🎭️ is the 'Pantomime Dame' at risk? 🎭️

QUEER WORD
PANTOMIME DAME

What It Means:

a traditional, comedic character in British pantomime, almost always played by a man in drag.

The character is known for her flamboyant costumes, heavy make-up, and witty interactions with the audience. She’s usually a warm, bossy, matriarchal figure (though occasionally she’s the antagonist).

Let’s Use It In A Sentence:

Bernadette was a bit miffed when Fenella announced that Widow Twankey, the pantomime dame they’d just seen perform at the local theatre, was going to be her new mum. 

A little bit of history:

When all this anti-drag nonsense started bubbling up in the US, many British people scoffed (in that way that Brits usually do when we find out what our American cousins are up to).

‘That kind of thing would never happen here!’, we said.

After all, drag has never been a dirty word in this country. We’re used to seeing it on our TV and in theatres. There’s a mountain of examples to point to, including drag queens as prime-time TV show hosts as far back as the ‘60s (hello Danny La Rue!), and game show presenters quizzing the nation in the ‘90s (hello Lily Savage!).

Heck, drag in this country goes back at least to Shakespearean days, when female roles were played by men because women weren’t allowed on stage (and, quick side note, there’s a wonderful urban legend that the word ‘drag’ is an acronym for ‘dressed as a girl’, which was supposedly used in Shakespeare’s scripts to describe certain characters).

And, perhaps the most well known, as part of one of our most enduring Christmas traditions, is the pantomime dame.

Pantomime? What’s a Pantomime?

In all honesty, you’ll never fully understand what a pantomime is until you’ve had the pleasure of experiencing one for yourself.

But, the long and short of it is: it’s a theatrical performance for children that’s staged at Christmas time, and usually retells a popular fairy tale (think Cinderella, Aladdin, Jack and the Beanstalk), with songs, slapstick comedy and audience participation (like shouting ‘he’s behind you!’).

Come December, practically every theatre across the country will have its own production, and many families return year after year as part of their pre-Christmas traditions.

It's as British as queuing, or drinking too much tea.

And at the core of every production? The Pantomime Dame

The dame has been around since at least the early 1800s. Joseph Grimaldi, a legendary clown and performer, is often credited as one of the first to play Mother Goose in drag, transforming what was supposed to have been a throwaway character into the star attraction.

By the Victorian era, pantomime was everywhere. It was working-class entertainment that had a broad appeal, full of music hall performers hamming it up in increasingly outrageous costumes. And the gender-bending was a core component of the art form. Almost all of these early shows had 'principal boys' (young male heroes played by women in very tight breeches) and 'dames' (older female characters played by men in increasingly ridiculous wigs).

Somewhere along the line the dame role pulled away, becoming the main focus of most pantomimes. And, again, it’s hard to explain this if you’ve never been to a pantomime before, but I think it’s important to highlight that the dame isn’t simply ‘a-man-in-a-dress-oh-isn’t-that-hilarious’. She is the heart of every show. She’s bawdy, warm, scene-stealing, and often the one who saves the day while cracking terrible jokes about her ample bosoms.

The dame has survived two world wars, Section 28 (Prime Minister Thatcher's 1988 law that banned local authorities from ‘promoting homosexuality’ and devastated a generation of queer people), and decades of social change.

She's a British cultural bedrock.

So surely we're not about to lose her now?

So, surely, with this long and varied history practically baked into our cultural DNA, there’s no way the American-style moral panic would poison our collective consciousness?

We’re not going to just forget this vital piece of our history that easily, are we?

Are we?

ARE WE?

(yeah, you’ve probably already guessed where I’m heading with this….)

Is the Pantomime Dame at risk?

Ok, ok, so maybe we were a little too quick to scoff.

Because here we are, in this strange timeline, where all of those bad-faith arguments about drag performers ‘grooming’ children have started seeping into parts of the British public consciousness.

And, although we’re not quite at the same level of American hysteria, we’re not a million miles away either.

So what’s been happening? Over the last few years:

• The attack on drag has been ramping up. Most notably with the targeting of drag storytime events - protests, general harassment, threats, and in some cases, cancellations.

• Some pantomime producers have started casting cis-women in dame roles, though this is almost always framed as a ‘modernisation’, rather than a discreet way of sidestepping controversy or complaints.

• Conservative commentators have started popping up in right-wing media to sneer at pantomime as ‘woke nonsense’ that our children need to be protected from (which is particularly galling, considering how old-fashioned and profoundly un-woke pantomime is)

I try not to be too doom and gloom about these types of things, but... yeah, going back to that original question, it does seem like the pantomime dame could be at risk. At least if we keep hurtling down this weird conservative trajectory we seem to be on.

But I don’t think any of this is really about men wearing dresses and performing for children. We've had that for centuries without any real pushback.

It's about drag becoming visibly queer.

Now, don’t get me wrong, drag has always been queer. Everyone knew Lily Savage was a gay man. Everyone knew what Danny La Rue represented. But there was always an unspoken bargain at play.

Yes, you can be a drag queen.

Yes, you can be bawdy, be funny, be outrageous and camp.

But, don't be political.

Don't talk about equal rights.

Don't advocate for your community.

Don’t be too gay.

Keep the queerness as subtext (and subtext only).

For decades, that bargain held. Drag existed in mainstream British culture because it stayed in its lane. Drag queens were entertainers, not activists.

But the world has changed. Now drag queens (and kings!) use their platforms to speak out about injustices, trans rights, and queer liberation.

They're not just performing gender for a few giggles. Now they're challenging gender norms, celebrating queerness, and representing community.

And that is what's making people uncomfortable. The fact our community has dared to speak out. That we no longer quietly know our place.

So when someone complains about drag being inappropriate for children, what they're really saying is: I don't want my children exposed to queerness. I don't want them thinking this is normal, acceptable, or… worth celebrating.

The pantomime dame isn't under threat because it's drag.

It's under threat because drag has stopped apologising for being inherently queer.