Sloan, J. D., photographer. Untitled, Delta Queen series. Nashville Tennessee, 1973 [or 1974] Photograph. https://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppss.01340/.
This photograph provides a historical example of gender impersonation, which can differ from drag performances in significant ways. For example, gender impersonation wasn’t always queer-coded and performances were sometimes created by and for predominantly straight people. This photograph offers a unique opportunity to discuss the historical and cultural evolution of gender performance, highlighting the ways that mainstream and underground gender performances have evolved over time and place in the United States. This photo also serves as affirmation for students who might feel restricted by traditional gender norms and societal expectations; this affirmation is critical to making all students, especially gender nonconforming students, feel seen and understood in order to be able to learn in the classroom.
This source, a digital version of a black and white gelatin silver print, is a photo of people who were preparing to be female impersonators for a performance at the Delta Queen club in Nashville, Tennessee. This photograph captures at least six people in different stages of the process of getting ready to perform, including putting on makeup and dressing in traditionally feminine clothes. It’s unclear if the performers were aware of the photographer with the exception of the person on the front left of the photograph who appears to be facing the camera.
This photo can help to demonstrate that people have been impersonating other genders as a form of entertainment for many years in the United States. This photo, taken in the 1970s when dinner theater was popular, was part of a larger series that documenting performers known at the time as “female impersonators” both on-stage and off, at the Delta Queen club in Nashville, Tennessee. The photo was taken by J. D. Sloan, a photographer revered for his portraits and projects that provide a glimpse into Nashville’s cultural life during the 1970s.
- How can we practice close analysis with a photograph?
- What context do we need in order to better understand the story behind a photograph?
- How do we define femininity and masculinity in our culture? What are different ways that we express gender?
- What gender biases do we hold and where do they originate?
- In what ways does everyone perform gender?
- How has popular culture’s relationship to gender performance and drag culture changed over time and why?
Common Core State Standards-ELA
RI.9-10.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person's life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.
- Students can use different levels of questions to examine this photo to complete an analytical understanding of the photo.
RI.11-12.6: Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.
- Students can examine how a picture from the 1970s related to drag culture has evolved over time. They can ask questions, find comparisons, and generate an understanding of this culture in America.
SL.11-12.1.c: Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of positions on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote divergent and creative perspectives.
- Students can write their own level 2 and level 3 questions, patterned after Costa’s Levels of Questions about this source and pose those questions to each other.
- This photograph could serve as a prompt for inquiry-related projects in which students explore commonly untold stories and the artists who tell them.
- This photograph could be used in a lesson on photographic analysis, encouraging students to apply critical thinking skills and examine their own biases. By asking students to reflect on questions about what they observe in the photograph, students can reflect on any assumptions they might have and investigate the origins of their gender-based biases. This analysis can prompt deeper inquiry into why certain narratives endure, especially if they reinforce discriminatory ideas.
- While this could serve as a starting point to a conversation about public policy in relation to drag performance in Nashville specifically, this could just as easily serve as historical context for texts such as Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club or Dean Atta’s Black Flamingo, both young adult texts that feature drag performance. Viewed through a cultural lens, this photograph can serve as a reminder that gender performance has been a longstanding form of mainstream entertainment in the United States, predating both this 1970s photograph and the popularization of mainstream drag culture through shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race.
- A class activity that practices the skill of synthesis could involve discussing this photo in conjunction with excerpts from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, or Alok Vaid-Menon’s text Beyond the Gender Binary. These texts would help students to consider gender as a social construct, as well as how society polices gender socially and politically. This photo could be presented as a prompt to consider ways that we all construct and perform gender on a daily basis, and you could ask students to find excerpts from the text that relate to the ideas represented in the photo.
People may raise concerns about one of the impersonators not being fully clothed, potentially leading to questions about appropriate imagery in education. Additionally, people may take issue with the fact that masculine-presenting people are impersonating women, often reflecting fears rooted in homophobia, transphobia, and/or misogyny. Critics may worry that images like this photograph could influence students’ perspectives on gender identity or sexual orientation, despite evidence to the contrary.
Links to resources for approaching those topics
- This guide book to supporting LGBTQ+ students from GLSEN, which includes a section on unpacking internalized homophobia and transphobia.
- These lessons from The Representation Project help to unpack gender stereotypes of all kinds.
- The Human Rights Campaign’s resource “Understanding Drag: As American As Apple Pie” discusses the history of drag and some of the reasons it’s so important for everyone to see.
- This black and white photograph of Mills Thompson from the year 1900 might be helpful to show that men have been celebrated for impersonating women in performance for a long time in the United States, as well as to normalize this practice. https://www.loc.gov/item/2015647064/
- Chronicling America from the Library of Congress has several newspaper articles about women dressing as men in the early part of the twentieth century. This newspaper article could serve as an option for anyone who would prefer text over a photograph.
- Facing History’s Guide to Analyzing Images would be helpful if teachers of students in grades 6–12 want a guide to help students learn the steps in analyzing this photograph or others in the series.
- This background on some of J. D. Sloan’s other work in Nashville could also be useful context in unpacking the photograph and the Delta Queen series, as well.
- Depending on the students' age, Dean Atta’s young adult novel-in-verse The Black Flamingo and drag superstar RuPaul’s autobiography Guru offer valuable insights into how drag became a means for both authors to embrace their authentic selves despite life’s challenges. These stories provide hope and inspiration, particularly for students in the LGBTQ+ community, those interested in drag, or those seeking positive Black and/or queer role models.