Drag Kings vs Male Illusionist

Dragology for Beginners

Chapter 6

Drag Kings vs Male Illusionist

Welcome back! I hope all of you have some shows lined up already, but again if you haven’t don’t worry it does take some time. What we are going to be discussing today is the difference between Drag Kings and Male Illusionists.

First we are going to be talking about Male Illusionists. If you remember from Chapter 2, Dress/Music, I talked a bit about ‘illusionists’ being Kings who portray a certain artist. Well a Male Illusionist is simply a woman portraying a real man. Normally that means they wear normal clothes that you would buy from a store. It can have basic alterations to it, but nothing too fancy. Basically these types of performers want people to see them as a man on stage performing, not a woman on stage performing as a man. They want to hear whispers in the crowd saying, “Is that a man or a girl?” This kind of performing is difficult to pull off, because even after all of the transitioning from woman to man, women still have a femme side to them and it’s hard to hide, but if you are one who can pull it off it pays off well in the end. Male Illusionists try not to do anything crazy during performances and they don’t wear crazy costumes.

Then there are the Drag Kings and Drag Kings are different in the fact that they don’t just wear normal, store bought clothes. Drag Kings are Kings and they have to shine like Kings. In the Entertainment world, Kings do compete against Drag Queens and Queens, are, well Queens. They have crazy outfits that sparkle and glitter and shine. For Kings to be able to stand out against all of that glitter, they have to glitter as well. Drag Kings normally make their own alterations to their clothing by adding rhinestones, glitter, their stage name, studs, anything and everything. Some of them even wear crazy wigs or have crazy colored hair and makeup. Drag Kings are there to put on a show in the sense that they are Kings and Kings need their jewels. No Drag King is going to look like the other.

Now the lines start to blur after awhile, some people may disagree about the ‘definition’ of a Drag King, and some people may put the two groups as one, which is fine, but one basic rule does apply as said by Victoria Cornerstone, “Good drag ain’t cheap and cheap drag ain’t good.” You need to put a lot of time, thought and effort into what you are wearing and sometimes that even means a lot of money. Though Good Will and thrift stores are a great place to look into as well. You don’t always have to spend a lot of money to look like you spent a lot of money.  ;)

Well that is all for this chapter. Please keep coming back because you never know what next week’s topic will be and please keep sending in your questions and comments I enjoy reading them. J Peace my brothers.