Mark Edward and Stephen Farrier, eds. Drag Histories, Herstories, and Hairstories: Drag in a Changing Scene Volume 2 London: Methuen Drama, 2021. 215 p. £67.50. ISBN: 978-1-350-10436-5.

Abstract

Edward and Farrier’s second edited volume turns attentions to historical drag with a collection of examples ranging from nineteenth-century Japan via Barbados to the ‘FunPubs’ofNorthernEngland and panto in Belfast. Reflecting the first volume’s desire to investigate lesser-known drag practices, these fifteen chapters act to illuminate and preserve the historical and cultural multiplicity of drag. Despite the range of examples, overarching themes do emerge. Jacob Bloomfield’s investigation of ex-service men performing drag after the Second World War counterpoints Isabelle CoyDibley’s detailed examination of the Japanese allfemale Takarazuka Revue. While they stand at the opposing ends of queening and kinging practice (to say nothing of stylistic and cultural differences), both cases are set against heavily patriarchal societies but can promote themselves as ‘family fun’ due their heavily staged nature. This acceptability, though, only highlights the limitations of drag, as the Japanese women are encouraged to renounce their masculine roles to be dutiful wives and mothers once again. The importance of staging is foreshadowed in Penny Arcade’s foreword when she recalls the impact of Billy Hansen. Billy was a young man who won the  tri-state drag competition in Hartford, Connecticut, by eschewing the fashionable impressions of Hollywood stars and embracing his ability to pass as a woman without makeup and go shopping, complete with lady wallet. Hansen’s victory indicated a shift in the dragworld from entertainment, as seen in Bloomfield andCoyDibley’s chapters, to also embrace a more selfaware and political drag. As with the first volume, this collection has sought to represent many facets of drag. Farrier’s own chapter on the importance of kinging is an important one that, along with Isabelle CoyDibley’s, points to the different challenges faced by kings when performing drag within a patriarchal system. While drag has developed a subgenre of lifelike imitation, in the art of kinging a difficult and politically charged tightrope is being walked where imitation often tellingly stops short of a lifelike imitation of the hegemonic male. Complicating drag further is Nando Messias’s powerful narrative, which explores the intersections of drag, race, and cultural variations of gender expression from a first-person perspective. Nick Ishmael-Perkins follows by peeling away the layers of Mother Sally, the ‘undersexed and hypersexual’ character of Barbadian carnival, revealing her to be a contested character that negotiates with the competing interests of folklore tradition, carnival, colonialism, Christianity, tourism, and shifting social attitudes to the LGBTQ movement. Meanwhile Simon Dodi’s chapter on camp as a culturally contested and evolving phenomenon that traces four approaches, from Sontag’s aesthetic reading to Meyer’s camp as strategic performance, is a particular highlight of the volume. This chapter is arguably a key by which to unlock the potential of drag in other chapters. Any student of campwill find this piece illuminating. Each volume of Drag in a Changing Scene can stand apart, but together they offer a fascinating insight into the changing world of drag and successfully trouble any attempt to box drag off as a sub-category of the arts or of gender studies. I am left by this volume as I was by the first: entertained, fascinated, and calling for more.  