DRAG QUEENS MADE ME A BETTER PARENT is a documentary on parenting and gender. What is the impact of gender — from clothes to toys to parenting advice — on parenting, and why does it matter? Where does traditional ‘wisdom’ stop and social engineering begin? As a parent of a boy and girl, a Midwestern mother decides to dive deeper into the topic in this documentary that aims to unpack the assumptions we make about kids, about personalities, about culture, and about ourselves.
Director Gabrielle Burton is currently working on the film and has received a prestigious Wexner Residency for completing it. DQMMABP will expand upon the topic of Gabrielle C. Burton’s TEDx Talk, diving deeper into the complexities of how gendering influences children and parenting choices.
As a parent of a boy and a girl, Burton has seen how starkly from day one (or even in utero), our society begins now to gender children increasingly into a binary system — two separate camps and what is allowed or encouraged in those identities — and also how that concept of gender expression (how you dress and style yourself) is often subconsciously or consciously conflated with sexuality (whom your attracted to physically) and biological identity (what body identity you have).
As the latter two concepts have become more of a topic of headlines, it is important to explore the distinctions between these three elements of identity (and some experts expand this to four with emotional attraction), and to examine gender expression itself — what it means, how we define it and influence it, and how it influences children and their concepts of what is possible for others and themselves.