The World Would Be A More Fabulous Place If Drag Were Contagious
Iam a straight cis man who is a devout follower of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I am not a drag queen but if I was, my name would be ‘John DezVous.’
No one asked but here’s a short list of my five favorite queens from Drag Race: At number five, Miss Vanjie, the meme queen. She is quirky and sassy, an absolute, snarling original. Jinx Monsoon is my fourth most beloved, her hilarious impersonation of Little Edie from the cult documentary Grey Gardens in ‘Snatch Game,’ a character-driven game show parody that is the highlight of every Drag Race season, is legendary.
Next up: Yvie Oddly, the glamorous goth weirdo. Coming in second is Bob The Drag Queen, serving comedic coolness, and my number one favorite queen is Sasha Velour, performance artist fashion alien, a legit genius who I’ve had the pleasure of seeing live on stage once.
There are others, too. I change my mind all the time. Shea Couleé and BenDeLeCreme and Bianca Del Rio. I would be happy for any of them to show up at my funeral, sing a few torch songs, and then read my corpse for filth.
I like to think about the future sometimes.
I know RuPaul’s Drag Race isn’t for me, per se. I’m a cishet dude and I’m not starved for TV shows built to please folks like me. Have you seen Jack Reacher? It rules.
But that doesn’t mean Ru and her advertisers aren’t happy to have my attention, it just means I am polite and respectful when watching the queens cackle and groove and work it. Drag is a cherished part of LGBTQ culture and I’m a guest — although Drag Race did recently cast its first cisgender heterosexual man.
(I would kvell to hear RuPaul tell me “condragulations.” Hey, a guy can dream.)
Since it first premiered in 2009, the question “who can do drag?” has been asked repeatedly and RuPaul’s answer has been “everybody.” Drag Race has become a global phenomenon. There are thousands of drag queens and drag kings performing their own unique and sometimes outrageous interpretations of gender all around the world. Gender is a show, after all.
RuPaul is one of the great one-name icons of all time, right after Cher.
Born RuPaul Andre Charles, she has been a performer and pioneering drag queen for over thirty years. She got her start in Georgia and, later, gritty New York City, and shot to mainstream fame in the 90s with the dance hit Supermodel (You Gotta Work.) And for fourteen seasons, she has presided over Drag Race — a media empire with spinoffs and international versions — like a benevolent demi-goddess, singlehandedly discovering a whole new generation of incredible lip-syncing, tucked and plucked divas.
A divine ex-partner of mine introduced me to Drag Race one night, years ago, and I was hooked forever. It is, truly, the funniest show on television, and sometimes, it is life-affirming. Ru and her army of glamazons lovingly mock identity while embracing each other and everyone who doesn’t feel like they fit in anywhere.
I think my ex intuitively knew that I needed drag in my life, somehow, and I am thankful for the gift. I had no idea that cis and trans men transforming themselves into living art would become an obsession of mine.
RuPaul’s Drag Race is — in my opinion — the best example of the popular reality TV competition genre, which includes shows like Fashion Runway and Top Chef, and, of course, Survivor. But Drag Race is more than just voyeuristic drama porn. It’s a competition amongst siblings, all of them accomplished dancers, singers, and comedians who dress up like extraordinary, larger-than-life women with mile-high wigs. Their creations aren’t realistic, they’re fantastical. RuPaul’s rogue’s gallery of drag queens includes beauties and clowns and Broadway babies.
Every episode of Drag Race is a modern vaudeville revue, with bawdy burlesque bits and a magnificent floorshow. The show is
Drag Race is devoid of irony and pretense and, most of all, hate. While insecure, middle-aged millionaires pepper their stand-up routines with passive-aggressive jabs at trans people, drag queens are busy making crowds howl and feel good about being alive.
I am, sadly, a couple of seasons behind on Drag Race but it’s been a wacky year for me, personally, and one day, pretty soon, I’ll stretch out on my couch with my thirteen-pound, one-eyed dog Morley and binge-watch talented men put on dresses and fake eyelashes and try their god damnedest to entertain me.
Drag is pure joy, in heels, and every drag queen celebrates love and freedom and naughty jokes. At a drag show, everyone is family and gender is just a punchline.
Aswitch has been flipped in the hearts of conservative America. Once again, Republicans are eager to scapegoat a marginalized group for political gain. If you’re queer or trans, nonbinary or asexual, or if you love someone who is gay or bisexual then you are all that is wrong with society.
