Inside Hong Kong’s drag scene: RuPaul’s Drag Race turned an underground LGBT subculture mainstream – but are Asian drag queens getting enough recognition?
- After the Stonewall riots in New York, drag balls became a place of pride – and with RuPaul’s reality TV show, drag has a bigger audience than ever
- Filipino, Hong Kong-based drag queen Mocha Diva appeared on Drag Race Thailand, and local queens are getting their voices out on social media and at events
According to the BBC, the first “queer masquerade ball” was reportedly held in Harlem, New York, in 1869. And after the kicked off the American gay liberation movement in 1969, drag balls became a place of unapologetic self-expression and pride.
But what about Hong Kong’s own drag scene? Are local performers being acknowledged and represented in the media to the same scale as their international counterparts?
Mocha Diva, a Filipino drag queen based in Hong Kong, drew plenty of attention when she took part in the second season of Drag Race Thailand. Aside from airing in Thailand on Line TV, the programme also streamed on Wow Presents Plus, an international service owned by World of Wonder Productions, the production company behind Drag Race.
Although Hong Kong still doesn’t recognise same-sex marriage or have laws protecting LGBTQ+ people against discrimination (in the private sector, at least), more of the public seem to support the community than ever before.
According to a survey conducted by Hong Kong University’s Centre for Comparative and Public Law, 50.4 per cent of respondents expressed support for same-sex marriage in 2017, in comparison to only 38 per cent in 2013.