DRAG

From Wikipedia:

"The term drag queen originates in Polari, a subset of English slang that was popular in some gay communities in the early part of the 20th century. Drag meant "clothes", and originated from Shakespeare's time when only men performed live theatre. They played both male, and female parts, and 'DRAG' was an acronym for "dressed as girl"^{[citation needed]}. Queen refers to the trait of affected royalty found in many drag characters." (click title to go to link)

Drag is, primarily, a performance. The theories we have studied previously have stressed the importance in film of maintaining a distinction between art and life. In drag, however, achievement lies in the complete blurring of the lines until the art is preceived as more real, as a more perfect representation, than the 'real.' In film maintaining cognitive faculties allows the viewer to be affected by the underlying message. The opposite is true with drag. For a drag artist to perform the role of a woman so convincingly that the viewer was fooled is to test the audience's understanding of gender.