Performing (Asian American trans) femme on RuPaul’s Drag Race: dis/orienting racialized gender, or, performing trans femme of color, regardless

ABSTRACT

This essay turns to reality television to perform trans of color criticism. Taking as its analytic focus the embodied performance – and concomitant mediated production – of whiteness by Asian American drag queen competitor Gia Gunn on the reality competition series RuPaul’s Drag Race [Bailey, F., Barbato, R., Campbell, T., RuPaul, Corfe, S., Post, P., & Salangsang, M. (Executive Producers). (2012). RuPaul's drag race all stars [TV series]. World of Wonder Productions]. We argue that Gia exploits what Nishime, L. [(2017). Mixed race matters. Cinema Journal, 56(3), 148–152. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2017.0031] calls the “perceived malleability of Asianness,” allowing her to perform a queer version of white womanhood. In turn, media producers orientalize Gia’s performance, effectively constructing a trans femme formation in transmisogynistic terms. In turn, and in the words of Nakayama, T. [(2012). Dis/orienting identities. In A. Gonzalez, M. Houston, & Y. Chen (Eds.), Our voices (pp. 20–25). Oxford University Press], the racialized trans formation “dis/orients” mediated tropes constraining Asianness.

KEYWORDS:

• Ambiguity
• trans of color criticism
• whiteness
• mixed-race
• trans femme

Notes

1 Not to be confused with her everyday persona: Gia Keitaro Ichikawa. Gia is a fourth generation (Yonsei) Japanese American who does not speak Japanese, nor do her parents. In an interview with JPy Magazine, Gia explains,

Ichikawa is my last name and Keitaro is my middle name … and [a]lthough Keitaro was the name my parents assigned to their “son,” and I am now their daughter, it still feels good to be reminded of exactly who I am (JPy, 2018, p. 30).

Gia’s connection to Japan is through a signifying chain that relies on positive affective attachment to subjective trans identity rather than historically sedimented flows of U.S. imperial power in the shape of mid-20th Century internment, for instance, pressing many Japanese families to distance themselves from their Japaneseness, including naming practices.

2 Lang/Levitsky (2021) traces femme, locating its emergence in two U.S. queer worlds: dyke-bars and ballrooms – with dyke-bars tending toward whiteness and ballrooms working to keep femmes of color alive. Dyke-bar femmes, while appearing feminine, worked against “normative femininity and conventional womanhood” placing them in broad motion away from (white) womanhood (Lang/Levitsky 2021, p. 5). Conversely, ballroom femme marks but “one position among many, one place to stand as a performer and as a person in the world” (Lang/Levitsky 2021, p. 5; Bailey, 2013). As femmes of color navigating racist publics, survival is communally realized. Ballroom femmes mark those moving in motion away from white womanhood, including the Western bio-logics used to assess corporeal intelligibility. Enriched by these histories, we use trans femme of color to describe our kin of color moving in motion away from both white womanhood and, distinctly, white manhood, including those assigned “male” at birth.

3 The confessional room is an isolated space where contestants openly reflect on the competition; producers direct conversational responses, which are then edited to advance storyline arcs (Fox, 2019).

4 Geish is shorthand for geisha.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lore/tta LeMaster

Lore/tta LeMaster (Ph.D., Southern Illinois University, Carbondale) lives, loves, and creates on stolen Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Piipaash (Maricopa) lands known currently as Arizona. She is Assistant Professor of critical/cultural communication studies at Arizona State University. Her scholarship engages the intersectional constitution of cultural difference with particular focus on queer and trans of color life, art, and becoming. Her pronouns are she/they.

Michael Tristano

Michael Tristano Jr. (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is Assistant Professor of queer intercultural communication studies at Towson University. His research focuses on the material conditions of queer and trans people of color and the means by which queer and trans communities of color engage in worldmaking practices and perform survival and joy in light of oppressive conditions. His pronouns are he/him/his.