A gaggle of King Size girls mess with gender norms
BILL BROWNSTEIN, The Gazette
Published: Friday, June 29, 2007
They sing. They dance. They do comedy shtick. They dress up as guys. They’re King Size, a gaggle of Montreal girls who just want to have fun.
They perform their brand of drag-kinging tonight at La Sala Rossa in their latest burlesque escapade, The Parlour.
Think Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, and then some. The ‘then some’ also includes the delightfully dry wit of comic/emcee DeAnne Smith and the divinely inspired hoofin’ of the Dead Doll Dancers featuring the incomparable Velma Candyass.
Drag-kinging is something of a phenomenon in the rest of North America and Europe. Introduced in Montreal by the Mambo Kings a few years back, it petered out, but is now making a comeback with King Size, a 12-to-15-woman collective that has been kicking it up together since January.
One of the leaders of the King Size pack is Gary Dickinson. By day, she’s Nancy Leclerc, a single mom and a respected anthropology professor at a local CEGEP. But by night, she morphs into Gary and acts out her cultural anthropological instincts – in a manner of speaking.
“It’s just about letting loose,” says Nancy/Gary. “I’m doing stuff at night as Gary that Nancy would have liked to do as a teenager by day. Of course, I get to charm the ladies as well as the guys at the same time.”
Donning her academic chapeau, the prof points out there is also a sort of social message to the madness: “We’re messing around with the established gender norms and getting the message out there that we don’t have to stick to such rigid norms.”
Since the dawn of civilization (or thereabouts), drag queens have been messing with established gender norms and have gained mainstream acceptance, particularly on the urban cultural front. Drag kings are relative upstarts compared with their drag-queen cousins and have had to work harder at breaking down barriers. Which explains why they feel compelled to be more than one-trick cross-dressers.
“We cover the gamut of entertainment,” says Nancy/Gary. “There’s an awful lot of diversity. Some of us sing. Some of us dance. Some of us do comedy. Some of us do all of the above. We’re trying to be very well-rounded.” No pun intended.
And then there’s King Size crooner Nat King Pole, who changes the lyrics of popular tunes and elicits king-size guffaws as a consequence.
“What we really want to avoid is becoming predictable,” Nancy/Gary explains. “We don’t want to be the sort of performers who put on the same show all the time and who people will, consequently, only see once.”
For her/his part, Nancy/Gary lip-syncs and role-plays on stage. It requires abundant rehearsal time, but the work has proved to be therapeutic. “I had been confused for a long time, well before starting to drag-king. I had gender issues when I was young. I wanted to be a boy. I didn’t think it was fair that I was a girl. But drag-kinging has helped me sort through a lot of that stuff.
“The group’s members do this for different reasons. But for me, it’s been helpful in coming to terms with my masculine side.”
Curiously, the prof’s buddies all believe that Gary and Nancy would make the perfect match together. “Now if I could only figure out how to get Gary and Nancy in the same room together. … Maybe it would work, but we would probably get on each other’s nerves because we are so similar. I’d give it a shot, even if it seems to be a little narcissist.”
Nancy assumed the role of Gary at the recent Fringe Fest’s annual Drag Races and fared well in trying to out-run the assembled drag queens. Of course, Gary had a distinct advantage in not having to sport high-heeled stilettos and a skin-tight dress.
“Footwear-wise, drag kings are definitely much more comfortable than drag queens. But we have other discomforts, like strapping down our breasts, which can be painful, depending on how well-endowed one is.
“It’s a bit of give and take in the drag world. You have to suffer to be hot.”
King Size performs Parlour tonight at 10 p.m. at La Sala Rossa, 4848 St. Laurent Blvd. Admission: $10; $7 for students and the low-incomed. For more information, visit www.kingsize.ca
bbrownst@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007
Notre ‘Front Man’ Gary Dickinson fait une apparition remarquée dans le cahier 
