Faux Queen

Faux Queen
Author: Monique Jenkinson
Publisher: Bywater Books
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2022-01-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1612942229

Faux Queen: A Life in Drag is the memoir of a ballet-obsessed girl who moves to San Francisco from the suburbs and finds her people at the drag club. It joyously chronicles Monique Jenkinson’s creation of her drag persona Fauxnique, the people and cultural practices that crash her identity into being, her journey through one of the most experimental moments in queer cultural history, and her rise through the nightlife underground to become the first cisgender woman crowned as a major pageant-winning drag queen. Jenkinson finds authenticity through the glee of drag artifice and articulation through the immediacy of performing bodies. She pens a valentine to gay men and their culture while relaying the making of an open-minded feminist and queer ally. Faux Queen finds deep healing in irreverence and posits that it might be possible for us to come together in fabulous difference on the dance floor.

A Drag Queen's Guide to Life

A Drag Queen's Guide to Life
Author: Bimini Bon Boulash
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2022-06-09
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0241996759

'MAGIC! A fun, fierce, honest origin story of how to drag yourself up out of trouble and become an icon' Katherine Ryan 'A triumph for UK queer culture' Travis Alabanza 'Eye-opening, intelligent, thoughtful as well as sassy and surprising - a must read' Lorraine Kelly _______________________________________ A witty and inspiring guide to transforming your life through lessons from drag, by the UK's favourite drag queen and star of RuPaul's Drag Race UK, Bimini Bon Boulash. From being told she couldn't have dance lessons as a kid in Great Yarmouth to having to conform to the stereotypes of the gay scene in London's East End, people have always been trying to put Bimini Bon Boulash in a box. It was only through discovering the art of drag that she began to fight back against those preconceptions, and understand that she had the power to define herself. In A Drag Queen's Guide to Life, Bimini tells the story of how drag took her from the brink of self-destruction to become a gag-inducing, death-dropping, plant-based superstar. Drawing on her own experience as a nonbinary person in a binary world, as well as inspirational stories from history, politics, pop culture and fashion, she uses all her wit, charm and kindness to show us how to lead the lives we wish we could lead, through the life-changing magic of dragging up. _______________________________________ 'Radical, life-affirming, and utterly important for this time' Riyadh Khalaf 'A very important read' Gottmik 'She's a superstar' Kathy Burke 'You will always be our winner' Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London 'A force of nature' James Acaster

Eccentric California

Eccentric California
Author: Jan Friedman
Publisher: Bradt Travel Guides
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2005
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 9781841621265

Jan Friedman's Eccentric America proved that the most unlikely events and landmarks could become tourist attractions. This award-winning title is dedicated to the sheer lunacy of California and her citizens, covering the biggest, the best, the wackiest and weirdest of the state's people and places. From art-car and golf-cart parades to the Valentine's Day Sex Tour at the San Francisco Zoo; from a festival that moons Amtrak to a town with its own language; from obsessed collectors of Pez, yo-yos, and bananas to kitschy theme motels and a man who built a three-storey mountain out of hay, adobe, and old paint. Eccentric California takes an in-depth look at one very peculiar place.

The Bodies of Others

The Bodies of Others
Author: Selby Wynn Schwartz
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2019-03-15
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0472125028

The Bodies of Others explores the politics of gender in motion. From drag ballerinas to faux queens, and from butoh divas to the club mothers of modern dance, the book delves into four decades of drag dances on American stages. Drag dances take us beyond glittery one-liners and into the spaces between gender norms. In these backstage histories, dancers give their bodies over to other selves, opening up the category of realness. The book maps out a drag politics of embodiment, connecting drag dances to queer hope, memory, and mourning. There are aging étoiles, midnight shows, mystical séances, and all of the dust and velvet of divas in their dressing-rooms. But these forty years of drag dances are also a cultural history, including Mark Morris dancing the death of Dido in the shadow of AIDS, and the swans of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo sketching an antiracist vision for ballet. Drawing on queer theory, dance history, and the embodied practices of dancers themselves, The Bodies of Others examines the ways in which drag dances undertake the work of a shared queer and trans politics.

The Queens' English

The Queens' English
Author: Chloe O. Davis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2024-04-30
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1665926864

This young readers adaptation of The Queens’ English is a nonfiction illustrated reference guide to the LGBTQIA+ community’s contributions to the English language. This playful, richly illustrated visual dictionary is the perfect book for anyone who has ever wondered about the origin of phrases like “boi,” “drag,” or “demisexual,” the history of the word “queer,” and the wonderfully diverse, wide-ranging histories that have contributed to LGBTQIA+ culture and vocabulary. Drawing from traditions as divergent as the ancient poet Sappho to the underground ball scene of the 1980s, from the Stonewall Riots to RuPaul’s Drag Race, this glossary is a colorful compendium—and a celebration of every king, queen, butch, femme, trans, folx, and enby who has shaped the history, identity, and limitless imagination of queerness.

Playing it Queer

Playing it Queer
Author: Jodie Taylor
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2012
Genre: Music
ISBN: 3034305532

Popular music has always been a dynamic mediator of gender and sexuality, and a productive site of rebellion, oddity and queerness. The transformative capacity of music-making, performance and consumption helps us to make sense of identity and allows us to glimpse otherworldliness, arousing the political imagination. With an activist voice that is impassioned yet adherent to scholarly rigour, Playing it Queer provides an original and compelling ethnographic account of the relationship between popular music, queer self-fashioning and (sub)cultural world-making. This book begins with a comprehensive survey and critical evaluation of relevant literatures on queer identity and political debates as well as popular music, identity and (sub)cultural style. Contextualised within a detailed history of queer sensibilities and creative practices, including camp, drag, genderfuck, queercore, feminist music and club cultures, the author's rich empirical studies of local performers and translocal scenes intimately capture the meaning and value of popular musics and (sub)cultural style in everyday queer lives.

