Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America

by Esther Newton

For two years Ester Newton did field research in the world of drag queens—homosexual men who make a living impersonating women. Newton spent time in the noisy bars, the chaotic dressing rooms, and the cheap apartments and hotels that make up the lives of drag queens, interviewing informants whose trust she had earned and compiling a lively, first-hand ethnographic account of the culture of female impersonators. Mother Camp explores the distinctions that drag queens make among themselves as performers, the various kinds of night clubs and acts they depend on for a living, and the social organization of their work. A major part of the book deals with the symbolic geography of male and female styles, as enacted in the homosexual concept of "drag" (sex role transformation) and "camp," an important humor system cultivated by the drag queens themselves.

"Newton's fascinating book shows how study of the extraordinary can brilliantly illuminate the ordinary—that social-sexual division of personality, appearance, and activity we usually take for granted."—Jonathan Katz, author of Gay American History

"A trenchant statement of the social force and arbitrary nature of gender roles."—Martin S. Weinberg, Contemporary Sociology

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, LGBT, History, Anthropology, Gender, Read For School

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Esther Newton is currently Term Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, and Professor Emerita of Anthropology and Kempner Distinguished Professor at Purchase College, SUNY. She is the author of Margaret Mead Made Me Gay: Personal Essays, Public Ideas, published by Duke University Press, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America, coauthor of Womenfriends: A Soap Opera, and coeditor of Amazon Expedition: A Lesbian Feminist Anthology.

Reviews

[Imogen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I mean, social anthropology is always problematic, but a book about female impersonators/drag queens in the mid sixties, which was published in 1972, fuckin come on. AWESOME. I'm pretty invested in trans history and what being trans looks like now vs. what it looked like seventy-five, fifty, twenty five years ago, so I was mainly invested in what this book had to say about shaping trans identities- like the roots of my movement, basically. And some if it was in there, which was awesome to read.

It's weird how- like lots of other movements- gay boys and girls and gender variant folks used to be oppressed as hell all over the place, so they hung out and got drunk together all the time- and how, now, subidentity groups have splintered off into their own tiny little interest/identity groups.

Grr. I have a lot to say about this. I want to read more on trans history, but it doesn't seem to be too out there.

[Ai Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly important ethnography, Newton offers a fascinating insight into the culture of female impersonators in the late 1960s. Packed with interviews and observations, it really made me want an updated version, perhaps comparing the current culture to the past culture. Great read, critical piece of historiography.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An insightful and delightful, if thoroughly academic, study of female impersonation in America before Stonewall. Interesting to see how much has changed, and how much hasn't, since the bad old days when homosexuality carried a heavy stigma and transsexuality was rare and mysterious. The book also contains a chapter that, unlike Susan Sontag's more famous Notes on Camp, details how camp functions within actual homosexual communities.

[Amanda Micek]

read for anthro of gender

[Angelica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read to gain insights of the times when the book was published in 1972, but there’s a lot of outdated things in there. It’s fun to read nevertheless.

[Lina]

Marquée par son époque, mais sinon enquête hyper complète et intéressante

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very important (if not for the most part particularly readable) account, in the main, of drag show culture in mid-1960s Kansas and Chicago. As such, it's a tremendously interesting culture document. But as an anthropological exercise, the text is very academic in its approach, for good or ill. The main value for me to be found in this consists in textual accounts of drag shows of this era, and brief interviews with a few queens.

For practical reasons, the author's informants were largely "stage queens" who were outright disapproving of individuals who transgressed gender outside that environment or to excess. So the work suffers for lack of attention given to street queens, who failed to compartmentalize their femininity is a theatrical and professional performance context. Nonetheless, these accounts of prudish attitudes and harsh social judgments from within the "female impersonator" community, upon those who inadequately censored and compartmentalized their femininity, are themselves enlightening.

[Dasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Newton's anthropological study of female impersonators is an incredible analysis and critique of the sex-role system. Although a short study, the details and analysis provided by Newton are stellar, including many conversations pulled from interviews and descriptions of different shows. Reminiscent of Gayle Rubin's "charmed inner circle" Newton demonstrates entry and socialization into the deviant world of gay, female impersonators. These impersonators serve as a connection between the dominant, "natural" society of heterosexuals and the marginalized, "unnatural" society of homosexuals. An interesting and important study, it is clear why it remains necessary to read 50 years after its publishing.

[Z · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is such an historical gem, and one that shines light on the current paradoxes experienced through both drag culture and transfemininity. Admittedly, Newton isn’t writing about transfemininity, but the parallels are striking, and her work continues to open up curious possibilities for forward thinking and work. I highly recommend this book not so much for a look-how-far-we’ve-come perspective, but more so for a deep pool of thinking more complexly about the the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same realities of material life for those who embrace, move toward, and take refuge in queered femininity.

[Martmota · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un regalo que me hicieron en lo que parece otra vida (mayo de 2021), que me he animado a leer por fin al empezar la quinta temporada de Drag Race España.

Envejeció como el mejor de los vinos gracias a la inteligencia de su autora. No estoy acostumbrada a leer antropología, pero una muestra imprescindible de cómo antes de la teoría queer hubo (y evidentemente hay) gente queer. Me encanta esta edición en español con la letra impresa en azul y con la contextualización de las editoras y traductoras, aunque le hace falta una revisión para la corrección ortográfica.

