ABSTRACT
The Maxi Challenge takes the fixity of gender to task with contestants performing multiple genders, but ultimately erases expressions of queerness in both movement form and gender expression by reinforcing both hyper-masculinity and heteronormative gender roles. The objective of “Prancing with the Queens” is to place seemingly opposite dances together so that the performers are both performing supposedly opposite genders and supposedly opposite dance styles. In "Prancing with the Queens," drag highlights the inherent fluidity of gender generated by heteronormativity, playing with the inconsistencies between gendered cultural paradigms and actual experience—the queens can switch quickly between the roles they are playing and provide the ultimate gender performance to, as Judith Butler suggests, "enact and reveal" how gender performance can destabilize the naturalized categories of identity and desire. Often, RuPaul’s Drag Race challenges the authenticity of gender as an absolute, fixed trait of one’s identity, instead portraying it as something to be imagined and performed.
