Fall is beginning and inevitably people start kidding around and asking me “so are you going to strap on a corset and a pair of high heeled sandals this Halloween?”. I’ve taken to answering back “Hey do you remember the funny things we did in the old days? Do you remember radical drag?” That doesn’t elicit a laugh. Typically all I get is a puzzled look. Since it seems I’m the only one left who remembers radical drag, I’ll go on and share my memories of it with you. Radical drag was a big thing at the gay marches in the early seventies. Everyone then tried hard to look like a real hippy but a few guys took it a step further and showed up in partial drag. Beehive hairdos, gowns, lavish make up, but always paired with items like beards and army boots. The point that they were trying to make was that gay civil rights weren’t enough- they were marching for the freedom to wear whatever you wanted, wherever you wanted. After all, why shouldn’t a man wear his favorite flowered frock with a pair of worn army boots? Or accent his lumberjack shirt with a little mauve eyeshadow? It seemed so important at the time. Only a few years earlier you could be kicked out of high school for growing your hair an extra two inches. These fellows were dead serious about this: this was Radical Drag!
Or serious up to a point. They also enjoyed the shocked reactions they got from the crowds and the rest of us did too. I first encountered this at Winnipeg’s gay pride convention in 1974. A couple of the fellows wore jean skirts to all the meetings. A jean skirt is this lumpy misshapen garment you get if you take all the stitching out of your jeans and try to sow it back together as a skirt. After one long day of revolutionary talk, a few of us went to a friend’s apartment for drinks and Chinese food. Some of the group took turns trying on the jean skirts. I can never forget the sight of those skinny little hippies pirouetting around, long hair and beards fanning out far more gracefully than the skirts. It helped the effect immeasurably that the host’s cat thought this was some kind of game and was skittering around behind them.
At the end of the convention a couple of the guys invited me to ride along with them in their van all the way back to Toronto. As there was quite a load of us crammed in there, my share of the gas money came to about $20. This trip was rendered all the more interesting by the presence of a petite Scotsman named Alistair. Alistair liked wearing tank tops trimmed with glitter and painting his face with intense, luminous green eye-liner and shadow. I suppose it complemented his long red-hair and Fu Manchu mustache.
Our main source of entertainment on this long, long trip (other than stopping to look at the giant goose, or the giant mosquito, or the giant trout, or whatever) was to “raise the consciousness ” of the locals. To achieve this, we would cruise the van slowly through some little town until we found a local young male sauntering along alone. These guys always seemed to be wearing hockey shirts and windbreakers, and carrying six packs. We would pull up quietly beside the victim and Alistair would lean way out of the passenger side window. Then, using his best Kenneth Williams style enunciation, Alistair would shout ” Cooey!” or ” Ello love!” or just make this loud unnaturally extended slurping noise. The unsuspecting victim on the pavement would look up and take in this vision of garish green paint, glitter, and red facial hair, and come to a dead stop. When his jaw had dropped sufficiently, we would drive off in a cloud of giggles. Mission Accomplished! We all felt quite brave, but I noticed that the driver sure stomped down hard on that gas pedal! Nothing ever happened to us on that trip, I guess the townspeople just said “What the hell was that?”
I stayed on in Toronto and encountered more of the same. I used to go to Gay Alliance Toward Equality dances, and there would always be a few people shuffling around in baggy old print dresses decorated with thrift shop brooches and necklaces. The effect wasn’t particularly festive as the other accessories were usually jeans, old runners, and glum faces. These fellows were usually political science or economics students, strictly serious types. They looked funny, but not haw-haw funny, just peculiar. The one exception was a tall, skinny, gnarly-looking hippy named Wally. He always had the longest beard in the place, and he loved kicking up his heels in his mini-skirt and white go-go boots. People kept saying to me: “Greg! Do you believe it? He wears that on the way over on the subway!”
The most spectacular Radical Drag gesture which I ever witnessed, occurred on Bloor Street on a Saturday afternoon in broad daylight. I was doing my shopping that day when I noticed absolutely everyone up ahead seemed to be pointing and laughing at something. I hurried on up to see what all the fuss was about, and there I recognized a familiar face: a tall PhD student by the name of Charles. He was doing his shopping with his plaid shirt, leather tote bag, long hair and beard, and mid-calf length denim skirt. This wasn’t some thrift shop item, he’d obviously had it custom made. It fit his long legs beautifully. Charles had gone through a huge effort to make the whole ensemble attractive, so he was obviously quite serious about the whole thing. However, the crowd was having none of it: they weren’t quite rolling around with laughter and pounding the pavement, but they were coming pretty close.
The whole radical drag thing started to fade away after that. People were cutting off their pony tales and beards, and working out. Mainly though I think it was because it was ineffective. Run around in a skirt and people are just laughing too hard at you to listen to what you have to say. I remember that all of the most effective gay activists whom I met in those days were quite unremarkable in appearance. As a matter of fact, fashion flair and gay lib seemed antithetical.
