Lady Bunny, a close friend of RuPaul and famous drag queen that frequented the same venues, described her style as “new-wave drag” “Ru was a little bit different because he didn’t always do drag. She begins addressing the audience with the same raw authenticity seen in the previously described videos, easing into the performance-monologuing, dancing, singing live into a mic, and obviously charming the crowd. She comes onstage in an oversized leopard print jacket, black mini-skirt, leopard print leggings, and sporting her own hair in a teased punk-rock undercut updo. There is a video of RuPaul’s first performance at the Pyramid Club in the East Village in 1984. Witnessing RuPaul emoting authentically with no filter or guard up felt like I was truly seeing her for the first time. On the show, every reaction and every display of emotion-even every laugh-feels filtered, almost performed. Watching these videos for the first time turned my concept of RuPaul upside down. Highly contrasting the refined, polished, picture-perfect RuPaul we recognize today, 1980s RuPaul sported a sloppy and rebellious style, and was known briefly by the name of “gender-fuck.” 3 Watching videos of Ru from this era-stumbling around dingy grocery stores, wearing ratty, teased wigs and half-finished makeup, complaining about having to let men touch her to pay rent, and fumbling to find her lipstick-is truly shocking. Although the path she first set out on was toward mainstream stardom, upon arriving to New York, RuPaul found the city to be a “mecca for drag queens,” and she became interested in using drag as a political statement. RuPaul knew that she couldn’t go directly to Los Angeles to make it big, so she left her hometown of San Diego and headed to New York City with the intention of becoming a “downtown superstar,” 2 using drag as a medium for her talents. Even before she was born, a psychic told her mother that the child she was carrying would be famous. Before we go into Pop Drag culture today, let’s look a bit into RuPaul as a figure, where she came from, and how she built her drag empire.Īccording to many of her oldest friends, RuPaul was destined for stardom from the very beginning. There are hundreds of different subcultures within the drag world (even within one city, you could probably find five to ten distinct drag subcultures.) In this paper, I focus specifically on what I think of as “Pop Drag,” or the subculture surrounding RuPaul’s Drag Race, and emphasize that this should in no way be taken as a full or comprehensive representation of drag. The drag world is so broad that to lump it all together as “drag culture” would be misleading. While mainstream drag’s popularity has expanded normative standards, there are drag subcultures that continue to push against restrictive norms. The show’s exponential growth over its ten years on air has been celebrated as a sign of progress, indicating general acceptance of drag. RuPaul’s Drag Race has created a tame, inoffensive image of drag fit for mainstream consumerism, making it palatable to audiences who would not have accepted its earlier incarnation. It was an underground political art form and a form of resistance, especially in times when LGBTQ identities were criminalized. Much of drag’s history can be traced back to queer and trans people of color who used the performative art form to blur the lines of gender and defy the gender binary imposed by society. With lines of fans queued up for hours to meet drag legends like Alyssa Edwards, Kim Chi, Katya, and Trixie Mattel, and entire floors reserved for VIPs to meet the most elite queens (usually including the most recent winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race-this year’s being Aquaria-and RuPaul herself, 1 mainstream drag culture in 2018 could not be further removed from the art form’s roots. Over the course of the weekend, one is bound to experience sensory overload at least once. The rest of the hall is filled with aisles of vendors selling wigs, jewelry, makeup, acrylic nails, fashion accessories, and handmade garments, and booths set up for queens to meet their fans. Music blasts through the convention center with some MC (probably someone at least vaguely famous within the drag world) booming into a microphone and a crowd packed around the stage in the corner of the convention hall. People of all genders walking around in ten-inch heels, enormous wigs, couture costumes made of anything from pure glitter to cans of LaCroix, and so much makeup that you can never be sure if you actually recognize someone unless you have their facial structure down by heart. Walking around DragCon is a surreal experience in a multitude of ways. How Did We Get Here? “RuPaul Past and Present” by Milenka Bermanova (2019)
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