In the northern market town where I grew up, winter took a long time to pass into spring, and even then something about the sky made me feel hemmed in. I used to call it the armpit of Lancashire. It wasn’t quite George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, but when I looked in the mirror when I was young, what I saw “wore … the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen”. I was a broken weirdo longing for a mask. I thought if I could become a different person, everything would be fixed and I’d finally fit in. How wrong could I have been? As RuPaul’s Drag Race makes clear, it’s the inner weirdo who fixes you.
This weekend, while I was painting an egg for Easter Sunday, the queens were painting their faces on TV. They slipped into shining gowns and they lip-synced in the “ultimate lip-sync smackdown for the crown”. It was the finale of the second series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs the World. Since February, 11 international performers have competed for the title of “Queen of the Mothertucking World”, with the UK as host nation. It’s sort of a mini-Olympics of drag, broadcast on the BBC. A spin-off of RuPaul’s media empire, this year it’s the first time the BBC has given away a cash prize – £50,000 was at stake in a glorious celebration of clownery.
“I’m the best version of myself I’ve ever been. I feel like a final evolution Pokémon,” said Tia Kofi, her name a play on “Tea or coffee?”, who came seventh in her first series. A lot of this season’s run has been about her “rudeeming” herself. Her looks were derided in her first season, and she was labelled the Baroness of Basic, but this year she came back revitalised. She levelled up.
The gag of the night – drag parlance for when something is shocking – was Australian Hannah Conda defeating Filipino frontrunner Marina Summers in the first lip-sync to Anastacia’s I’m Outta Love. “This is the most authentic I’ve been in years,” Conda said. “I’ve always found drag to be a therapy for me. A place to live outside the box. It saved my life many times.” Fashion powerhouse La Grande Dame was defeated by dad-joke-loving Tia Kofi in Boogie 2night by Booty Luv, and Tia Kofi then demolished Hannah Conda in Your Disco Needs You by Kylie Minogue, winning £50,000, a crown and a sceptre. “This means the absolute world to me,” she said. “To go from Baroness Basic to Queen of the Mothertucking World is wild. I’ve realised that I’m so much stronger than I ever thought I was … I’ve done it. I’ve won.”
Some staid people might say that Drag Race is visual Valium, without meaning or culture. But the Greeks dressed in drag, the Elizabethans did too, and the Victorians are understood to have created the word for it. The rise of the right across the world means that drag has come under attack. Now, it’s the concern that “drag storytime” – where drag queens read storybooks to kids – is inappropriate. But as Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO and president of Glaad, told the Guardian: “If you’ve seen Mrs Doubtfire, you’ve seen drag, to no negative impact on anyone.” Not to mention pantomime, or (rest in peace) Lily Savage.
We need it more than ever. Research published on the Conversation in 2023 found that RuPaul’s Drag Race has helped to destigmatise the LGBTQ+ community at a time when it is under attack. Watching Drag Race, I’ve felt a commonality with others who have been attacked, who have been the victims of sexual assault, who have been bullied and abused. In this most recent season, La Grande Dame talked about how she had to leave home at 14 “and become an adult” immediately. Queens regularly discuss their HIV status, or how they had to emancipate themselves from their family. Drag does save lives.
Just last week, Republicans in the US Congress pushed an amendment to make it effectively illegal to fly a Pride flag above a US embassy. In England and Wales, homophobic hate crimes have shot up by 112% in the past five years, and hate crimes against transgender people have increased by 11% in the past year alone. In times of division, when we are putting up more borders between us, Drag Race is a rainbow-coloured flag in full view.
Max Wallis is a writer and poet
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