The rise and fall of the progressive drag queen: Westernization of cross-dressing in 1990s Poland

The article studies the meanings of drag in the Polish media in the period 1989–2002. A textual analysis of mainstream as well as gay and lesbian media texts on drag queens was conducted to examine strategies that explained and legitimated drag in the context of the westernization of Polish culture, the socioeconomic changes of the 1990s, and the politics of respectability of the early Polish gay rights movement. The article shows that drag lacked the western political meanings that focused on gender performativity and gay rights; instead, it assumed connotations specific to the time and place. Drag queens turned out to embody the socioeconomic changes and widely shared class and geopolitical aspirations related to the 1990s westernization of Poland, but they also attested to the persisting distance between Poland and the imagined West. The article calls for critical attention when applying western theoretical concepts to the East.