As their art form enjoys unprecedented cultural visibility and popularity, DC-area drag kings are stepping into the spotlight—and putting on an eclectic, gender-bending, raucously liberating show.
Written by Britt Peterson
In February, DC drag artist King Molasses performed on one of the drag world’s most important stages: RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Sasha Velour’s NightGowns revue in New York City. Lip-synching in part to a monologue from Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, Molasses put on a show radiating grief, tenderness, and pride, expressed through a jerky, swaggering striptease, all while wearing a giant fake beard, cowboy hat (eventually flung into the audience), and cowboy boots.
Molasses, who grew up in Prince George’s County, has been performing since 2018 and is a celebrated artist on par with the country’s best. But as a drag king, they often come into shows with “the understanding that there’s going to be people that (a) have no idea who I am or (b) have no idea what I do.”
An art form with deep Washington roots going back to at least the late 1800s, drag is having a complex cultural moment: more visible and mainstream than ever, but also facing a backlash that includes anti-drag ordinances in politically conservative areas and drag events nationwide enduring protests and bomb threats. Meanwhile, drag kings—traditionally defined as assigned-female-at-birth people performing in masculine outfits—remain largely in the shadow of drag queens. Despite fan requests, RuPaul has never included a drag king on his show, closing off a crucial avenue to fame and success. Even here in the DC area, kings report being booked and paid less than queens.
This is a loss for artists, but also for audiences. Gender-bending entertainers in masculine attire have been strutting across stages for centuries. The “male impersonator” was a staple of British music halls and Harlem cabarets, and one of the best-known performers of the 1950s and ’60s, Stormé DeLarverie, is said to have helped launch the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement by fighting back against police violence at New York’s Stonewall Inn in 1969. Perhaps because they’re still overlooked by the mainstream, today’s kings have retained all the ferocity, experimentation, and occasional sheer absurdity that make drag, well, drag. “Drag kings are still so underground, we are all able to define it for ourselves,” says Ricky Rosé, another prominent local drag artist.
DC’s kings are creating eclectic personas that range from otherworldly demons to get-you-pregnant-with-a-stare lotharios. At shows, you’ll see Hollywood glamour kings shrugging off their fake-fur coats to 1930s show tunes, goofy kings lip-synching to Radiohead in Muppet costumes, and gender-bendy goth kings twerking in glitter beards. Performances are raucous and liberating: Audience members fling dollar bills while kings stalk the room, seducing onlookers.
Here are eight artists who represent the local scene.
fetish
noun
1
a
: an object (such as a small stone carving of an animal) believed to have magical power to protect or aid its owner
broadly: a material object regarded with superstitious or extravagant trust or reverence
b
: an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion : prepossession
c
: an object or bodily part whose real or fantasied presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification and that is an object of fixation to the extent that it may interfere with complete sexual expression
2
: fixation
3
: a rite or cult of fetish worshippers
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fetish
Newsessentials Blog 
Posted on June 8, 2024
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