Today drag kings are not quite as popular as their female counterparts. Still, the art is steadily growing and is as veritable and revered as other performance art.
What Is A Drag King?
Put simply, a drag king is a female performance artist who dresses in masculine drag and embodies traits typically associated with men. Their art, like those of drag queens, is purely for entertainment as well as unbridled self-expression. Drag kings typically move in groups but can also be found performing individually. As with most drag performers, drag kings performances include stand-up comedy, dancing and singing.
The History of Drag Kings
Drag kings have been around for centuries. In China, “male impersonators” were said to have been documented from 618 to 907 AD.
In the early 1900s, Gladys Bentley and Stormé DeLarverie were becoming pioneers of the drag king scene. Bentley, in the pictures from her time as a drag king, often wore a high hat over a long suit jacket, a bowtie and long pants. Bentley was a blues singer and pianist working and living in the heart of the Harlem Renaissance. In her days, Bentley performed with other drag performers and is said to have openly loved women for much of her life. For that reason and more, Bentley is highly regarded as one of the women who paved the way for the art of drag to be so culturally accepted.
Today, 21Ninety is spotlighting some Black drag kings you should know and follow.
King Molasses
As the D.C based drag king performer told Vox, “I feel the fullness of myself when I am in drag.” King Molasses is one of the few prominent Black drag kings changing the narrative and fighting for the inclusion of drag kings to be as mainstream as drag queen performers. Molasses typically wears a full beard, over a suit or a wife beater and pants during his performances.
Miles Long
Miles Long is one of the Black drag kings educating people on the art of drag performance. Long can be found performing in Los Angeles. Long has talked about drag helping him in his transition, as it was a “safe way for me to test out being male in the world.”
King Perka
King Perka is one of the rising drag kings on TikTok. He is also, of course, famous outside of the app and is well known for his theatrical masculine make-up and over-the-top performances.
Manly Mannington
Manly Mannington is a Leeds-raised drag king performer who has had a storied career, including touring Italy as a violinist in an orchestra. Mannington aims to explore Afrofuturism, cosplay and Black nerd culture through his art. Like most Black drag kings, however, their journey hasn’t always been smooth. As they told Hunger magazine in an interview, “Being Black, being a woman and being a drag king was almost a triple burden. I had so many hurdles put in my way – people purposefully excluding kings and some kings excluding Black and POC people from getting opportunities. It was difficult.”