dr.a.g. Book Review

This post has been sponsored by dr.a.g. book, however, all opinions are 100% my very own, as always.

This is the dr.a.g. book review. If you were unfamiliar, drag queen come from dr.a.g. (for ‘dressed as girl’). The dr.a.g. book is a 180-page 28x28cm Coffee Table Book that celebrates the beauty and diversity of drag. Drag meant “clothes”, and comes from William Shakespeare and his time when theater performers were only men.  A drag queen is a person, usually a man, who dresses (or “drags”) in female clothes and make-up for special occasions and usually because they are performing and/or entertaining.

There are tons of gay coffee table books out there that feature porn stars (I myself have three,) but there really aren’t any out there that I could find for drag queens. So, already the d.r.a.g. book is already a trailblazing accomplishment or at the very least, serving an under-served market. Thank you Christopher Logan. We as a gay community owe a lot to drag queens. Besides entertaining us with their lip syncing of our favorite hits, providing us with possibly the greatest reality show ever (RuPaul’s Drag Race, on Logo);  there are drag groups like The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI) that do a lot of charity work for the gay community, and it’s said that it was a drag queen who stood up to the police and started the Stonewall riot, which gave us our modern day Gay Pride Parade. So, it’s about time these girls get some recognition and the dr.a.g. book is a nice start.

The late Erica Andrews

The dr.a.g. book features an introduction and acknowledgments page in three languages explaining the concept and origins of the word dr.a.g. and dr.a.b. (dressed as boy) and then jumps right into the collection of photos. There is no table of contents or index page and there’s no particular order to the photos, so if you’re looking for a specific queen you’re just going to have to flip through. That’s not such a bad thing since the book features several faces that you’ll recolonize like Jackie Beat, Miss Coco Peru, Sherry Vine, Hedda Lettuce, Jimmy James, Chad Michaels, and many other wonderful and talented queens. Among the featured queens is the late legendary trans woman and drag queen Erica Andrews of San Antonio, Texas.

That said, there is one glaring omission from the book. That omission is probably the best known drag queen today, who in her own words is still payin’ the f%kin’ light bill over [at LOGO TV]:RuPaul. Yes, American pop culture icon, actor/actress, model, author, recording artist, TV host, entrepreneur, podcaster, and lion tamer (okay, I might have made that last one up) RuPaul Andre Charles is not in the book. Plenty of former RuPual’s Drag Race contestants and even RuPual’s Drag U Dean of Drag (and legend in her own right), Lady Bunny, are in the book, but the Supermodel of the World/Champion/Glamazon is absent. I get that with TV shows, a movie, books (Workin’ It! and Lettin It All Hang Out), and a full discography of original songs out there,  RuPaul doesn’t exactly need publicity from the dr.a.g. book. RuPaul has done so much that it’s seems odd for the quintessential drag queen not to be included.

The photos are all taken by different photographers and with that comes people of different skill levels. Some photographers like Mike Ruiz aare talented masters of their craft while others could use some pointers. Some of the drag queens are airbrushed within an inch of their lives and their skin just looks like they used the paint bucket tool and called it a day. Others photos suffer from the “Vaseline on the camera lens” look. For you more mature readers, it’s the blur that seemed to follow Dynasty’s Alexis Carrington (played by drag queen favorite Joan Collins). For the younger fans, it’s the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race where everything looks out of focus. In the words of Jonny McGovern‘s character, Chocolate Puddin’, I have a question: why are ya’ll so muther f%kin’ blurry?

Beside RuPaul, there are other queens that I wish had been included,  as big as the world of drag is, that is a lot to ask even for at 180-page book. Plus, nothing says there can’t be a dr.a.g. book volume 2 featuring RuPual and all the queens who didn’t make it into this book. There are many talented drag performers and entertainers out there and the dr.a.g book has wet our apatite and we want more! We were only given a digital copy for review, but I’d say that the dr.a.g. book by Christopher Logan would be a fabulous addition to any library or coffee table and is worth picking up.