender performance which is not limited to a binary framework but which must engage with and critique conceptions of gender in some fashion.
This could include explorations with heightened forms of masculinity or femininity, as well as playing with other forms of gender identity. Unlike female impersonation , the term drag is closely associated with queer identity.
