f Off the clock: Is drag ‘just a job’?

Many contemporary performance scholars and ethnographers define drag as ‘just a job’, a professional identity often presented as incompatible trans identity. However, recent events, such as Facebook’s ‘real names’ issue, and trans drag performer Peppermint’s highly publicized tenure on RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009–present), have put tension on this fairly narrow definition of drag. In this article, I use these recent moments of tension between drag and trans identity as a jumping off point to track the history of the definition of drag as ‘just a job’ and scrutinize the simplicity of this statement. Drawing on the work of trans historian Susan Stryker, theatre historian Laurence Senelick and drag ethnographer Esther Newton, among others, I use both recent and historic moments of convergence and overlap between drag and trans communities to problematize the definition of the two identities as mutually exclusive.