A look at ‘fishy drag’ and androgynous fashion: Exploring the border spaces beyond gender-normative deviance for the straight, cisgendered woman

This article seeks to re-explore and critique the current trend of androgyny in fashion and popular culture and the potential it may hold for gender-deviant dress and politics. In order to do this, it will discuss the way in which a popular version of male drag has monopolized a vision of gender subversion that has marginalized ‘straight’ cisgendered women’s transgressive challenge to gender norms. Although not misogynistic in itself, RuPaul’s Drag Race (Logo 2009–2017) brings to the surface the misogyny inherent in femininity – the performance underscores deeper asymmetrical power imbalances which are embedded in women’s daily lives. Recent unisex fashion collections with their subsequent campaigns have sought to address this imbalance; however, this is not a problem with an easy fix. This article looks at the way in which particular performers such as Grace Jones and Harnaam Kaur have ad(dressed) their gender resistance without camouflaging and thus losing sight of a feminist history of gender inequality which still strongly resonates.