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Gender under Construction: Beauties, Drag Queens and Gender Theory

Drag Queens are most commonly known as flamboyant, hyper-feminine males putting
on feminine attributes, presenting themselves as women. They spend hours altering their
physical appearance and practicing feminine behavior to get in drag, to become a woman. In
her text, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler asserts that gender is performative, not biologically
determined; the Drag Queens and Females in general are no different in the construction of their
gender. The physical body is not the inherent determiner of gender, rather the body is figured as
a surface and the scene of cultural inscription (Butler 2543). Butler determines the cultural
inscription as external to the body. Gender is a social construct determined not by physical
attributes, but by the drag one wears. The beauties in Jennifer Egans Black Box represent
females putting on the gender of woman. They are beautiful women in drag to fulfill their
duty: assert themselves into the inner circle of violent, powerful men, to gather information
through the spy gear implanted within them. The Beauties have left behind their domestic lives
and answered a call to their country. Their journey is documented and read through the
transmissions she receives internally, readers see them Tweet by Tweet. These transmissions
include day to day instructions, encouragement, and a recipe for their role, their gender:
Necessary ingredients for a successful projection: giggles, bare legs, shyness (Egan 1). These
ingredients create the gender of a feminine woman, projected onto the blank female canvas.
Their projection represents the projection females and Drag Queens undertake daily. The
representation seems to follow Butlers model of performative gender, but they prove her theory
incomplete. The Beauties are socially constructed women, but their gender inscription comes
from both internal and external sources. The original state of the Beauties before they fully
become Beauties is not a blank canvas as Butler suggests, but a source of life, memories, and
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previous performances of self, proving that gender is a series of choices, that Women are active
choosers of the discourse, and that the body is an effect of discourse. Every performance of self
or gender alters the canvas and creates a need for a new performance of self. The performance
creates a fluid self, a fluid gender.
Butlers theory of performative gender states that being a woman is a performance of the
traits associated with femininity. The Beauties follow this model, putting on their feminine
performance to achieve their goals, but unlike Butlers theory, the Beauties are more than their
performance, they perform intentionally. They choose to give up their former domestic lives and
put on the femininity necessary to become a Beauty. According to Butler, gender is performance,
much like acting. She states that Garbo got in drag whenever she took some heavy glamour
part, whenever she melted in or out of a mans arms, whenever she simply let that heavenly-
flexed neckbear the weight of her thrown back headhow resplendent seems the art of acting!
It is all impersonation, whether the sex underneath is true or not (Butler 2542). Garbo imitated
social constructions of gender, and created a new impression on her canvas. This performance is
continuous, from birth or even before. A young girl learns how to act in the world of adults
through social cues, and if she gets what she wants after appealing to the sentiments of her Father
with her wiles, she will continue to perform variations of that throughout her life and associate
that with being a girl, and later a woman. This performance creates her notion of femininity, the
parody is the very notion of an original (Butler 2550). To Butler, this performance is inscribed
on a self that is void of anything underneath.
The Beauties performance is carefully crafted, much like gender is. When Garbo got in
drag, she intentionally put on the characteristics of women that would make her appear more
feminine. The acting of Garbo, the responsibility of the Beauty and the becoming of a woman are
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all similar. The Beauties intentionally assert themselves in a way that is innocuous to the
Designated Mate, the powerful, violent man. They project this innocuous woman onto a
canvas, which requires them to act as if they were never anything before being a Beauty. They
are required to have the instincts and intuition of experts, and the blank records and true
freshness of ingnues (Egan 5). Women are required to possess the same dichotomous traits;
being highly intelligent and simultaneously perceived as ingnues. The Beauties appear to their
Designated Mate as innocuous, simply beautiful women, but they are more than that. They, like
all women are posing, putting on feminine traits in order to be women. Some of these choices are
incidental and some are intentional, posing as a beauty means not reading what you would like
on a rocky shore in the South of France (Egan 3). The Beauty decides between what she wants
and what would preserve continuity of the drag performance, implying that there is personality
under the performance. Her choices are decided through her internal filter working in tandem
with her external script. Her internal filter, or self, is a more authentic self. This filter is her lens
for the world, the place from which her gender truly is derived. Females (and males) are in the
midst of an elaborate ever changing performance, constantly getting in drag to play the role of a
woman, a man, or a Beauty.