[Val · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so interesting! I read it as a primary source document and it has a lot to share about when it was written (1960s) and published (1972). Obviously not everything aged very well, but there were some things that stayed close to the same, and others that had clear through-lines from 1960s to 2020s. God bless inter-library loans.

[Austin]

Probably more valuable as an artifact of scholarship than an "ethnography"

[Georgia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very outdated but very interesting for my degree.

[eden · Rating 3 out of 5]

i didn’t find it that captivating or stimulating but it was entertaining and i did learn things

[Kayla Lessard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esther Newton’s Mother Camp, is a compelling example of a first-hand ethnography. Through fieldwork, Newton uncovers the complexities of the culture of female impersonators in American society during the 1960s. Prior to Newton’s work, there had been no full ethnography of the homosexual community in the U.S., which enabled her to create her own path and shed light on a community that was virtually invisible to the greater public.

The way that Newton reveals her research to the reader enables them to see professional impersonators in a non-judgmental context. She paints a picture of the professional impersonator community as a social network. However, she also lets her readers into the intricacies of the network through a substantial outline of the, “homosexual community.” As outsiders the readers are told of the ways in which fairies and drag queens fit into that that structure. They are also told about the fundamental divisions within it, such as camp and non-camp homosexuals. Although, Newton gives the readers few reasons as to why they should see her as an expert on the culture, she does define terms throughout the entire book, which enables the reader to fully understand the many excerpts of interviews that she shares with them. The interviews are a way for Newton to give a voice to her informants. At points she gives her reader examples of her own experience in the field. This increased her authority but she could have done more of it to strengthen her arguments.

Newton gives her readers a view of professional impersonators as real people. She mentions struggles with drugs and alcohol, verbal abuse from audiences, and the difficulties to work with Bosses who are not homosexual themselves and who are controlling of the impersonators. The most powerful part of the ethnography is when Newton outlines the difference between working at gay bars, straights bars, tourist clubs, chic clubs, and traveling shows. The realities of the communities’ everyday struggles are revealed in a humanistic way. The reader is told about the range of prestige between the different settings, in the pay scale and in the amount of support they receive from the owners of the clubs. These are all reinforced by first hand accounts of experiences in all the different setting which are very powerful. Newton’s ability to match interviewer excerpts with photographs gives her readers strong emotional attachment to certain impersonators.

Newton could easily be criticized for giving limited depth and perspectives because she gives little information on the viewpoint of people looking at the community from the outside and even gives few of her own opinions. However, she does convey an effective glance into the world of professional impersonators and their struggle with finding a place in American society where they belong.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esther Newton's slim anthropological study of drag queens and camp culture in mid-60s America is a quick and informative read. I didn't love it, though. Mother Camp - like many of the queens profiled - betrays its age. No doubt, this was ground-breaking stuff when it was published, but this pre-Stonewall account reads almost laughably elementary in a RuPaul's Drag Race world. We learn things like: drag queens, or female impersonators, often refer to each other as "she"; and that "tricks" and "hustlers" are men who are often paid for sex. Obviously, it's unfair to "read" (and I mean that in a throwing shade kind of way) Newton for the increased visibility drag culture has acquired in the subsequent decades, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for something a bit more academic and rigorous and less, well, anthropological. The whole approach was kind of like watching a nature documentary in that you have a very removed and (more or less) objective view of a contained world. One major omission, I felt, was the lack of discussion about the queen's romantic lives. Sure, the aforementioned tricks, hustlers and even "husbands" were mentioned, but always as minor figures on the periphery. I would've liked to see what the romantic lives of these performers were like: was it difficult to find love given the stigma of drag and the transitory nature of the profession? did the queens date amongst themselves? etc. I don't think that would've been outside the stated scope of this project, especially since Newton spent a considerable amount of time describing the various domiciles of some of the central performers in the text. For me, it would've helped paint a more complete picture, particularly at this crucial moment in gay history. Overall, I think the book succeeds in its project, but I would advise readers to look at this more as a historical document than as a text informing contemporary drag culture.

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[margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

i wrote a 10 page paper about this book. loved every second of reading it.

[Kristen Ghodsee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a professor at Bowdoin and taught this book to my senior capstone seminar in Gender and Women's Studies. The book is short enough to have the students read over the course of a week, and it is one of the earliest studies of female impersonators (i.e. gay men who dress like women and perform a show in night clubs).

Highly accessible and historically significant, this is a book that puts forth the idea of gender as a performance long before Judith Butler did.

[6655321 · Rating 3 out of 5]

i guess like, this is *historically* mad important but also feels horribly incomplete and has a super rigid analytic framework that occasionally really butts up against the most interesting parts of the book (where you wish she would let the drag queens talk more). Also, probably worth mentioning: Esther Newton says some pretty fucked up stuff by contemporary standards that is like, probably radically progressive from the era this was published in.

[Erin Tuzuner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Invariably groundbreaking when first written, much of this seems like a condensed representation of drag performers in the 60s. The sadness is palatable, and little celebration is mentioned. Thankfully, things have changed for the better since its publication.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting anthropological consideration of drag queens in the 1960s. A lot of it the information is dated, but it's interesting to see what parts continue to linger, particularly in the perceived distinctions made between the queens themselves.

[Bryn]

Interesting! I love writing on camp. A natural extension of Sontag, but less closet-y. And I have some six-degrees action going on with E. Newton, so.

[Mira Darling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Queer and feminist anthropology at its best.

[Mills College Library]

301.4157 N562 1979