Document Type
Article
Abstract
Mid-twentieth century pansy comedian and female impersonator Ray Bourbon's biography and stage materials suggest a disdain for "wide-open spaces" and queer ambivalences about the rural and the open road as sites of threat and danger. The performer's struggle reflected larger concerns for many queer men, especially traveling professional female impersonators. Often relying on long trips to small towns in order to find work, impersonators were vulnerable to a host of legal and socio-cultural repressions with little recourse. Examining how impersonators negotiated the natural and built environments of small towns and roadsides raises new questions about historical and contemporary understandings of the "natural" and "wide-open" as necessarily libratory sites, particularly for men. Understanding why Ray Bourbon would say "To Hell with the Range" highlights the need for nature and place to be treated as historically and culturally specific sites of gendered and sexualized power relations, countering America's universalizing masculinist romance with the open road and the rural.
Repository Citation
Romesburg, Don. "Camping Out with Ray Bourbon: Female Impersonators and Queer Dread of Wide-Open Spaces." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 7, no. 2, 2007, pp. 1–22. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol7/iss2/10