Drag Queens and Beauty Queens

Drag Queens and Beauty Queens
Author: Laurie Greene
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2020-12-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1978813880

The Miss America pageant has been held in Atlantic City for the past hundred years, helping to promote the city as a tourist destination. But just a few streets away, the city hosts a smaller event that, in its own way, is equally vital to the local community: the Miss’d America drag pageant. Drag Queens and Beauty Queens presents a vivid ethnography of the Miss’d America pageant and the gay neighborhood from which it emerged in the early 1990s as a moment of campy celebration in the midst of the AIDS crisis. It examines how the pageant strengthened community bonds and activism, as well as how it has changed now that Rupaul’s Drag Race has brought many of its practices into the cultural mainstream. Comparing the Miss’d America pageant with its glitzy cisgender big sister, anthropologist Laurie Greene discovers how the two pageants have influenced each other in unexpected ways. Drag Queens and Beauty Queens deepens our understanding of how femininity is performed at pageants, exploring the various ways that both the Miss’d America and Miss America pageants have negotiated between embracing and critiquing traditional gender roles. Ultimately, it celebrates the rich tradition of drag performance and the community it engenders.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies
Author: Abbie E. Goldberg
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
Total Pages: 1023
Release: 2021-02-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1544393822

Transgender studies, broadly defined, has become increasingly prominent as a field of study over the past several decades, particularly in the last ten years. The experiences and rights of trans people have also increasingly become the subject of news coverage, such as the ability of trans people to access restrooms, their participation in the military, the issuing of driver’s licenses that allow a third gender option, the growing visibility of nonbinary trans teens, the denial of gender-affirming health care to trans youth, and the media’s misgendering of trans actors. With more and more trans people being open about their gender identities, doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, counselors, educators, higher education administrators, student affairs personnel, and others are increasingly working with trans individuals who are out. But many professionals have little formal training or awareness of the life experiences and needs of the trans population. This can seriously interfere with open communications between trans people and service providers and can negatively impact trans people’s health outcomes and well-being, as well as interfere with their educational and career success and advancement. Having an authoritative, academic resource like The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies can go a long way toward correcting misconceptions and providing information that is otherwise not readily available. This encyclopedia, featuring more than 300 well-researched articles, takes an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to trans studies. Entries address a wide range of topics, from broad concepts (e.g., the criminal justice system, activism, mental health), to specific subjects (e.g., the trans pride flag, the Informed Consent Model, voice therapy), to key historical figures, events, and organizations (e.g., Lili Elbe, the Stonewall Riots, Black Lives Matter). Entries focus on diverse lives, identities, and contexts, including the experiences of trans people in different racial, religious, and sexual communities in the United States and the variety of ways that gender is expressed in other countries. Among the fields of studies covered are psychology, sociology, history, family studies, K-12 and higher education, law/political science, medicine, economics, literature, popular culture, the media, and sports.

Traversing Gender

Traversing Gender
Author: Lee Harrington
Publisher: Mystic Productions Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2016-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1942733836

In the current age of gender identity and transgender awareness, many questions are coming to light for everyone. Whether brought about by media and cultural attention or personal journeys, individuals who have never heard of transgender, transsexual, or gender variant people can feel lost or confused. Information can be hard to find, and is often fragmented or biased. Meanwhile, trans people are getting a chance to dialogue with each other and finally be heard by the world at large. In Traversing Gender: Understanding Transgender Realities, author Lee Harrington helps make the intimate discussions of gender available for everyone to understand. Topics include: What the words "trans" "transgender" mean, differences (and crossovers) between sex, gender, and orientation, the wide array and types of trans experiences , social networking and emotional support systems for trans people, navigating medical care, from the common cold to gender-specific procedures, what "transitioning" looks like, from a variety of different approaches, how legal systems interplay with gender and trans issues, extra challenges based on gender, race, class, age and disability, skills and information on being a successful trans ally. Bringing these personal matters into the light of day, this reader-friendly resource is written for students, professionals, friends, and family members, as well as members of the transgender community itself.

Contemporary Drag Practices and Performers

Contemporary Drag Practices and Performers
Author: Mark Edward
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-03-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350082961

In recent years drag performance has moved from the fringes to emerge as a mainstream phenomenon, showcased on TV shows in the US and the UK. This collection offers a diverse range of critical engagements by drag performers, makers, scholars and writers reflecting on work from the UK, USA, Israel, Germany and Australia. Moving beyond discussions of gender theory, the essays consider contemporary drag performance practices, connecting them to the histories, communities and politics that produced them. Chapters range across discussions of drag kings in the US, UK and drag and activism; the influence of RuPaul on the generation of new forms of work in New York; transfeminist critiques of drag; 'bio'/faux queens; engagements with race and ethnicity through drag performance; drag andragogy; audience concerns; drag intersections with animal personas, and how drag performance relates to personal narratives of history and identity. Collectively the contributions focus on drag as a mode of performance that is diverse and that uncorsets the easy thought that drag is simply a cross dressing man in a dress or a woman in a suit.