Kings, Queens and Norah Vincent

As much as I hate to admit this, I was watching Tyra Banks' talk show (I'm unemployed, I've got a lot of time on my hands). To ambush potential makeover victims, she enlisted a team of draq queens. Three extremely costumed young men were literally strutting down the street during the day with slabs of make-up and twenty-inch heels to find girls in need of layered bangs and form-fitting tops.

When Tyra announced that she was employing the Drag Force, the audience cheered. And, as I've flipped the channels in the past, I've noticed Tyra, Maury and other talk shows often have drag queens on their shows for advice from fashion to relationships (seriously, I swear, I just flip channels a lot).

Now, I'm not saying by any means that Tyra Banks is the barometer by which we should measure society's ever-changing cultural norms. But, based on certain elements in pop culture and the media, it seems as if we are slowly inching towards a day when drag queens aren't just Boy George-like celebrities to entertain us from a safe distance, but also...maybe...the fabulous, stylish boy next door?

It's no surprise that women appear more open-minded than (straight) men when it comes to expanding notions of sexuality. How else to explain the relatively recent phenomenon of women attending drag bars for bridal showers? Can you even imagine straight men attending a bar full of lesbians and drag kings for a bachelor party? "Dude, where's the men's room? Oh, sorry."

On the flip side, it's not too often that you hear about drag kings in mainstream media. Maybe it's because a woman putting on some baggy clothes and faking a five o'clock shadow will blend in easier than a 6'2" man dressed in a shiny, sequined dress, so therefore drag kings attract less attention to themselves. Maybe it's because women have been adapting male style for decades, modifying the business suit to help actualize their own recently-accquired access to male economic power (whereas we're still nowhere near men employing women's clothes in any serious manner). And Diane Keaton in Annie Hall (or Katherine Hepburn in just about anything) could dress in slacks, dress shirts and ties and be considered intelligent and a sexually attractive romantic lead (again: man in a dress? Not so much).

Enter Norah Vincent: columnist, journalist, lesbian. She took eighteen months off from her jobs at the L.A. Times, The Advocate, and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to dress up as a dude and see what happened. Since her book, Self-Made Man, just came out, I haven't read it yet (the bloggers of Bookslut, however, offer this two-sentence review). But she was profiled on 20/20 by JuJu Chang ("JuJu"? Like the candy? Best. Anchor. Name. Ever.).

First, I would feel more comfortable with this whole discussion if Vincent specified that she was studying straight male culture. As much as she says "men, men, men," what she really is referring to is "straight men." I would think that, of all people, a lesbian journalist would understand the importantance of making such a distinction.

Secondly, I wasn't all that impressed with some of her findings, such as:

Men are emotionally reserved, even around each other. Um, really? No shit. Is this news?

And:

Strip joints are about "pure sex drive - completely empty of any meaningful interaction." Were women under the impression that men had deep, profound conversations with strippers, forming a strong emotional connection so they could choose which surgically-altered Barbie was worthy of slapping his face with her pasties?

Maybe I'm taking some of this information for granted because I am a man. However, some of this is just common sense.

That being said, sometimes stating the obvious is necessary. I still get the feeling that, just as men are clueless about women, so too are women, even with (generalization alert) their supposedly heightened gifts for compassion and empathy, clueless about men. The fact that women (such as Chang and Vincent) even find this to be news worthy says something in itself.

So when Vincent explains that male sexuality is "a bodily function. It's a necessity. It's such a powerful drive and I think because we [women] don't have testosterone in our systems, we don't understand how hard it is," I at first thought...well, duh. But then I realized that maybe some women are still in the dark about male sexuality and still don't understand men's separate relationships with sex and love (the elusive quality of male sexuality is something I've discussed before).

Her strongest point is about the emotional consequences men pay for repressing emotions, as illuminated by her joining a male support group. She was shocked, yet sympathetic, when she found these men using anger to express their darkest frustrations - usually about women. Note to ladies: there's a price to being expected to always be strong and stoic. But maybe women don't care to hear this (which is exactly why they should). The Booklist review for Self-Made Man sums it up best: "[Vincent in drag] also found women to be distrustful, ever ready to criticize men for being emotionally distant yet clearly preferring men who met stereotypical images of strength and virility."

I think it's important to hear, especially from a woman: "Men are suffering. They have different problems than women have, but they don't have it better. They need our sympathy. They need our love, and maybe they need each other more than anything else. They need to be together."

By letting women in on a man's world from the point of view of both genders, maybe Vincent is on to something. Sometimes it's not the message, but the messenger, that makes a difference. In Sex, Art and American Culture, the anti-feminist feminist Camille Paglia rightly praised drag queens for "their daring, flamboyant insight into sex roles." Paglia might also want to expand that notion to include drag kings since she, a notoriously tough critic, also compliments Vincent's work.

Vincent has a pretty exhaustive media assault to promote her book in the next coming weeks, but if she really wants to make a difference, maybe she should go on Tyra's show. Miss Banks can teach Vincent how to be fierce and Vincent can teach Tyra how to cover her skyscraper forehead with a backwards baseball cap.