Taking the Spotlight

Why do people do drag? And what, exactly, makes it queer? It feels impossible to say definitively. Starting out, it could dissemble same-sex attraction, and it can free gender expression or heighten self-expression. For Julie Dafydd, it was “a means to an end.” In the ’50s and ’60s, Dafydd had grown up in Soderville, Minn., about 30 minutes north of Minneapolis. “I pretty much knew I was trans all of my life, all through my childhood—although there wasn’t a term, ‘trans,’ at th