There's a history of "drag" for kids in the UK as well (in pantomime shows) and probably other countries too. It's just the US that can't do it without fucking it up and putting unsuitable things in there. Probably because the particular type of drag practiced in the US evolved out of minstrel shows (progressives always leave that part out).
Not really. Yeah, drag in panto is pretty mainstream in the UK, fine.
"It's just the US that can't do it without fucking it up and putting unsuitable things in there."
No. "The US" isn't doing
shit, cross-dressing is not some beloved national comic tradition in the US like it is in the UK. Drag as we know it is a specifically
gay subcultural thing that was meant for (pretty lousy, cheap) transient bits of entertainment for adults in nightclubs.
That's all. It was never meant to be some cultural artifact or career choice. Just because RuPaul commercialized it and monetized it doesn't change that history. "Putting unsuitable things in there" was a major aspect of it though,
for adults in nightclubs and no one else. Usually on drink or drugs. I never enjoyed drag shows, thought they were lame, but one good thing is that they were scabrously politically incorrect, no sacred cows at all.
In my clubbing yoof of the late 80s into the 90s I said hi to a few drag queens after the show but avoided them like the (other) plague because they were all basically degenerates on drugs. And they could get clingy in an instant, they were promiscuous gay man with tragic trauma backstories in the South or whatever and I guess I was on the masculine side and they tended to take mere friendliness as sexual interest and got offended if you said "Whoa. No."
Fuuuck no. Good looking, mentally stable guys with jobs did not become drag queens, the ugly ones fucked over by life did. But I digress.
"Drag evolved out of minstrel shows" is unsupported and dubious. We have 15,000 pages here in this thread of analysis of men impersonating women, and caricaturing the darkies is not an impetus. I'll conclude: Drag was cheap entertainment for gay men in nightclubs. Men with sexualities more in line with the opposite sex's in the 20th century and before made the literal travesty an understandable gimmick. Not racism, but hypocrites elsewhere love to level that charge at us for everything, 330 million people of all races that actually manage to get along all right every day.