For black males to take appearing in drag seriously, be they gay or straight, is to oppose a heterosexist representation of black man-hood. Gender bending and blending on the part of black males has always been a critique of phallocentric masculinity in traditional black experience. Yet the subversive power of those images is radically altered when informed by a radicalized fictional construction of the “feminine” that suddenly makes the representation of whiteness as crucial to the experience of female impersonation as gender, that is to say when the idealized notion of the female/feminine is really a sexist idealization of white womanhood. This is brutally evident in Jennie Livingston’s new film Paris is Burning. Within the world of the black gay drag ball culture she depicts, the idea of womanless and femininity is totally personified by whiteness. What viewers witness is not black men longing to impersonate or even to become like “real” black women but their obsession with an idealized fetishized vision of femininity that is white. Called out in the film by Dorian Carey, who names it by saying no black drag queen of his day wanted to be Lena Home, he makes it clear that the femininity most sought after, most adored, was that perceived to be the exclusive property of white womanhood. When we see visual representations of womanhood in the film (images from from magazines and posted on walls in living space) they are, with rare exceptions, of white women. Significantly, the fixation on becoming as much like a white female as possible implicitly evokes a connection to a figure never visible in the film: that of the white male patriarch. And yet if the class, race, and gender aspirations expressed by the drag queens who share their deepest dreams is always the longing to be in the position of the ruling-class woman then that means there is also the desire to act in partnership with the ruling-class white male.
Bell Hooks, pp 147-148
Jennie Livingston’s film Paris is Burning points out the fact that the gender blending of the black drag queens symbolized people’s admiration of womanhood, specifically, their idealization of white womanhood. From the quote of Dorian Carey to the pictures shown in the living space of these black drag queens, the film suggested that in the world of drag queen cultures, the figure that they look up to is, indeed, white women. This idealization of white womanhood could also be interpreted as black male’s desire of acting like a ruling-class white male.
Here, Bell Hooks emphasizes the point on how the black drag-queen culture is closely related to admiration of experience of the ruling-class whiteness. Bell Hooks, using examples like quotes and visualizations in the film, suggested the female experience that the black drag-queens are idealizing is not any kind of womanhood, but those that the ruling-class white woman have. Bell Hooks is trying to point out how racial injustice had also affected the gender blending culture, how black people dreamed of becoming what is considered as the “superior” class in that time. The audience of this passage will be anyone who watched Paris is burning but ignored the importance of how race had also influenced the black drag-queen culture of the film.
My key to the passage will be the idea in which Bell Hooks’ argument on the racial perspective of Paris is Burning. To be more specific, the idea about the dream of the black drag-queens are not only to be women, but also to be a part of the ruling-class white group. My lock to the passage will be the last sentence of this quote, “And yet if the class, race, and gender aspirations expressed by the drag queens who share their deepest dreams is always the longing to be in the position of the ruling-class woman then that means there is also the desire to act in partnership with the ruling-class white male.” I understood Bell Hooks’ point of how black drag-queens idealize the white womanhood. However, I get confused when Bell Hooks said that this also expressed “the desire to act in partnership with the ruling-class white male.” My question would be how fantasizing white womanhood relate to acting in partnership with the ruling-class white male.
Amy,
Your analysis highlighted great points from the text and I agree that the link between fantasizing about white womanhood and acting in partnership with white men is confusing. I think what Hooks is getting at here is that these black drag queens are fantasizing about heteronormative, white life. When you think of the traditional gender binary and societal norms, females exist in a partnership with males (romantically, sexually, etc.). Hierarchically, whiteness is above all other races, so the white male is considered to be the “correct” partner to the white woman. In fantasizing about heteronormative white womanhood, these drag queens must then also fantasize about the “ideal” partner of the white woman which is the white man.
Thank you for your post, Amy! I think you ask a compelling question in that why would admiring (or parodying) white womanhood automatically lead to partnership with the white male? It’s certainly a confusing notion — and one that Judith Butler would reject, Insofar as they’d likely say something like identity and subject formation is unpredictable — interpellation, or an assignation of an identity through some kind of acknowledgement, fails or does not create the intended subject it meant to, instead producing something else. Because of this unpredictability, there’s no sure way to say either that they are *only* admiring white womanhood (Butler would suggest they are parodying or de-legitimizing through revealing the farce of heterosexuality as a performance) or that they could *only* inevitably support the ruling-class white male. I think bell hooks would likely argue, however, that whether it’s intended or not, whether it’s conscious or not, a complicity with whiteness is generated when whiteness itself goes un-investigated and instead is reified as the “dream” life that everyone wants. Certainly, queens like Venus Xtravaganza fantasize about a suburban lifestyle — but I think it might be more complicated than simply Venus wants to be a white woman.
There’s a quote in PIB where Venus talks about how, if a white woman want a washer and dryer, and her husband brings home the money, that she’d likely need to “give him what he wants to get what she wants.” This is interesting because it implies that the sex work Venus performs is not something entirely exceptional or unlike white womanhood, but is instead more like it than people would realize. If the white woman has to sleep with her husband to get a washer and dryer, how is that any different from Venus sleeping with a stranger to make money? They both give what the other wants to get what they want. Sure, it’s not necessarily an immediate overlap, but perhaps it shows how things are more ambivalent than simply *drag-queens emulate white womanhood because that’s who they want to be*.