Butler asserts that gender is separate from the body, an entity that does not presuppose or
define gender, but rather is inscribed with gender from an outside source. For Egans Beauties,
the body is a more valuable asset than a passive medium - they utilize the female perform to
portray the gender of a woman, or play the role of a Beauty more effectively. These women
prove that the body, the canvas, is a much more integral part of gender performance than Butler
asserts. In Gender Trouble, Butler states that the sex/ gender distinction and the category of
sex itself appear to presuppose a generalization of the body that preexists the acquisition of its
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sexed significance. This body often appears to be a passive medium that is signified by an
inscription from a cultural source figured as external to that body (Butler 2542). To Butler, the
body is a blank canvas on which culture and gender is inscribed; gender gives meaning to the
body. Biology is not the source of gender, and sex is meaningless. Whether or not the
performers gender matches the sex underneath is unimportant. The body is a vessel for gender,
without any independent significance. However, the beauties, like Drag Queens, accentuate
certain aspects of the female form to perform on their surface, throwing back your head and
closing your eyes allows you to give the appearance of sexual readiness while concealing
revulsion (Egan 6). The Beauties use their body to portray an attitude they do not feel. Her body
is as much a character in the projection as the Beauty within. Her body is not simply a passive
vessel, for what is a woman without her wiles? The Beauties are required to use their form to
insinuate themselves into the inner circle of the powerful man designated to them, the necessary
trust of this job is created through sex. A Beauty can expect her Designated Male to lumber
towards her (46) after telling her that he want[s] to fuck her now (36). A womans shape
defines her as much (or more) than her behavior does.
Beauties utilize their female form to project woman onto their blank canvas, and this
gender intentionality seems to assert that gender inscription is internal rather than external.
However, the Beauty makes her decision internally. The recipe for gender is external, but it holds
no power until internalized by the Beauty. The Beauties receive instructions as the events are
unfolding, each new transmission an answer to the last, to the action described within them. This
format allows the reader to assume that the Beauty has made a choice and that the transmission is
an answer to that choice, a next step. This allows for some ambiguity, the narrator
simultaneously seems removed and intimately involved, much like the decisions made day to day
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by females everywhere. The subtle learned behaviors are enacted daily, some without explicit
knowledge. The transmissions to the Beauty are a playbook, a resource from which she learns
how to be a woman, how to be a Beauty. She learns how to dress: a crisp white sundress against
tanned skin is widely viewed as attractive (Egan 16). She learns how to act: the goal is to be a
lovely, innocuous, evolving surprise (Egan 16). There is little difference in these external
instructions and those found in any Womans magazine. Females are inundated with external
transmissions of instruction manuals that describe in great detail how to be a woman. These
transmissions are not exclusive to Beauties, examples of these can be found in media worldwide.
The homepage of Self Magazine is littered with detailed instructions on how to be a woman.
They break it down into three categories: Body, Looks, and Life. These transmissions to
women detail how to squeeze in cardio, be post-workout pretty in minutes, and gives four
no fail sex tips (Self.com). External instructions like these do not become inscriptions onto the
body until internalized. Reading these magazines, websites, and all other sources of
transmissions does not create a woman. Accepting the external instructions and processing them
internally create the woman.
