Students were apparently encouraged to bring ‘tip money’ to give to the drag queens (strippers?). In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, there was a fair bit of parental fury last month when ‘drag queens performed sexually provocative dance moves in skimpy spandex thongs at an after-school student event’ at a high school. ‘At a time when our LGBTQ+ communities are under increased attack across this country, we must use our education system to educate’, said NYC mayor Eric Adams. Last week it was reported that the authorities in New York gave Drag Story Hour NYC $207,000. The weird mixing of drag queens and kids has rarely been out of the news in recent weeks. Go to those clubs and watch that six-foot fella lip-synch to Babs or Judy. It’s all a tad too shallow and knowing for my tastes – speaking to Susan Sontag’s famous definition of camp as a ‘love of the unnatural, of artifice and exaggeration’ – but if it’s what you like, then knock yourself out. They’re in bookstores bamboozling the juvenile browsers of the kids’ section with their ridiculous wigs and exaggerated lips. They’re in the local library reading stories to infants. They’re in your eight-year-old’s classroom. Drag queens in schools – what is going on? In the US and the UK, big-haired, dolled-up, foul-mouthed blokes in dresses are no longer only to be found in late-night clubs in seedy districts.
