The drag king scene in Britain is fast gaining a huge following. Minnie Stephenson meets the stars of this gender-defying world

Photography: Sarah Brimley

Backstage, in a basement bar in neon-lit Soho, Richard is staring intently in the mirror. His short hair is combed into a quiff, a smart suit jacket hugging his broad shoulders. Drawing a deep breath, and puffing out his chest, he reaches into a bowl and takes a handful of hair clippings, before meticulously applying them to his chin in the shape of a goatee beard.

Look a bit closer at those shoulders and you’d discover that, rather than the result of a gym regime, they’re actually just plastic inserts to exaggerate his ‘manly’ physique. Because, beyond the stage that he’s about to perform on, Richard doesn’t officially exist. By day, Richard is actually Zoe, a 22-year-old health and safety worker from Essex.

Richard is a drag king: part of the gender-defying performance art scene fast gaining a huge British following. Drag kings are, as you would expect, the opposite of drag queens – a display of hyper-masculinity, prosthetic packages and ego. They’re bold and often sexual, though being a drag king has little to do with sexuality – the women who portray these male alter-egos can be straight, gay, bisexual, transgender, genderfluid and non-binary (not identifying as just male or female).

In fact, in this illusory world, the lines of gender are purposefully blurred and social constructs are obliterated. On stage, the singing, dancing, miming, lip-syncing entertainers are whoever they want to be. And that freedom is perhaps why drag king culture – which has been around since the late 1800s and became a movement in its own right in the Nineties – is currently more popular than ever.

“The current growth is born out of younger generations of women,” explains Dr Meagan Tyler, an expert in gender and feminist theory. “They are less bound by traditional paradigms of gender conduct in the wake of various feminist movements. Social attitudes in this country are undergoing tremendous changes when it comes to acceptance of otherness.”

Meet the drag kings: the gender-defying performance art scene fast gaining a huge British following