So last week was the longest week ever, but it still didn’t allow me enough time to finish my post, so I’m combining two weeks in one. Except here I am at the end of the secondlongest week ever, again, and Daylight Savings Time has zapped any energy I had, Starbucks’ stock has probably risen because I’m basically mainlining espresso at this point, and even though I’m not particularly busy at work…
anyways. drag kings have been around for decades & are equally as important as drag queens. drag masculinity faces serious erasure & that’s a problem. support your local drag kings
whenever I see people reblog this or my other post about this with some variation of “oh i didn’t even know drag kings existed!!” it makes me so sad. I’m glad u know it now but like, the fact that people don’t even know drag kings exist? how many people do you thing would get into drag if they knew drag kings and drag masculinity was a Thing? how many more people would get to explore their masculinity via drag?
Some kings to get you going.
Landon Cider, Buck Wylde, Miles Long, Koco Caine, Murray Hill, and Spikey Van Dykey.
I should also recommend Beau Jangles and Mudd the Two Spirit, my two personal favorite kings!
Beau is very much inspired by Cab Calloway, so you know. I, Heidi Ho myself, just have to be obsessed.
Mudd is an indigenous king and honestly? His looks are FUCKING INSANE I love him.
Drag kings haven’t just been around for decades, they’ve been around for over a hundred years.
As an aspiring professional queen myself, the erasure of drag masculinity is quite literally offensive to the artform as a whole. Kings have contributed so much and they deserve better.
anyways. drag kings have been around for decades & are equally as important as drag queens. drag masculinity faces serious erasure & that’s a problem. support your local drag kings
whenever I see people reblog this or my other post about this with some variation of “oh i didn’t even know drag kings existed!!” it makes me so sad. I’m glad u know it now but like, the fact that people don’t even know drag kings exist? how many people do you thing would get into drag if they knew drag kings and drag masculinity was a Thing? how many more people would get to explore their masculinity via drag?
Some kings to get you going.
Landon Cider, Buck Wylde, Miles Long, Koco Caine, Murray Hill, and Spikey Van Dykey.
I should also recommend Beau Jangles and Mudd the Two Spirit, my two personal favorite kings!
Beau is very much inspired by Cab Calloway, so you know. I, Heidi Ho myself, just have to be obsessed.
Mudd is an indigenous king and honestly? His looks are FUCKING INSANE I love him.
Drag kings haven’t just been around for decades, they’ve been around for over a hundred years.
As an aspiring professional queen myself, the erasure of drag masculinity is quite literally offensive to the artform as a whole. Kings have contributed so much and they deserve better.
They have been around for over a hundred years!
In the 1800s, drag kings were called “male impersonators” (and likewise, drag queens called “female impersonators”), and they would work the music halls (like, variety acts, comedy and theatre) - mostly singing silly or risqué songs like “Burlington Bertie from Bow”, “Following in Father’s Footsteps” or “Jolly Good Luck to the Girl that Loves a Soldier” - and many of them also did panto, acting as the Prince Charming, or Peter Pan (as is traditional), things like that
One of the early ones was Bessie Bonehill in the 1890s
Here she is, from an image search -
Later on, there was Ella Shields
And Hetty King, who worked until the 1930s, 30 years on the halls
In this blog we meet the drag kings who will be performing in Moll and the Future Kings, a candlelit hour of work-in-progress, late-night drag king cabaret and improv.
This blog contains colourful language and swearing.
I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with Thee. As You Like It
In response to Marlowe’s Edward II, which features an early modern portrayal of a homosexual relationship, we present Voices in the Dark: Pride, Then and Now, a festival that explores the themes of gender and sexuality in thrilling new ways.
Getting the party started on 30 March, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse will host Moll and the Future Kings, a candlelit hour of work-in-progress, late-night drag king cabaret and improv.
The Globe stages have seen many women perform male characters, and vice versa. Shakespeare’s audience too would have been familiar with men performing female characters. More recently, in 2018 the Globe stage was graced with people of all genders, performing characters of any gender they chose in Alternative Miss World.
Moll Frith, also known as Mal Cutpurse, was a 17th-century cross-dressing performer, criminal and trickster. In 1611, during a production of The Roaring Girl, a piece written about her life by Middleton and Dekker, she appeared on stage in an improvised moment of rude jokes, songs and smoking.
Sarah Grange has been waiting 15 years to have a conversation with Moll Frith and Moll and the Future Kings is the start of it. For her, it is ‘an attempt to get back to meeting her [Moll Frith] on her own terms’. Moll’s spirit is being gloriously channelled through an amazing line-up of drag kings including Sigi Moonlight, Mal Content, Wesley Dykes and Bae Sharam.
Our relationship with clothing and gender in the street and on the stage may be evolving and becoming less defined, but in the 17th century, people had a very literal relationship with clothes.
‘I think when you look back at that early modern period, they had this completely different idea of gender…Their clothing [was] so gendered that they’re almost wearing their genitals on the outside. So if you put on the other gender’s clothing, it’s almost like having a sex change - they took it really seriously.’ Sarah Grange
All hail the kings
Without further ado, let’s meet the kings of the stage, as described in their own words.
Sigi Moonlight
Sigi Moonlight : Dan Govan
In the year that a profoundly orange-faced, pussy-grabbing sociopath was elected leader of the free world, Sigi Moonlight came to Earth.
With his suave, satirical characters inspired by a dangerous mix of cinema and politics, Sigi presents humanity with a message of hope and defiance in (most likely) the last five years of its existence.
