Outside Oberlin

Sports & Drag Balls May Have a Lot in Common

Recently, I was watching a television documentary on the renowned singer, supermodel, talk show host and drag queen RuPaul. During the broadcast, she repeated her oft-quoted slogan, “We are all born naked. Everything else is drag.”
I had heard Ru saying this before, but this time it made me really think. I could not help but ask myself, “Is a football uniform really just the same as drag? Wouldn’t this mean that Michael Jordan is shooting hoops in drag? Oh my God, is the police officer who pulls you over for speeding, pulling you over in drag?”
If you were one of the many who were beaten and abused in high school by burly football players, you may take some comfort during your post-traumatic stress flashbacks by attempting to remember instead that those jocks in their heavily-stylized outfits were really just drag queens like RuPaul, Divine and The Lady Chablis.
And it is all undeniably true, of course. All our standards for acceptable clothing are culturally constructed, just as our very concepts of what it means to be male and female in our society are socially and culturally-constructed. Thus, for example, it would be the scandal of the decade if George W. Bush were caught wearing a miniskirt and eyeshadow, simply because the majority of our society has reached a consensus that such things are somehow unacceptable, even immoral. Just as in some cultures, it is considered proper and formal for men to wear long sticks attached to their reproductive organs, it is considered formal attire in this culture for men to wear pants and ties.
I was indeed surprised, however, to discover that after some thought and a little bit of research, there are in fact a multitude of connections to be drawn between sports uniforms and drag, or more specifically, male sports uniforms and the female-impersonating brand of drag.
First off, sports players in our country have become major public figures, and in some cases — Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali, for instance — internationally-recognized celebrities. The sports uniform has consequently become an important symbol for many of the values that our society holds dear to its heart. Strength, fame, monetary affluence and undiluted masculinity are just a few of these associations. The latter seems to be true despite the fact that with each year more and more women are becoming involved in professional athletic endeavor, and in many male-dominated and strength-oriented games like basketball or track, they are often perceived to be sacrificing their femininity for their competitive edge. Although a woman with big muscles is still slightly more acceptable today than is a man in a dress.
In many urban gay communities, dressing up as a flamboyant queen is just as powerful a statement about the values of their social order. As documented in such films as Paris Is Burning, such characteristics as good fashion sense, an eye for drama and super-femininity are prized by gay communities such as those in New York City, who have become famous for their competitive drag balls. The costumes displayed at these balls also reveal a commonality with the values represented by sports uniforms in the appreciation for fame and monetary success, as seen in their use of expensive designer brands and their owners’ attempts to mimic the looks of celebrities. The usually extravagant “uniforms” displayed at these pageants are for the often-impoverished minority communities who put them on, symbols of what their members idealize in their everyday lives, even outside the glitter and glamour of drag performance.
Secondly, competition is also a strong shared connection between drag and the athletic uniform. It is, after all, at the root of the sports uniform’s design. The football uniform, for example, is designed to offer maximum protection, while the basketball outfit is made to allow flexibility and encourage body heat reduction. Each respective uniform is created in such a way as to protect the competitor who wears it and to increase her or his likelihood of winning. The winning uniform-wearer in many male-oriented sports is then celebrated as an intimidating icon of masculine prowess.
The drag fashion ensemble is thus quite similar in this respect, as during drag competitions participants use their costumes to maximize their chances of winning prizes for their respective competitive categories, or simply for “Overall Most Fabulous,” as at Oberlin College’s traditional cross-dressing balls. Instead of clothing that maximizes physical protection and athletic performance, drag queens use their clothing to maximize the jealousy and intimidation of their fellow drag competitors, and the ultimate winner is therefore celebrated as an intimidating icon of feminine prowess, or more correctly, drag prowess.
Thirdly, aggression is a component of both the phenomena of drag and of sport-related uniforms. It is, of course, not difficult to see the aggression displayed by uniform wearers during such athletic pursuits as football and hockey, because these are quite commonly synonymous with brute, physical violence. This is considered par for the course among these games, though the aggression among drag queens is just as real, though not as well-documented. This is because the aggression in drag competition more often takes the form of clever and perceptive verbal slurs — also known as “reading” — sardonic facial expressions that make no bones about playing fair and trying not to be a sore loser — oft-times called “throwing shade” — and highly stylized fighting that has evolved such grace as to have become a dance form known as “voguing.”
Fourthly, disproportionate numbers of minorities are represented in most drag and uniform-oriented sports communities. For instance, according to some studies, the very popular sports organizations of the National Football League and the National Basketball Association put numbers of African-American members at approximately 70 and 80 percent, respectively.
Moreover, since most competitive drag queens are not heterosexual, though there are probably many heterosexual men who dress in women’s clothing in private, this community is also heavily made up of minorities, i.e., minorities of sexual orientation. Yet along with this fact, most of the drag ball competitions that are going on in urban gay society are, like sports, also happening among African Americans. Although there are many drag queens who do not belong to racial minorities, these people have traditionally made themselves more widely known in stage performance, while drag among gay African Americans has more commonly taken the form of fashion competitions.
My personal take on this last point is that the over-representation of minorities in these competitive arenas stems from the disenfranchisement that these minorities experience in other realms of our society. Because of it, they have developed feelings of inferiority, for which they overcompensate. African-American men are only now beginning to move beyond a time when they were referred to commonly as “boys,” an appellation which undermined a sense of their own masculinity. Thus their attraction to physically-aggressive, male-dominated sport is understandable. The gay man, similarly, is only now at the extreme beginning of an era where he is starting to give himself the right to admit to and express what he feels to be the feminine aspects of his personality. Thus the reason for the attraction to cross-dressing is also obvious.
And in the end, who can contradict the truth of RuPaul’s pronouncement? We are beings of fashion, it seems, and everything is drag. How can we to deny it? We use our clothing to transform us into the characters we play, from presidents to housewives, talk show guests to talk-show hosts, football players to drag queens.

