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Emily Regalado
English 114B
Mr. Kubler
15 April 2015
The Good, the Queer and the Drag
The movie, To Fong Woo, illustrates 3 Drag Queens from New
York on a typical road trip to Hollywood. It depicts real life challenges
that queens overcome, whether it is acceptance, hatred or total
isolation. In this movie, negative attention is not entirely present, and
rather shows acceptance and tolerance towards cross-dressers. Judith
Butler, a professor at UC Berkley, draws attention to the idea of
Queerism, and how being Queer is genderless, drawing parallels to
drag queens, who do no claim a certain gender. Her ideas reflect
special points in the movie, which back up her idea of the publics
perspective on gender.
According to Butler, drag or the genderless is, considering
that the body is invariably transformed into his or her body is only
known through its gendered appearance. It would seem imperative to
consider the way in which this gendering of the body occurs the body
becomes its gender through a series of acts which are renewed,
revised, and consolidated through time. Within the first 3 minutes of
To Fong Woo, the audience is exposed to the first character Vita and
her transformation from a physically fit man, into a Southern of high-

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class woman. This transformation is interpreted through song and
dance, an intended hype for the progressing scene of a drag contest.
While the characters Vita and Noxzema are changing from these robust
men to women and have to act the part. Nonetheless their physical
attributes are now female, but they must also live their life as a
woman, without really pretending to be one.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the author of The Phenomenology of
Perception, initiates Butlers theory of body reflection towards a person
(the nonexistent gender). Butler refers to a persons actions that
defines his/her sex, Merleau defines a gender as a matter of perception
and rather how a person can perceive another. [The body] gains its
meaning through a concrete and historically mediated expression in
the world. That the body is a set of possibilities signifies (a) that its
appearance in the world, for perception, is not predetermined by some
manner of interior essence, and (b) that its concrete expression in the
world must be understood as taking up and rendering specific of a set
of historical possibilities. Rather of self-perception as well as societys
perception, while on the road trip the character discusses how it is not
a matter of choice to become a drag queen/king, it is something that
one is born to do. When a straight man puts on a dress and gets his
sexual cake, he is a transvestite. When a man is a woman trapped in
a mans body and has to do an operation, he is a transsexual. A gay
man that has way too much fashion senses for one gender, he is a

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drag queen. (20:51-21:13) A persons action and they way they carry
themselves (in this case, as a woman) can relay on whether a person
can see them as a natural woman figure.
Another topic Butler discussed was the level of censorship
carried within society. It would be socially acceptable to pretend to
be something you are not, but it isnt okay to actually become the
intended character, which evidentially ties to the absence of gender.
Gender performances in non-theatrical contexts are governed by
more clearly punitive and regulatory social conventions. Indeed the
sight of a transvestite onstage can compel pleasure and applause
while the sight on the same transvestite on the seat next to us on the
bus can compel fear, rage, even violencethis is just an act, and derealize the act make acting into something quite distinct from what is
real on the street or in the bus there is no presumption that the act
is distinct from reality. In the movie, Chi Chi, the starting off queen
decides she has ridden in the car for too long and opts to walk into a
public inn and demand a room. Vita and Noxzema warn her from
associating with outsiders, whom may not understand. They explain to
her that she could be rejected or even be seriously hurt. To their
surprise, they are welcomed into the cheap inn, and attempt to blend
in with female basketball players. The towns folk from Snydersville
accepted them as drag queens, which at first seemed completely
oblivious to their real identity. Once the queens were in danger, they

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knew to protect their own. So they proclaimed themselves as drag
queens/kings when faced with trouble. Well I can tell you something
about our founding fathers, they sure had fabulous wings, this shows
acceptance of stage-like conventions and acquire this a social state.
The greatest social issue surrounding civilization is acceptance
and oblivion. Judith Butler enables the belief of 1 single person
(duality) and the nonexistent genders. She believes that gender factors
do not define a person and a person can choose to be whatever they
please; the examples portrayed show that not every person can
choose a gender, and that society alienates them from living
comfortably in the real world. I agree with Butler to a certain extent; I
believe that a person should be able to be whatever they want to be,
whether it is not defining them. However, I do not feel that a person
that a person that looks the part, rather strictly appearance, should
define them. A person should be able to pick and choose their lifestyle,
regardless of their sexuality.