‘Drag is a grotesque caricature of femininity’

The BBC’s RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs the World has been branded “openly disrespectful” to women.

Women hit back at an article in The Guardian by LGBT activist Max Wallis, in which he celebrated the controversial show as ‘a much-needed cultural phenomenon’.

Last year, RuPaul’s Drag Convention – supported by popular children’s TV programme Teletubbies – offered free entry and passes for “after hours” parties to under-8s.

An offence

Wallis claimed the programme had “helped to destigmatise” the LGBT community, and hailed it as “a rainbow-coloured flag in full view”.

Drag queens take the trappings of femininity and exaggerate these to create a grotesque caricature which, at its core, humiliates women.

But in a letter to the newspaper, Dr Grace Barnes encouraged him to “take a moment” when next watching the programme “to consider how women feel about being parodied” on primetime television.

She continued: “Drag queens take the trappings of femininity and exaggerate these to create a grotesque caricature which, at its core, humiliates women.”

Dr Barnes added: “Drag is being utilised – RuPaul’s Drag Race being an example – to tick the inclusion box, when it is, in fact, exclusionary, sexist and insulting to women.”

Boundaries

Another member of the public, Katherine Rogers, called it “highly sexualised adult entertainment, which many people feel is pretty misogynistic”.

She argued that those who complained about children being exposed to drag were not “staid” as Wallis suggested, but men and women of all ages “who are concerned about the erosion of boundaries”.