Girlfriend:: Men, Women, and Drag

Drag--one gender dressing as the other--crops up everywhere from English pantomime to Japanese kabuki, to New York's now-famous Wigstock Festival. In this illustrated study, Brubach, the style editor for the New York Times, and noted photo-journalist O'Brien troll Bangkok, Tokyo, Berlin, Rio, New York, Paris and London for cultural insights into the drag phenomenon. Writing with nuance and verve, Brubach synthesizes cultural perspectives on sex and gender from the likes of Colette, Lou Reed, Quentin Crisp and Hubert Selby, and casually displays a comprehensive knowledge of such related matters as Marlene Dietrich's career and gender in Buddhist philosophy. Brubach is interested in the ""why"" as well as the ""how"" of drag, and draws upon postmodern and queer theory to discuss how gender is socially constructed. Ultimately, she pulls back from the broader, radical implications of this line of thought and views the politics of male-to-female drag as similar to those involved when whites wear blackface. Although she discusses the phenomenon of women dressing as men (""drag-kings"") and examines the role of drag in gay male culture, in the end Brubach is more concerned with looking in a fairly traditional way at the roles and position of women in a culture in which concepts of ""femininity"" and ""masculinity"" are in constant flux. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)