I'm guessing that this phrase - very definitely gay in origin - moved into the straight community through hairdressers who used it in conversation with clients. Mothers with improved hair might go home and use it on their young tantrum-throwing children. This is where their husbands first heard it. Concurrently, it infiltrated the workplace where it was first introduced by gay employees much to the delight of their straight co-workers. (I know this to be true. I was one of the carriers.) Initially, the gay co-worker would sanitize the phrase by using it to refer only to a female co-worker who might be acting out. Soon enough, whole offices were gleefully using it to refer to men and women alike.

I knew the phrase had come almost full circle when, a few years ago, in a meeting with my female boss, she accused me of being a drama queen. Because, as administrators, she and I very carefully suppressed all elements of "gay" in our workplace, I knew that she didn't have a clue about what she was really saying.

Note, in gay parlance, the drama queen is never to be confused with the Broadway queen or the musical comedy queen or the theater queen or the opera queen. They are different critters, and Obama, soon after becoming President, managed to take his wife to New York for dinner and a show without becoming any of them. I fully expect the mainstreamed confusion of all these queens to soon unfold. Long before I become a dinosaur queen.