Butler asserts that gender is performative, but the Beauties prove that the performative
nature of gender is also cyclical. The performance creates a cycle of then necessary
performances, creating new versions of self with every performance. The canvas is ever
changing, the self has a fluid nature. Butler states that in imitating gender, drag implicitly
reveals the imitative structure of gender itself (Butler 2550). The act of performing the gender
reveals the ways in which gender is an imitation, a performance. In wearing that crisp white
sundress and not reading what [she] would like, as written in the script, she is becoming a
beauty, or a woman. Butler asserts that the performance creates the self, but for Egan, this
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performance, is temporary. The Beauties will perform this service only once, after which [they]
will return home to [their] lives (Egan 5). The beauties will take off their drag and return to
their former selves and lives, supposedly returning home the same person [they] were when
[they] left. Egans Beauties realize that while that may be the goal, it is impossible, you will
reflect on the fact that youve been guaranteed you will not be the same person and that you
had stopped being that person even before leaving (Egan 15). How can it be possible to require
a return to a former self and simultaneously know it is impossible? The performance creates the
self, but the very act of performing changes the self, the canvas on which culture is inscribed.
Once that canvas has been altered, the performance changes, as is the case of the Beauties.
Instead of returning to their former lives, they must now put on the drag of a Beauty that never
was. They have changed the canvas, and on it must now inscribe a woman that was not a part of
this service. Butler argues that this perpetual displacement constitutes a fluidity of identities that
suggests an openness to resignification and recontextualization (Butler 2550). This cycle is a
classic heros journey; the Beauties answer the call, take their journey and then after their
experiences and performances have changed who they are underneath the gender, they must
return and perform once again. This new performance is one of resignification and
recontextualization; recognizing that while their actions were required during their time as a
Beauty, they might not fit within the context of her duties as a wife, so she must alter her
performance and create a new version of woman, one that was not within the inner circle of a
violent and powerful man. Performative gender, and the performance itself alters the canvas. The
canvas is not ever blank, every performance alters it, and alters the next necessary performance.
For Beauties, their next task may require more of them; they must recontextualize their
experience - the things they did were justified within that context even if they are at odds with
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the morals of their current context, and resignify it adjust its importance to their current
situation, and alter the significance of signs that occurred within their role as a Beauty - pressing
down repeatedly behind their knee will not alert anyone of a dangerous situation anymore. This
fluidity of gender and identity occurs constantly, with every performance identity is altered.
Judith Butlers claim of performative gender is furthered by Jennifer Egans Black
Box. Females and Beauties alike get in drag to project their identity onto the canvas that is the
body. The body is the canvas on which gender is inscribed, but it is not a blank canvas. The body
is not simply a vessel of gender as Butler asserts, but a valuable asset to feminine projection.
Beauties accentuate features of femininity that are valued by the violent and powerful men in
order to gain their trust, and this imitation of femininity proves that gender is performative.
Females need not share the sentiments of the woman they project, but that projection alters the
canvas, the self-embedded in the projection. The projection is not an outward display of the inner
characteristics of the female, but rather validation of external instructions of femininity. If she
performs the type of femininity that giggles and plays coy, she will project that type of woman.
The projection renders her different; she receives social cues and inscribes those cues onto the
canvas of her body and mind and those change who she is. The self is fluid, changing with every
projection and the social inscriptions that follow. Butler describes the fluidity of self in her text,
but the Beauties exemplify the cyclical nature of gender alongside self-fluidity and self-creation.
The self that is changed creates a necessity for a new projection, one that seems to be unchanged
by the previous projection. The cycle continues on ad infinitum.




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Works Cited
Egan, Jennifer. Read Black Box by Jennifer Egan---Tweet by Tweet read Black
Box by Jennifer Egan Tweet by Tweet. Paste Magazine, 6 June 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New
York, NY [u.a.:Norton, 2001. 2536-2553. Print
Lindsey Emery, Kate Sandoval, and Nicole Beland. SELF Magazine, Nutrition, Health
and Advice: Self.com. Self Magazine. Self.com Worldwide, 05 Dec 2013. Web. 06 Dec.
2013