The problem isn’t school shootings or domestic terrorism or climate change. No. It’s drag queens. They’re corrupting the youth, you see. Extreme income equality isn’t anything to worry about but gay rights are an existential threat to the republic. As I write this, on Twitter, a grown man with a podcast is complaining about gay characters in a cartoon. Those characters are a pair of loving, married women.
The homophobia I grew up with in the 80s and 90s is back, and meaner than ever.
When I was visiting my mom in Austin recently I saw a girl at Target no older than ten with pierced ears and a face full of makeup just like her mama and then I bought some socks. Gender is also fashion and it is none of my business if a mother wants to paint her princess up like a child bride. The pair looked quite happy, to be honest, but kids are born people pleasers.
I use to dress up like a “little man” to go to church so I get it, though.
There are just some people who have built their entire identity on cultural cliches and men who dress like women really shake their reality. It is frightening — for some — to have the value system you were raised in challenged and that can be radicalizing. So being given permission by the powerful to rage out on strangers who look happy is healing.
These same anti-social conservatives also railed against wearing masks and vaccinations during the deadly pandemic. Go figure. Those types barked about “parent’s right” as COVID closed schools, too, but now, suddenly, they want you to snitch on your neighbor to Child Protective Services if you suspect they’re taking their kids to drag show story hours at the local library.
Drag is a uniquely American art form, like comic books or hip-hop, or cowboy movies. It was born in the shadows more than a century ago and has been a safe space for queer people to express themselves since then, despite near-constant harassment by law enforcement.
Gender is creativity and drag allows artists to explore who they are on the inside and then wear that sparkle on the outside and the choices are endless, really.
I don’t know when the orders to persecute the LGBTQ+ community were re-issued but over the past couple of months, especially, conservatives have been winning votes by terrorizing trans kids and gay teachers and their friends and families.
In Florida, the GOP passed a bill that punishes teachers from mentioning or discussing, or hinting at their sexuality, unless they’re Good Straight White Christians. Thankfully, a few days ago a judge in Texas blocked a law that had made it legal to, essentially, hunt and intimidate trans kids and their loved ones.
This isn’t a complicated political calculation, Republicans know what they’re doing. They know their base gets excited by spite, and they will write checks and volunteer and knock on doors if you allow them to bully people who are busy committing the crime of being different and peacefully living their lives. There is a large block of voters in America who are inspired by loud, proud prejudice.
And as I mentioned, the GOP has unleashed the dogs on drag shows, especially drag shows for *gasp* children. There are conservatives who wonder, out loud, how they will explain drag queens to their fragile offspring. I truly hope that answering the question “what’s a drag queen?” is the most difficult conversation you have with Junior.
What’s a drag queen? Well, first, she’s fabulous…
In Texas and other states, there is a growing anti-drag frenzy growing. The idea is those drag queens are pedophiles, or “groomers” as conservative Twitter weirdos love to put it, and that parents who take their kids to drag shows are, I don’t know, in league with these groomers? It’s not a fully cooked conspiracy but the strategy is simple: accuse the LBGTQ+ community of preposterous wrongdoing in order to steer the public conversation away from gun violence and inequality and former President Trump’s flagrant corruption. The GOP will sacrifice a drag queen if they have to.
A few days ago, 31 white supremacists were arrested in Idaho. Their plan was to crash a Pride parade and riot. They were members of a fringe political group but I’m going to guess that they weren’t fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race. These men are lunatics. They don’t represent conservatives, obviously. Uh-uh. No sir.
But… on the other hand… these white nationalists and Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green do have one big thing in common and that’s they both hate the same kind of people, wink, wink. A coincidence, I’m sure. There’s no way that telling bigots its open season on their political rival’s senses of safety and security can get out of hand. Right?
Drag shows are harmless. Hysterical. Uplifting. But even more importantly, they’re necessary. Right now, there’s a sensitive and talented queer kid whose life is being saved one Drag Race YouTube clip at a time. RuPaul preaches acceptance, full-stop. Her hit show can be simply summed up by the pithy prayer that ends every episode: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?” Amen.
Her show is a big tent. A big circus tent.
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I went to a Pride parade in Brooklyn this weekend. I’ve been back in NYC for a few weeks. There were families and cotton candy and a literal rainbow of people. I saw small children interact with drag queens on the street too. Those kids knew that this was a person in a costume and they laughed and squealed and one girl hugged a six-foot-tall blonde. They didn’t need anything explained to them. It’s pretty self-explanatory. It’s all dress-up.