Vintage drag: Female impersonators performing resistance in Cold War New Orleans
Description
Post-World War II New Orleans was home to several famous and successful venues for female impersonators. In the white club My-O-My, situated in a lightly policed border-space on the fringe of New Orleans, men performed women to a largely heterosexual audience of locals and tourists in a fast-paced nightclub review. Black clubs included the Dew Drop Inn and the Caledonia. On all stages, the female impersonators, utilizing sex, humor, talent and falsies, acted to undermine the basis of patriarchy During this Cold War period, patriarchy was the law of the land. Women, confined to the home and relieved of any economic or personal agency, were encouraged to find fulfillment in passive femininity. Black Americans were offered only second-class citizenship, with no voice in their own governance, and little or no economic opportunity. Homosexuals were despised and persecuted, particularly under the auspices of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the attacks of Senator Joseph McCarthy In this political climate, the success and popularity of entertainment clubs featuring female impersonators might seem an anomaly. However, the phenomenal appeal of the female impersonators was directly attributable to the transgressive nature of their performance. The performance of women by men challenged the assumption of essential gender; the appeal of the free wheeling sexuality of the impersonators in their guise as women offered actual women an alternative to passive dependence, while undermining the basic idea of patriarchy: men are masculine and women are feminine The performers skewed ideas of essential gender; without active and passive natures irrevocably assigned according to biological sex, there is neither a basis nor a justification for patriarchy. By establishing the social construction of gender, it was possible also to suggest a social construction of race. As 'Other' to patriarchy, and therefore dominated by patriarchy, women, blacks and homosexuals all had an interest in finding a new social order. Performance provided freedom to transgress the restrictive prohibitions of the Cold War era, and disprove the tenets of the established system of hierarchy. The performance became a dress rehearsal for a less restrictive social order