ALIEN FEMININITIES: TRANSCENDING GENDER THROUGH DRAG IN AN AESTHETICALLY RESTRICTIVE CULTURE by ANDREA PAULINE HERRERA A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Sociology and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2020 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Andrea Pauline Herrera Title: Alien Femininities: Transcending Gender through Drag in an Aesthetically Restrictive Culture. This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Sociology by: CJ Pascoe Chairperson Oluwakemi Balogun Core Member Tristan Bridges Core Member Priscilla Ovalle Institutional Representative and Kate Mondloch Interim Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2020 ii © 2020 Andrea Pauline Herrera iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Andrea Pauline Herrera Doctor of Philosophy Department of Sociology June 2020 Title: Alien Femininities: Transcending Gender through Drag in an Aesthetically Restrictive Culture. In this dissertation, I conceptualize femininities not as a static category of gender performance, but as a set of shifting configurations of dress, cosmetics, bodily comportment, and behaviors inflected by race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age, body size/shape, and facial beauty. Non-cisgender-male drag queens who embody exaggerated forms of femininity defend their contested participation in drag culture by defining drag as a multi-gender queer culture based on the staged exaggeration of quotidian gender, against mainstream definitions of drag as the cross-gender performance of a (cis) man dressing up as a (cis) woman. Because these queens are subject to sex-gendered double standards for the intracultural legitimation of their temporary accomplishment of the queer gender Drag Queen, many queens incorporate stylistic elements based on aliens and other fantastical creatures as a form of aesthetic overcompensation to preempt critiques from audiences and cis male drag queens. The embodiment of alien femininities also enables the participants in this research to temporarily transcend cultural restrictions on aesthetics and self-presentation, especially those based on quotidian gender, which they conceptualize through a framework of trans-inclusionary gender essentialism. Through this discourse of gender, participants and I consider together the political potentialities of femme, a quotidian queer gender, and alien femininities, a temporarily- iv embodied queer gender, excavating a ripple-effect theory of social change in which feelings at the micro level animate interactional and (sub)cultural shifts at the meso level which then ripple outward and upward to restructure and, hopefully, help dismantle systems of normalizing power at the macro level. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Andrea P. Herrera GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED University of Oregon, Eugene University of Houston, Houston Universidad del País Vasco, Spain DEGREES AWARDED Master of Arts, Sociology, 2014, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, Anthropology and Sociology, 2011, University of Houston AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Sexualities Sex and gender Race Embodiment New media Qualitative methods PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Graduate employee, Departments of Sociology, Ethnic Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2012-2020 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Miller Family Scholarship. University of Oregon Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, 2018-2019 General University Scholarship. University of Oregon, 2018-2019 Martin P. Levine Memorial Dissertation Award. American Sociological Association, Section on the Sociology of Sexualities, 2018 Student Forum Travel Award. American Sociological Association, 2018 Graduate Student Publication Award: “Theorizing the Lesbian Hashtag: Identity, Community, and the Technological Imperative to Name the Sexual Self.” University of Oregon Sociology, 2018 vi Charles W. Hunt Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. University of Oregon Sociology, 2018 General University Scholarship. University of Oregon, 2017-2018 Conference Travel Grants. Center for the Study of Women in Society, 2014, 2016, 2018 Lawrence Carter Graduate Student Research Award. University of Oregon Sociology, 2017 Research Travel Grant. University of Oregon Sociology, 2017 Marquina Faculty-Graduate Student Collaboration Award (with Oluwakemi Balogun). University of Oregon Sociology, 2017 Charles A. Reed Graduate Fellowship. University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, 2016-2017 Distinguished Paper Award: “The Accomplishment of Heterosexuality in Women: An Intersectional Approach.” Southwestern Social Science Association, Women’s and Gender Studies, 2016 Marquina Faculty-Graduate Student Collaboration Award (with CJ Pascoe). University of Oregon Sociology, 2016 Joan Acker Graduate Teaching Fellowship for Gender Research. University of Oregon Sociology, 2012-2013 PUBLICATIONS 2020. Musselman, Malori A, Andrea P Herrera, Diego Contreras Medrano, Dan Michael Fielding, Nicole A Francisco, and Larissa Petrucci. “Dissonant Discourses in Institutional Communications on Sexual Violence.” Women, Politics, & Policy. 