by Lauren Brachman
A few nights ago I heard a knock on my door. My friend had warned me earlier that he was going to come over to borrow something. I thought he wanted a calculator. He needed a dress.
After we spent a half hour picking out a nice spring dress that suited his coloring for his pledge task, I got to thinking: What is with our campus’ obsession with drag? Okay, obsession might be a bit too strong, but there’s no denying its long tradition in Princeton’s history. Take Triangle Club’s drag kickline. According to PTC’s website, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the kickline in the 1999-2000 academic year. Although the origins of the kickline are unclear, the website suggests that it may have been influenced by theatrical trends in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the club was formed. Although the website brags of the unique playfulness utilized by the Triangle Club’s drag kickline, drag, performed by white cis heterosexual males for over a century on campus, is not a new concept and has long been performed by certain enclaves in the non-heterosexual community. Before the Triangle Club sang and kicked about the Honor Code, a long tradition of drag queens and kings aimed for political subversion through parody and camp.
But it’s not like the Triangle Club is the only male to female drag on campus. Recently I’ve noticed a trend in fraternity pledging that utilizes drag as a means of humiliation and shame. I may be wrong, but I doubt this type of drag does aims for either playfulness or subversion. Rather, pledge drag reifies binary gender standards. We laugh and point because “real” men who begin as pledges and eventually become brothers are supposed to be the opposite of effeminate. By using feminine (read: women’s) clothing to humiliate their male pledges, frats reaffirm a polarity that separates “real” masculine men from effeminate (woman-like) men. The shame and embarrassment that accompanies a feminine gender performance teaches the pledge (and all of us who watch him) a lesson: Men, especially men pledging frats, are not feminine. This exercise makes sure that masculinity stays attached to the male body and femininity to the female body.
I worry that pledge drag is a dangerous practice that, if pervasive enough, could force gender normativity, or solidify an already existing environment of gender normativity, on campus. The effects of which would confine each of us to a specific and expected gender performance. In this sense, pledge drag threatens the gains in gender variance and fluidity fought for by women since (and by!) our integration into Princeton in 1969.
Pledge drag may have a detrimental effect on our community even beyond my feminist qualms. When we use drag as a punishment that reifies the gender binary, rather than parodies it, we lose the camp and fun that traditionally accompanies a transgressive gender performance. After all, it is a performance! The Triangle Club’s drag kickline is not meant to be a political statement; it’s a form of entertainment. A form of entertainment, which is threatened by pledge drag’s imposition of shame and gender policing in our campus community.
I agree with you completely. I don’t have a problem with Triangle’s drag; I think you can tell that the men, many of whom are heterosexual, are really having fun in drag—some even wear the drag costumes to parties unrelated to Triangle. This, like the Terrace drag ball, is a fun celebration of gender and gender fluidity.
But when used to shame pledges, I agree with you in that drag “reifies binary gender standards.” Sororities don’t make their girls dress up as boys to shame them (at least not at Princeton); so when guys are forced to dress as girls to gain membership in a frat, they’re also showing us which sex is the shameful sex to be.