Exploring masculine identity through drag – photo essay
Yas Necati takes Angela Christofilou on a journey through the transformative process
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
Drag isn’t just about queens, it’s about kings too and exploring masculine identities.
It’s about expressing different aspects of gender and discovering different ways of being and seeing. It’s about anything we want to be. I had the pleasure of photographing Yas Necati recently at their house transitioning into their drag king act Tarkan and it was a wonderful process to document. I was invited in and taken on a journey.
“I feel like drag for me is just an extended way of me exploring my own ideas of gender and my personal gender identity,” Yas explains.
“Obviously being a gender and performing a gender are two very different things – but in performing manhood and masculinity it’s allowed me to be more open and accepting of my femininity too – something that I used to shy away from in a quest to be ‘butch’.
“I feel like that experimentation has been really freeing for me, and contributed to me recognising that I’m non-binary – that I’ve never really sat at one end of the spectrum or the other.
“My drag king act is Tarkan, who is a Turkish
For more of Angela Christofilou’s work you can visit her website here
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments