Jack Atlanta does a neat little thing with drag in today's issue. In the previous issue, she shaves her 'stache and puts on a slinky dress in order to infiltrate a salsa club. It turns out that these clubs are sexual outlets for the higher ups in the government, in that the dancing is erotic without being...naked, I guess. After this little adventure, Jack returns home, puts on her real clothes, pencils the mustache back in, in anticipation of it growing again, and then wonders if the man she met at the club the previous night will recognizer her "out of drag."
This is interesting because, for Jack, drag is dressing in a more conventionally feminine style, rather than the Miami Vice look that she prefers. So this is a female-identifying person who dresses in a stereotypically male mode but then puts on drag that conforms, from a societally conventional perspective, to her self-identification. Drag is so damned interesting when you start thinking about it outside of the confines of stage performances. What does it mean for drag to be an everyday part of one's life, one's presentation of self? Really, we all wear drag. When I stand in front of a classroom, I am in teacher drag. When I go out to a bar or club, I am in recreational drag. We dress in particular ways to fit ourselves to particular situations - which, really, is drag.
Jack's "deviant" sexuality is also hinted at in this issue. The virtual dates she maintains on a weekly basis are with a young lady, hence the secrecy surrounding the establishment she frequents. On top of her blatant queerness, she also demonstrates a desire for virtual BDSM practices as well. Both of these identifications, of course, mark Jack as aberrant to the ruling class. In the fictional milieu this makes sense, but it also works as a nice metaphor for the practice of non-normative sexualities and identities in the late 90s when the comic was published. Remember, this is pre-50 Shades, so BDSM culture was still very much in the underground.
We'll finish up Jack's story tomorrow. More to come...
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