Does Belarus’s Victory Give Hope to Expos, et al?

Wow. I just found out that Belarus upset Sweden in the Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey quarterfinals. Now, first of all, just where the heck is Belarus? No, never mind, that’s not all that important. What is important is that up until Wednesday, Belarus had been the doormat of the tournament’s second round, beaten 6-4 by the Russians, and absolutely stomped on by Finland and the U.S., 8-1 each time.
And Sweden was no pushover, either. Nope, they were 3-0 in their bracket, having handily whipped Germany, the Czech Republic and Canada. (By the way, did you know that everybody hates Team Canada? Yup, it’s true. I know because Wayne Gretzky said so.) Everyone, including myself, thought that Sweden was on a collision course with the U. S. for the gold medal game. Now people are already comparing Belarus’s victory to the “Miracle on Ice” of 1980, when Team USA (long before the NHLers entered the picture) upset Russia.
But let me back up here for a second. Once I decided that I ought to do the requisite Olympics column, I looked all about for possible angles to take. (Okay, I’ll admit, most of them involved hockey.) I thought about taking a look at Canada’s apparently lackluster play; I thought about tackling the tricky issue of team allegiance in the Olympics when your favorite NHL players are all from different countries; I thought about saying something about the U.S. women’s hockey team skating over, under, around and through the competition; I even thought about getting mildly serious and examining the nationalistic aspects of the Olympics in light of the current state of the U.S.
But forget all that, because Belarus upset Sweden. And immediately, like a vision, it came to me.
Could 2002 be the Year of the Upset?
My perspective is a little skewed, of course, but let’s take a look at this. We’ll go back to the beginning of January, right about the time of the NFL playoffs.
First the Philadelphia Eagles upset the Chicago Bears in the second round. Okay, this wasn’t a huge upset, and I’m sure many people weren’t surprised. But I expected it to be a close game, at the least. The Bears were two games better than the Eagles in the regular season.
Then, (and here’s where it gets more interesting) the Patriots upset the Pittsburgh Steelers. No one gave them half a prayer, and they were 10-
point underdogs.
And of course, the Super Bowl. But we’ve been there already, so I won’t make you go through it again.
But now it’s not just football. It’s not just professional sports. This is the Olympics. This is hockey. This is some itty-bitty-former-Soviet-state country. And they were supposed to be going back to that country today. Sweden was supposed to skate all over them.
I’m getting into this.
The implications are mind-boggling…just think of all the possible scenarios. Will the Minnesota Wild upend the Detroit Red Wings in the NHL West finals? Or maybe the Columbus Blue Jackets? Or maybe the Atlanta Thrashers will thrash the Wings in the Stanley Cup finals. Doesn’t that sound exciting?
Well, maybe that’s not super-cool, but it gets even better when you move on to baseball. Oh yes it does.
The Philadelphia Phillies could beat out the Mets and Braves for the NL East title. Or the Montreal Expos could. (Well, maybe even the Year of the Upset can’t make that happen.) Or Pittsburgh might win the NL Central. Maybe the Florida Marlins will return to prominence, or their fellow Floridians, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, could make a run for it. Kansas City, anybody?
Those might be a bit of a stretch. Except for the Phillies. But here are some very real possibilities: Oakland over the Yankees in the ALCS. Cleveland over the Yankees in the ALCS. Boston over the Yankees in the ALCS. There seems to be a pattern going on here. But here’s my favorite potential upset of all. You ready? Okay…
Minnesota over the Yankees in the ALCS. Doesn’t that sound cool? (Neatly ties in last week’s column, too.) The lowest payroll in the land over the highest. The upstarts over the dynasty. Oh yes, the Year of the Upset will be very sweet.
Wait, what’s that you say? The heavily favored U.S. hockey team demolished the Germans? 5-0? Oh.
Well, maybe it’s not the Year of the Upset after all.
Bummer.