🏳️‍🌈 A Bad Case of 'Drag Mouth'...

QUEER WORD
DRAG MOUTH

What it means:

A tongue-in-cheek term used to describe someone who leans perhaps a smidge too heavily on drag slang - peppering everyday conversation with popular catchphrases and clichés from the world of drag, even when they’re completely irrelevant (or worse, wildly out-of-step with the mood or context).

Let’s use it in a sentence:

When James ended his grandma’s funeral speech with ‘now, sashay away,’ his family all agreed: the drag mouth had gone too far.

A little bit of history:

The year is 2009.

A lone drag queen, Shannel, struts onto a studio set. She paces the room, mouth agape, a bundle of nerves and anticipation.

Soon enough, eight more drag queens join her in the space, all matching her anxious excitement as they size up their competition.

And from these humble beginnings a phenomenon was born.

Okay, okay, I know it might sound a little hyperbolic to call RuPaul’s Drag Race a phenomenon, but I genuinely believe it’s reshaped our culture.

And I’m not just talking about drag culture. I’m not even talking about queer culture. I’m talking about culture full stop.

You can hear its influence absolutely everywhere - in overheard brunch conversations, splashed across TikTok reels, and shoehorned into those cringe-worthy corporate Pride campaigns where some poor social media intern was clearly told to ‘make it gay, but not toooooo gay’.

And with this immense cultural shift came something unexpected: drag mouth.

Before Drag Race Took Over The World

Sure, drag had flirted with the mainstream here and there before Drag Race (See: ‘Priscilla’, ‘To Wong Foo’), but it was still largely rooted in local bars and clubs, each with their own vibe, customs, and slang.

But when Drag Race blew up, it began flattening what had been a beautifully messy patchwork of distinct drag scenes. These days, nearly every local scene is shaped (consciously or not) by what’s happening on the show.

And it’s not just drag.

This is just a more visible example of a bigger shift across the queer community: the slow erosion of all those gorgeous, bizarre hyper-local quirks - the dialects, the in-jokes, the subcultural codes - all giving way to a shared, internet-led monocultural mush.

We’re never going to get another Polari. Or Swardspeak. Or isiNgqumo.

These types of secret languages born of necessity, secrecy, and tight-knit community just don’t have the same space to bloom anymore.

And I find that kind of sad.

But perhaps that’s a rant for another day…?

Back to Drag Mouth…

After more than a decade on the air, Drag Race has raised an entire generation of queens who don’t remember a world without it (and, yes, I know I’m fully showing my age here, but I just want to say that it blows my mind to think that there are full-grown adults out there that literally grew up watching Drag Race! Isn’t that so weird?).

They’ve never had to learn by toiling away in sticky, sweaty nightclubs. No glue-stick brows. No dodgy padding. No ‘making it work’ with borrowed heels, busted tights, and blind bravado.

And it shows - not just in their perfect, generic makeup or the same three dance moves they all whip out in each performance, but in the way they talk.

It can feel like drag as cosplay — rehearsed, blandly uniform, and missing any kind of grit.

So, Am I Just Being A Crotchety Old Man?

It’s highly likely.

And, to be clear, this isn’t me pining for the ‘good old days’. I certainly don’t want drag shoved back into the shadows.

But drag is at its best when it’s subversive, edgy, and a wee bit dangerous.

Going mainstream has taken some of the bite out of it.

All this mimicry and parroting from baby queens makes me wonder: when we absorb a culture without living it - when we repeat the language without understanding where it came from - what gets lost?

Who Gets to Speak the Language?

And when you poke at it a little more I guess there’s a big, messy question at the heart of all this:

Do you need to be part of a community to use its language?

On one hand, I don’t think we should be gatekeeping queer slang. Language should be fun, irreverent, malleable, and constantly evolving. If we start policing who can say what, we risk stripping all the playfulness from it.

But I also get the frustration of seeing your culture repackaged, watered down, and sold back to you by people who’ve never had to live a day of it.

Especially when the language that helped you survive - that gave you a way to signal and connect and feel seen - becomes someone else’s quirky aesthetic.

The Kids Are Alright (Mostly)

But then I think about this:

Queer culture doesn’t get passed down from parent to child. There’s no handbook. No roadmap.

No one sat me down and taught me how to fine-tune my gaydar. No one told me that picking a female popstar to unhealthily obsess over was just a natural part of the queer experience. I had to figure it out myself, often through subtext, hindsight, and stolen moments.

So who can blame the new generation for clinging to what they do have - even if that’s just some vacuous catchphrases and a RuGirl quote wedged haphazardly into every conversation?

Yes, sometimes it’s annoying. And, yes, sometimes it’s way too much. But, If drag mouth is their way of signalling ‘I’m here, I belong, I’m going to take up space’ then maybe - just maybe - we can meet that with a bit of grace.

Let’s keep the grit. Let’s keep the weird.

But let’s also leave the welcome mat out.

And now I want to know what you think! Hit reply or answer the poll below to let me know what you think about queer language going mainstream.