I love RuPaul’s Drag Race. I love the way this little quirky show brings part of gay culture into the homes of people who think they’ve never met a gay person, or think drag queens are all tragic Madame Butterflies. There’s no real budget to speak of, and the show often doubles as an extended ad for RuPaul’s music (“available on iTunes!” we are chirpily and frequently informed). But that doesn’t matter, because the transformations on this show are what keep bringing me back. Each week, the men on this show push and prod and paint and be-wig themselves into beautiful women, stomping on a stage as if they were mashing an ex-lover’s heart every step of the way.
The transformations, in fact, make me wonder about how these often average-looking men (sorry, guys) can in fact become so stunning. I see the same people on these shows, at one point dressed as male, at another dressed as female. And yet the differences are enormous. Men I would pass casually on the street without a second thought become women who drop my jaw. I remember Sharon Needles, the queen who won last season, as a skinny blond out of drag, often dressed in faded jeans and baggy sleeveless shirts. In drag, Sharon is fierce as fuck, the spiritual daughter of Naomi Campbell and Morticia Adams, a banshee coming for your blood – and making you beg for it.
This says a lot to me about men and women and beauty. For one thing, it tells me that we look for beauty more in women. We expect it to be present, to be a quality for which we search in a woman. In drag, I look in part for beauty, even in queens such as Sharon, Nina Flowers and Jinkx Monsoon – all either past or present contestants who have gone for more unusual looks than straight glamor. Even in them, I search for beauty. I say this as a feminist, as someone who feels we pay too much attention to how women look. But RuPaul’s Drag Race forces me to admit that I look for beauty in women in a way I don’t in men.
But the female beauty on this show is explicitly constructed, molded, shaped. Few of the queens are as stunning out of drag as they are in (and two from this season were eliminated early, because they couldn’t find anything besides their beauty to offer. Brava, RuPaul!). The judges often call out queens who have not padded their bodies correctly on the runway, there is talk of fake breasts, and everyone sucks it in. The workroom is full of dresses and wigs, and we see the contestants in mid-makeup, colors blocked out on their faces, lines not yet smoothed out, stocking caps hiding their male heads of hair but not yet presenting their female heads.
These mid-transformation moments are necessary to the show. Without them, the looks paraded on the runway would just be looks – the banal lushness of Fashion Week, where the runways are never supposed to hint at the work behind them, and the women aren’t supposed to look like more than glamorous hangers for the outfits they wear. But because wee see the segue into queendom – the paint, the padding, the way these bodies are lifted or squeezed or rounded out – we see there’s nothing effortless here.
These are drag queens, though. And even for the oddballs, a certain kind of beauty, or at least pleasingness, is expected. Myself? In the morning I shower; afterward I moisturize, I use some eye cream (I’m 37, guys), some body lotion. And then I dress and leave the house. Occasionally I might run some mousse or gel through my hair; occasionally I wear a dress, though jeans or shorts or comfortable pants are likelier. I prefer comfortable shoes such as ballet flats or sneakers to heels, and I only wear makeup for special events. This isn’t so much about feminism as it is about laziness.
Part of me wonders if I could look like the queens on this show, even if I tried: Raja, another past winner, who projects a certain angular delicacy; Jujubee, who I’d crush on hard if I were a guy as much for her humor and energy as her looks; and RuPaul herself, of course. The first time I saw RuPaul I was a teenager, and her video for “Supermodel” was on the television. I grew up so sheltered that at first I just thought RuPaul was an exceptionally tall woman. I saw her legs and swooned, they were so straight and long and powerful. It was only the unreality of her beauty, in fact, that made me wonder if she were biologically female. RuPaul works her ass off, and if she weren’t generous to show us, we’d never know that. But knowing it makes her look even better to me.
There’s something reassuring to me in that. Nothing’s given on this show. Do you want to be a fierce queen? Work for it, honey. Slap on that paint, strap on those heels, and tuck away. You want to be something or someone else? You can, but you better work, because you don’t get it for free. Ovid taught me as a teenager that the world is a more fluid and mysterious place than we know; Carl Sagan taught me that we have multitudes in us, even to the stars; and RuPaul teaches me, every week, that you can work to make yourself something else. You can earn it – you have to earn it, over and over. The show’s mantra is charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. You don’t have to be born with any of those things; you just have to find them.
Happy (or whatever) 