Mal Content
Mal Content Blioux Kirkby
Crawling from the inky-dark Jacobean depths, fuelled by bile, bombast and brandy laced with regret, Mal Content rises to wreak randomised revenge on a cruel and unfeeling world. You have been warned…
Wesley Dykes
Wesley Dykes Lea L’Attentive
Wesley Dykes was born on Halloween 2012, after noticing a considerable lack of Colour, Soul and Funk in many of the Drag King scenes across the world. Usually Wesley is your favourite rapper, your favourite RnB singer and your friendly neighbourhood fxckboi. Tonight he’s your favourite storyteller, using spoken word, poetry and improv to weave multiple histories into this historical space.
Bae Sharam
Bae has been performing in the London Cabaret scene after graduating with a bang from the Michael Twaits’ Art of Drag course last year. Nominated for Best New Cabaret Act 2018 AND 2019 by Boyz Magazine and a MxGenderFvcker finalist, they are a queer muslim performance artist specialising in alt-drag.
Strap yourself in for rocky as fuck ride straight down to “Um, I don’t know if I can laugh at that?”. The answer is no, you can’t. But you probably will. And yes, that does make you a bad person.
is now back on Amazon with a limited supply while we await supplies that are en route -
We ran out of stock of our first batch of inventory last week and as a result, unfortunately had to cancel 1 or 2 orders while we waited on supplies. As someone noted, that’s a good problem to have!
We’ve listened to your suggestions and worked to improve our chest binder with your help and input.
So we’ve come back after this brief hiatus with a brand new size scale,more shipping options,and the S-1000 is now available in black! White will also be coming soon.
Please check the description and instructions for the updated size chart!
This is a trial run of our new sizes, so we hope you will bear with us and please, please give us your feedback on how they are fitting now! You should not find them running a size too big any longer. Finally, if a size doesn’t work for you, we are happy to exchange it for a size that will.
anyways. drag kings have been around for decades & are equally as important as drag queens. drag masculinity faces serious erasure & that’s a problem. support your local drag kings
whenever I see people reblog this or my other post about this with some variation of “oh i didn’t even know drag kings existed!!” it makes me so sad. I’m glad u know it now but like, the fact that people don’t even know drag kings exist? how many people do you thing would get into drag if they knew drag kings and drag masculinity was a Thing? how many more people would get to explore their masculinity via drag?
Some kings to get you going.
Landon Cider, Buck Wylde, Miles Long, Koco Caine, Murray Hill, and Spikey Van Dykey.
I have a friend who studies and writes about drag kings. If you’re interested in the history of drag kings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, you should read her book.
anyways. drag kings have been around for decades & are equally as important as drag queens. drag masculinity faces serious erasure & that’s a problem. support your local drag kings
whenever I see people reblog this or my other post about this with some variation of “oh i didn’t even know drag kings existed!!” it makes me so sad. I’m glad u know it now but like, the fact that people don’t even know drag kings exist? how many people do you thing would get into drag if they knew drag kings and drag masculinity was a Thing? how many more people would get to explore their masculinity via drag?
Some kings to get you going.
Landon Cider, Buck Wylde, Miles Long, Koco Caine, Murray Hill, and Spikey Van Dykey.
if the existence of drag kings as a concept makes you “uncomfortable” or whatever idk what to tell you but you just suck royally. there’s a tiktok going around of a drag king group showing off their performers and it’s so cute and fun and it just reinforces that we need to be aware of drag kings and how much they rule. anyways a bunch of the comments are from transmascs like “oh how disgusting seeing this activated my dysphoria please don’t post content of people living their lives and having fun like this ever again because it makes me personally upset :(((“ and god what a weird thing to say about REAL people. that a REAL person having fun with their identity, in a completely harmless way, just exists and is bringing awareness to their own existence and you think it’s like a personal attack. do you not see how fucked that is dude. as a butch lesbo with a weird gender I am on my hands and knees begging you I am shaking you by the shoulders BUTCH AND GNC LESBIANS ARE NOT A THREAT TO YOU. DRAG KINGS ARE NOT A THREAT TO YOU. if you see a sapphic person just living their life and that sapphic chooses to present themselves as anything other than fem, and the first thing that activates in your mind is “ew this person portraying themselves outside the binary, which is gross To Me” then that is YOUR problem to come to terms with, not ours - and you best be coming to terms with it soon because with a mindset like that, you won’t survive a day in any real life lgbt spaces. nonsapphics start treating gnc/nb/butch/drag king sapphics with any molecule of respect challenge (impossible)
anyways. drag kings have been around for decades & are equally as important as drag queens. drag masculinity faces serious erasure & that’s a problem. support your local drag kings
whenever I see people reblog this or my other post about this with some variation of “oh i didn’t even know drag kings existed!!” it makes me so sad. I’m glad u know it now but like, the fact that people don’t even know drag kings exist? how many people do you thing would get into drag if they knew drag kings and drag masculinity was a Thing? how many more people would get to explore their masculinity via drag?
Some kings to get you going.
Landon Cider, Buck Wylde, Miles Long, Koco Caine, Murray Hill, and Spikey Van Dykey.
I should also recommend Beau Jangles and Mudd the Two Spirit, my two personal favorite kings!
Beau is very much inspired by Cab Calloway, so you know. I, Heidi Ho myself, just have to be obsessed.
Mudd is an indigenous king and honestly? His looks are FUCKING INSANE I love him.
Drag kings haven’t just been around for decades, they’ve been around for over a hundred years.
As an aspiring professional queen myself, the erasure of drag masculinity is quite literally offensive to the artform as a whole. Kings have contributed so much and they deserve better.
