I mean, okay, they’re men. But even so, all the drag queens I’ve seen, generally on TV but sometimes I see them around and about, are like 6’100" and have huge platform shoes and big hair.
What’s the deal with such a high percentage of slim big-haired basketball-tall drag queens?
The not-so-tall ones are just drag princesses. 
You must unlearn what you have learned. – Yoda
You know, I’ve wondered this myself, and this is what my opinion is:
(Time for “fun with pronouns”)
The most popular drag queen in the world, RuPaul, is really tall. But we need to throw her out of the equation because she fouls the data.
Men on average are four or so inches taller than women.
Society conditions us to expect that a person dressed as a female will be the same average size as a female.
A glamourously dressed woman wears high heels.
Drag queens tend to go a little higher on the heel scale than the average glamorously dressed woman.
So you see a man dressed as a woman, he’s average height for a man, say 5’10". He’s wearing four inch heels. He probably is wearing an elaborate wig of some sort. He ends up 6’4".
These accoutrements, plus the fact that a woman who is six foot in heels is a tall woman, leads to your perception.
stoli
“There’s always a little dirt, or infinity, or something.” -Feynman
Tall compared to what?
“‘How do you know I’m mad’ said Alice.
'You must be, ’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’”
I have two theories about this.
One is that a short drag queen would be convincing enough that you wouldn’t notice the s/he was a drag queen. You only notice the sore thumbs.
The other is that, men only really dress up like women if they won’t be mistaken from women. The short ones might actually pass for women, so they avoid drag. That’s a bogus theory, since I think a ton of drag queens earnestly want to be mistaken for women. Poor little theory. I create it and then diss it immediately.
Let’s See What’s Out There … Engage
The world’s loneliest doper.
Sore thumbs, as in “stick out like…”.
The drag queens I know don’t want to be taken for real women, but there are those who do. There are different kinds of drag and “realness” is more or less important depending on the type. High fashion glamour drag, realness is more important. Clown drag, not so much.
Drag queens come in all sizes… let me start again.
The men who play drag queens are of average height for men. And the distribution of abnormally tall and abnormally short drag queens is, again, normal compared to the general male population.
But, you say, you see only abnormally tall men play drag queens. And that’s because your sample is skewed. You see only the drag queens which make it to pop entertainment. These are the superstars of the drag circuit. And the process of gaining drag superstardom selects for tall men for these reasons:
Our pop society favors tall celebrities – both male and female (and male playing female). Since many drag queens are also female celebrity impersonators, they’ve got to be tall to pull off an impersonation of Cher or Ida Lupino (ask your grandfather). And then, the taller Cher impersonators are favored over the shorter ones.
Our pop society favors thin celebrities – both male and female (and male playing female). Height always gives the illusion of a person being thinner, even if that person is in the same proportion of a shorter person.
Drag is about excess. Abnormally tall works well in this genre. Also, as has been mentioned, the height then gets even further exaggerated with heels and wigs.
Thus…
The tall, thin drag queens can make it in the mainstream pop world. The gay bar and cabaret circuit are full of the, how shall we say… more full figured and less tall drag queens. Now, that doesn’t make them less talented, just less likely to hit mainstream.
I am what I am…
By the way, drag queens do not try to pass as women. That is the difference between drag queens and transgendered people. Drag queens try to pass as drag queens.
“I do not impersonate females! How many women do you know who wear four-foot hair, six-inch heels, and skintight gowns?” - RuPaul
A drag queen is an extreme form of transvestism, few try to pass as women. Being transgendered usually means you believe you belong to the opposite sex, but not all transvestites are transgendered, nor are all the transgendered tranvestites. Nor are all drag queens transgendered, but they are defintely transvestites.
Confused? A person can be transgendered and still follow their biological-sex social role, they may not like it but they don’t all cross-dress or get an operation. Transvestites can be anyone from a sexually straight person (most get off on it but don’t feel homosexual) to a gay person without being transgendered. Assumptions like straight people who cross-dress are really gay and gay people really want to be the opposite sex just aren’t generally true.
Drag queens or drag kings, for that matter, are a subset of transvestites, which may or may not involve ‘passing,’ and are not necessarily transgendered. Also who’s to say a person who’s a drag queen at the nightclub doesn’t ‘pass’ during the day?
OK. Let me try to clear this up.
A transgendered person is anyone whose gender (the social conventions that they use based on sex - dress, name, actions, or a combination of these) do not accord in the expected way to their physical birth sex. This is basically anyone who gender bends.
We can divide transgendered people into two broad types: transsexuals and non-transsexuals. Transsexuals feel as though they are members of the opposite sex, whether or not they adopt a gender identity to match. These range from people who don’t pass as the opposite sex and are unhappy to people who have had a sex change operation. Transsexuals usually ‘pass’ or want to do so. Transsexuals who wear the clothing of the opposite sex in order to pass can be called transvestites.
A lot of transgendered people are not transsexual; they do not feel as though they are members of the opposite sex. This includes those transvestites who wear the clothing of the opposite sex for the sexual arousal. It also includes drag queens, who gender bend for fun and profit but are more or less secure in their masculinity.
Transgenderedness has little to do with one’s sexual orientation, as there are transgendered people of all sexual orientations.
I would argue, for example, that the character in The Crying Game was not a drag queen, since she lived more or less full-time as a woman, even though she didn’t have surgery. I would argue that she was a non-operative transsexual (who happened to be a cabaret singer.)
Check this out! http://php.indiana.edu/~mberz/ttt/faqs/glossary
The Alt.Transgendered Glossary