In Victorian-era England, Thomas Ernest Boulton, left, and Frederick William Park were known for dressing and performing as women. In April 1870, they were arrested for the former.

Dress Code

A new history of drag in Britain reveals the little-known mainstream popularity of cross-dressing in British culture, even during the Victorian era

By Jacob Bloomfield

When I first started conducting the research that formed the basis of my book, Drag: A British History, my assumption was that I would mostly be investigating niche renderings of an art form shunned by the mainstream due to its association with homosexuality. What I soon found out was that, when drag was associated with sexuality, it was not always considered taboo. In fact, the sexual aspects of drag could fascinate and even turn on audiences, including mainstream, “respectable”—even heterosexual—people.

Take, for example, a letter submitted to and published in the Victorian newspaper London Society in 1893. In it, a correspondent, implied to be male, retrospectively pores over the body of a female impersonator (historically, the common term for a male drag artist) that he had allegedly seen: “The bust and hips were accentuated by the marvelous slimness of the waist, whilst the shapely limbs, clad in pink tights and gauzy skirts, terminated in a pair of ankles and feet that would have put to shame many a fashionable dame.”