2019. Herrera, Andrea P. “Strategies for Sexual Subversion: Informing the Future of Sexualities Research and Activism.” Social Thought and Research 35. 2019. Farris, D. Nicole, D’Lane R. Compton, and Andrea P. Herrera, eds. Gender, Sexuality, and Race in the Digital Age. New York: Springer. 2019. Herrera, Andrea P. “Review of Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism, and the Politics of Presentation by Hannah McCann.” Gender & Society 33(5): 828-830. vii 2018. Herrera, Andrea P. “Theorizing the Lesbian Hashtag: Identity, Community, and the Technological Imperative to Name the Sexual Self.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 22(3): 313-328. 2018. Pascoe, CJ and Andrea P Herrera. “Gender and Sexuality in High School.” In Handbook of the Sociology of Gender, edited by Barbara Risman, Carissa Froyum, and William Scarborough. New York: Springer. 2018. Herrera, Andrea P. “Reverence for “Family Values” Cast Aside at the Border.” The Register-Guard. June 21. 2016. Herrera, Andrea P. “Review of Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing by Jeffrey Q. McCune, Jr.” Men & Masculinities 19(2): 213-214. viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I’d like to thank my family, especially my mother Mary for supporting my education, always, in so many ways, and for loving me unconditionally. If I could pick a mom out of a magazine, I’d pick you. My darling Kat – thank you for carrying the buckets, bear, and for always believing in the best version of me. I’d like to thank my child, Cuauhtémoc Pauline Roman Herrera, for sharing your hugs and trucks with me, sitting on my lap during my defense, and going on bike rides with me when writing a dissertation inside every day during the COVID-19 pandemic felt at once monotonous and frenetic. Our secret “I love you” hand signal is one of the most precious joys of my life. I love you all the time. PS: fire truck. To my advisor, chair, supervisor, mentor CJ Pascoe: my intellectual trajectory has been immeasurably shaped by your influence, though you have always made space for me to curate my own voice. You’ve made me feel smart and capable when I’ve doubted myself. From your first graduate student advisee ever – a huge thank you. To my other committee members Kemi Balogun, Tristan Bridges, and Priscilla Ovalle, thank you for engaging so thoughtfully with my work and ideas and for being so flexible with your time and intellectual labor during the chaotic period during which I finished this dissertation. Each of y’all have enriched my ideas as well as my belief in myself and my abilities. Other faculty I’d particularly like to thank for assisting me in this project, whether they realized it or not, are Jocelyn Hollander, Shoniqua Roach, and Matt Norton. Multiple intellectual communities sustained me during this research, especially the Social Sciences Feminist Network Research Interest Group (SSFN-RIG). To the members of “the rig,” my dear friends and coauthors Nic, Mal, Dan, Larissa, Diego, some of my favorite memories of grad school happened with y’all. #feministsoup. To the DTeam – I ix now pass the baton of Senior Membership to Ken Hanson. Thank y’all for thoughtfully workshopping my research multiple times. Thank you also to the University of Washington Gender Working Group for inviting me to present and talk through my work and to all the conference attendees who helped me sharpen my arguments. Many thanks to the staff and coordinators of the University of Oregon Department of Sociology, especially Chris Blum and Nena Pratt, for facilitating my Zoom defense and for helping disentangle me from many bureaucratic webs of my own spinning. Thank you to my cousin Justin Hutchens for running the script that collected all the tweets I analyzed for this project. To my loving friends from Houston to Eugene, Instagram to Twitter, thank you for constantly and vociferously reminding me of the worth of my thoughts and emotions throughout the research process and beyond. To the staff of Trev’s Sports Bar & Grill, where I wrote the majority of this manuscript, thanks for letting me hang around, learning my name, and always knowing I am probably going to order a Boneyard IPA and stop writing whenever the basketball game starts. I am grateful