COMEDY

68 GENDER AND SEXUALITYfinancial success that putting on drag has brought Paul O’Grady as wellas Lily’s own history of low-grade prostitution, the selling of women isalways thematically near.How might we then think about the representation of gender throughdrag acts and female impersonators? Certainly the politics of draghave produced a number of theoretical perspectives on its representationof gender, although it must be acknowledged that these are almostexclusively concerned with the meaning of drag in gay and lesbianculture, where comedy is not always the primary focus of the act. EstherNewton, writing in 1979, argued that drag existed within a two-tier‘sartorial system’ in which the gender identification of the performerwas best understood in relation to the first two layers of their clothing.The top layer of clothing, visible on the outside, was a ‘costume’ andpresumed to be part of an act or symbolic presentation on behalf of thewearer. The second layer of clothing, essentially underwear, hiddenfrom view, reveals the true nature of the wearer’s gender identificationthat ‘anchors’ their gender during the performance. Thus, Newtonargues, drag, ‘poses an opposition between one sex-role sartorial systemand the “self”, whose identity has to be indicated in some way’, because,‘when impersonators are performing, the oppositional play is between“appearance” which is female, and “reality”, or “essence”, which ismale’ (Newton, 1979:101). Drag is then a parodic interplay between‘appearance’ and ‘essence’, in which the performer retains their ‘real’gender via the guarantee of the concealed body. Applying Newton’sposition to comic drag, we might conclude that its garish makeup,euphemistic sexual content, and parody of female behaviour amounts tomimicry and mockery of women by men who always confidentlyremain men. Yet Newton’s sartorial distinction remains questionable:how can one set of clothes be said to stand for gender authenticity,while another represents quotation and parody? Mark Simpson, forexample, has argued that drag can go beyond a ‘mere carnival’ parodyof women and challenge the heart of suppositions about gender insociety. Drag, he writes, can,take the form of an incitement to rebellion. It can express a desireto revolt against the most tyrannical of laws, the ‘natural’ linkbetween sex and gender. This drag-as-rebellion, strange to relate,can even represent a rejection of the denigration of women’sbodies on the basis of lack.(quoted in Bruzzi, 1997:165)