"Drag" was originally a theatrical term used to describe the women's clothing a man wore on stage. It came into use in the 1870s at the same time that cross-dressing, or dressing as the opposite sex, became popular in vaudeville variety shows. Men would dress in "drag" and women would "wear breeches," each one poking fun at the foibles and anxieties of the opposite sex. By the 1940s, drag had come to describe professional female impersonators and had begun to take on meanings associated with male homosexuality. Gay men who wore women's clothes off-stage started to be characterized as men in "drag" by mid-century.

Since the 1950s, the term "drag" has come to describe a form of cross-dressing for both men and women that intends to expose itself as false. In other words, men and women in drag broadcast the fact that they are dressed up as one...