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A British Olympian Compared Drag To Blackface – & The Internet Has Thoughts

Photo: BBC
The cast of 'RuPaul's Drag Race UK'
Drag has been part of our culture for centuries, but there's no denying it's captured the zeitgeist in recent years. At a time when we're questioning and exploring gender to a greater extent than ever before, funny and subversive performances by drag queens and drag kings can shine a spotlight on toxic masculinity and chip away at traditional gender roles.
Thanks partly to the success of RuPaul's Drag Race and its UK spin-off, and fuelled by growing LGBTQ acceptance across the board, it's arguable that drag has never been more visible. RuPaul has called drag "a big f-you to male-dominated culture", but British Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies, who won a silver medal at the 1980 games in Moscow, clearly isn't a fan of the art form.
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"Am I the only person fed up of drag shows?" she wrote on Twitter on Saturday. "A parody of what a real woman is, like black face. Woman are juggling kids, rushing out a wholesome dinner, doing the laundry & cleaning, holding down a job all with period pains & leaky boobs if breast feeding. Enough of the stereotypes."
Davies's tweet immediately caused consternation on Twitter. Many found it offensive for Davis to compare drag, which is inherently celebratory, to blackface, a highly damaging and outdated form of entertainment which reflected and contributed to racial oppression by perpetuating racist tropes such as the idea that people of colour are in some way comically inferior.
Meanwhile, some people pointed out that even though Davies accused drag of perpetuating stereotypes relating to women, she had done exactly that in her tweet.
Others said that while some bad drag acts may rely on sexist and reductive material, the vast majority of drag queens actually celebrate and pay homage to femininity.
TV presenter Lorraine Kelly, who recently channelled her inner drag queen on the cover of queer magazine Attitude, said Davies had underestimated the power of drag and "how it empowers people who often feel like outsiders".
"It can literally save lies," she added. "And it's such a lot of fun."
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