The surprising response controversial Australian drag queen Reuben Kaye got when he asked a British boy about men wearing make-up has resurfaced on social media.
A video clip of the exchange between Kaye and an unnamed schoolboy has been viewed almost 900,000 times.
‘Why do you have make-up and lipstick and glitter on,’ the boy asks Kaye.
Kaye responds, saying: ‘Because it looks pretty.’
The boy offers a stunned expression, before Kaye asks him: ‘you don’t think it looks pretty?’. The boy then shakes his head.
‘What do you think about men who wear make-up?’ Kaye asks the boy.
‘You can’t put it into boys,’ the boy firmly replies.
Australian drag performer Reuben Kaye got a surprising response from a British school boy to a question about men wearing make-up
‘Who said?’ Kaye asks.
‘The penguin over there,’ the boy says pointing to a large cardboard cut-out cartoon penguin behind Kaye’s shoulder.
‘The penguin?’ a stunned Kaye says looking around.
‘The penguin believes in binary gender roles. I love it,’ he responded to the boy.
Binary gender roles prescribe specific behaviours based on perceived male or female identity.
Kaye visited the school in 2019 to make a short YouTube video for Britain’s Channel 4 where he spoke to a number of children while in full drag costume and gauged their reaction.
One of the kids in the video told him that his ‘eyelashes were a bit too long,’ while bursting out into laughter.
He then asks another pair of children, ‘do you think I look normal?’ , with one of them responding no, while another says ‘you’re normal a bit.’
However, not every child was critical of the way Kaye dressed, with one asking if he went to school dressed in drag.
‘Yeah, and school was not a fun time for me. I was a young gay kid and I liked to dress up, and I liked to sing and dance and I wasn’t into sport.’
A second child tells him: ‘At least you had the guts to do things, what other people can’t.
A third added: ‘I feel like everyone should be who they want to be and people shouldn’t tell them what to do.’
The British schoolboy in the Channel 4 YouTube is far from impressed with Kaye’s outfit and make-up
Kaye became centre of a storm of controversy when a lewd joke he made about Jesus went to air on Channel 10’s The Project in February.
Hosts Waleed Aly and Sarah Harris were forced make a groveling apology after he quipped about Jesus: ‘I love any man who can get nailed for three days straight and come back for more’.
Appearing as a panellist on the ABC’s Q+A show in June Kaye defended the joke and said it only offended people because he was gay.
‘That joke has been told by straight people,’ Kaye said.
‘Ricky Gervais devotes almost 90 per cent of his routine to tearing down religion, Dave Chappelle does it.
‘Large, big name, straight comics do this all the time. This isn’t about the joke, this is about who was telling it.’
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