Drag is a highly stylized art combining extravagant costumes, exaggerated make-up and entertaining personae in musical and theatrical performances. Drag as an artistic practice challenges gender stereotypes and the epistemic regimes of gender (Butler, 1990), establishing a non-fixed gender reality. While scarcely represented in the field of consumer research, the appeal of drag has increased in recent years due to its visibility in the cultural and media mainstream. Traditionally performed in LGBTQ+ venues, drag has recently ‘gone to the market’: the contemporary drag marketplace represents a multimillion-dollar industry that reaches far beyond traditional queer venues and audiences. With its increased popularity, drag has evolved into an international consumer pastime, with drag performers-cum-celebrities featuring on national tours, in concerts and at large-scale events, appearing regularly in television shows, movies and advertising, developing their own brands, products and collaborations. This newly acquired visibility allows for contemporary drag to highlight its boundary-spanning nature across art, politics, lifestyle and entertainment. Drag is indeed, as this book shows, a profession – a product bought and sold – but also a political act.

A drag queen may be described as a professional male performer appearing as a female character (Newton, 1979); she is ‘the realisation of the “veiled woman” … such is the androgynous power of the drag queen that what lies behind the veil may represent reassurance as much as alarm’ (Baker, 1995: 128, 130). Drag as female impersonation is anchored in the contested myth that the term drag would date back to Elizabethan theatre and stand for DRess As Girl, an acronym for a role where the male actor would portray a female character (Baroni, 2006). Women impersonating hyper-masculine characters on stage are drag kings. For a long time, if impersonating a female character, women were called faux queens or bio queens (Nicholson, 2017). These distinctions are increasingly antiquated and it is widely accepted (as well as practised) that persons of any gender (women, men, non-binary) may be drag queens and drag kings.

During its long history, drag has been a staple of both high and popular culture traversing opera, theatre, cinema, popular music and ‘the club’. A drag performance, regardless of genre or context, includes entertaining by, often, lip-syncing, singing, comedy and audience engagement.