The boys from Queens
I can ALMOST understand the desire to present oneself as the opposite gender from which one is born. It is not common, but... human impulses occupy a pretty wide spectrum, and that one is on it.
But what is is that makes a man wish to not only look like a woman, but to look like a circus clown version of one?
Ridiculously over the top clothing and makeup, exaggerated female-style movement, dancing and walking and whatnot. The presentation is SO cartoonishly female as to be a dead giveaway that it is a male… actually REDUCING the impact of the character as the female he claims to wish he was.
There are no women in entertainment who present like this. A drag queen is imitating NOBODY. It is an entirely male phenomenon, notable FOR the fact that only males do it.
The "ladyboys" in Thailand at least FOOL the young men who go there trying to find women. For awhile, anyway. But none of those young men are fooled by drag queens, and aren't the least bit attracted to them. So who are the drag queens trying to attract with their garish and excessive presentations?
I reckon it’s other drag queens.
Never mind the obvious present-day attempts to recruit and increase their number. I’m asking the essential “why?” A “normal” man who looks like a woman is simply trying to attract other men. The drag queen is definitively not going to succeed at this, and knows it.
It HAS to be other drag queens.