Dhak Dhak to Drag Shows — How Madhuri Dixit Became a Queer Icon

It starts with a shimmer of sequins and a lip-synced whisper: “Choli ke peeche kya hai?” On queer stages from Mumbai to Toronto, the answer lies not in the lyrics, but in the symbol — Madhuri Dixit. For decades, Bollywood’s sweetheart has been unofficial queer royalty. Sequined, expressive, a little scandalous — Madhuri is everything drag performers and queer fans love to celebrate, subvert, and relive.

Madhuri Dixit rose to fame in the late 1980s and ‘90s with a string of blockbusters that solidified her image as the ultimate Indian heroine. She played the perfect daughter, lover, wife; all while pulling off some of Bollywood’s most iconic dances. Her classical dance training and expressive charm made songs like Ek Do Teen, Maar Dala, and Choli Ke Peeche not just hits, but moments of cinematic spectacle. And spectacle, in queer culture, is everything.

This wasn’t happening in a vacuum. In the India of the ‘80s and ‘90s, queer life was pushed underground, criminalized under Section 377 and invisible in mainstream media. Bollywood divas became more than entertainers — they were lifelines. Queer audiences, denied open representation, read between the lines of camp performances, melodramatic gestures, and over-the-top glamour. From Helen’s cabaret numbers to Sridevi’s slapstick excess, Bollywood heroines had long been adopted as queer icons. But Madhuri arrived at the precise moment when spectacle met repression — when her swirling lehengas and arched eyebrows became a coded language of escape.

Her performances are what Susan Sontag called camp: heightened, dramatic, stylized to the point of glorious excess. The heavy eyeshadow, swirling lehengas, and dramatic expressions were never just feminine — they were fantastical. For members of the LGBTQ+ community, especially those growing up in conservative households, Madhuri offered a world where femininity itself became performance — exaggerated, theatrical, and therefore liberating.

And it is this duality of Madhuri’s image that makes her enduring. To mainstream Bollywood, she was the sanskari heroine — the ideal daughter and wife, upholding tradition. But to queer audiences, the very exaggeration of that role revealed its performative nature. She wasn’t just embodying tradition; she was playing it so perfectly that it tipped into parody, into camp. That tension — between tradition and transgression — is precisely what made her a queer icon. She came from the heart of heteronormative Bollywood, yet she became a mirror for those who lived outside it.

So naturally, drag performers picked it up and ran with it. Mallika, a Toronto-based drag queen, is known as “the Madhuri Dixit of Drag” — audiences request her Dixit numbers like clockwork. In Mumbai, transgender performer Madhuri Sarode of the troupe Dancing Queens says audiences gave her that name because of her dance style — inspired entirely by Dixit. And even India’s most prominent drag queen, Sushant Divgikar aka Rani Ko-HE-Nur, has spoken of idolizing Madhuri from a young age, embodying her flair in childhood dance contests. These performances aren’t parody; they are homage.

The reasons are layered. There’s Choli Ke Peeche. A song that once stirred moral outrage now thrives in queer clubs and drag sets. Its lyrics toyed with desire. Its visuals played with restraint and release — flirting with taboo and censorship, balancing sensuality with subtext. As The Quint and The Established have noted, such tracks allowed queer fans to “make space” for themselves within the heteronormative structure of Bollywood.

In her recent roles, Madhuri has transitioned from a symbol of queer adoration to an active participant in queer narratives. In Maja Ma, she portrays Pallavi Patel, a middle-aged woman whose concealed lesbian identity is unveiled, challenging her family’s conventional values. This portrayal marks a significant step in mainstream Indian cinema’s representation of LGBTQIA+ characters. Similarly, in Dedh Ishqiya, her character’s complex relationship with Muniya introduces nuanced interpretations of queer dynamics, drawing parallels to Ismat Chughtai’s ‘Lihaaf.’ These roles signify a shift from implicit queer iconography to explicit representation, reflecting evolving narratives in Bollywood.

Some stars are remembered for their roles. Others, like Madhuri, are remembered for the lives and freedoms they help us imagine.

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