Tom Fitzgerald - The First Decade of RuPauls Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life

Dedicated to all those fierce and ferocious warrior-goddesses who stomped and marched and danced in their platform shoes and stiletto heels so that we could walk freely and with pride

This book is meant to be read one-handed.

No, you didnt accidentally pick up the wrong book or get a defective copy with the wrong cover on it. What we mean is that this book was devised, from its inception, to spur the reader on to look up more about the people highlighted and spotlighted in it. We want you to become so curious about what Julian Eltinge looked like or how Charles Pierce sounded or whether were doing Tandi Iman Dupree justice when we describe her legendary lip sync that you cant help but want to see it for yourself. We want you to grab your phone and look up a video or blog post or wiki entry about any of the people or events mentioned in this book whenever the curiosity strikes you. There is an Alexandria-size library of spectacular queer history and cultural essays literally at your fingertips, and this book was written not only with that in mind but in a way that encourages you to look someone up because you read about them in these pages. Practically every performer mentioned in this book has some aspect of their work preserved online, which means you can look up Jackie Shane singing Walking the Dog on Canadian television in 1965 or Sylvia Riveras legendary speech at the Christopher Street parade in 1973 as easily as you can look up Manila Luzons latest music video.

RuPauls Drag Race started out as the purest representation of gay male social culture that television had ever seen, and eventually morphed into a celebration of LGBTQ life and culture in general, encompassing all the work and lives of countless queer people who came before it. Every aspect and feature of the show can be traced to some long-standing tradition, event, or practice in queer life, queer communities, and queer culture. RuPaul and company devised a show that serves as an actual museum of queer cultural and social history, drawing on queer traditions and the work of legendary figures going back nearly a century. In doing so, Drag Race became not only a repository of queer history and culture but an examination and illustration of queer life in the modern age. It is a series of snapshots illustrating how LGBTQ folks live, struggle, work, and reach out to each otherand how they always have.

The point of this book isnt to reveal all the secrets and hidden meanings behind Drag Racethe show isnt that deliberate in its intentions; and besides, thats not how culture works. The point is to show that Drag Race exists smack on the continuum of queer culture and history and naturally pulls references from up and down its timeline, sometimes deliberately and sometimes as a result of a cultural osmosis.

The history of the show itself is something of a queer Cinderella story, a nearly perfect metaphor for drag: A dirty little smeared-lens, poorly lit, low-def, rough-looking drag revue sandwiched between HIV meds and leather gear ads on an extremely niche cable network went on to become a worldwide glamour extravaganza. The journey of the show perfectly mimics the journey of drag as an underground form of expression that eventually found its way to the highest arenas of media and entertainment. The first season of Drag Race looks like it was shot in the dimly lit back room of a bar somewhere, but by the tenth season, it looked exactly like what it was at that point: a massive hit variety show loaded with sparkle and glamour, populated by impossibly beautiful beings with sickeningly flawless makeup. Were going to show how queer culture generally and drag culture specifically made a very similar journey. When we say queer culture, thats not necessarily the same thing as queer equality or legal protections, nor does it encompass the broad spectrum of queer existence. Its the shared culture created or curated by queer people for queer people arising out of our experiences as queer people.

The story of RuPauls Drag Race is the same as the story of the LGBTQ political and cultural movement of the past half century; its impossible to separate one from the other. You cant talk about RuPauls Drag Race in any depth without talking a bit about the history of drag as a form of expression and a part of pop culture. And you cant talk about drag as a form of expression without talking about its place in queer life. And you cant talk about queer life over time without having some idea of what LGBTQ folks faced in the past and how their lives played out.

For the majority of the twentieth century, it was illegal for a man to appear in public wearing womens clothing. It was illegal for men to have sex with other men, and the mere act of flirting could land a man in jail or a mental institution, or have him medicated against his will (a practice known as chemical castration). It was illegal to produce or distribute any work that depicted same-sex desires, and it was illegal for bars and restaurants to serve alcohol to gay or lesbian patrons. Same-sex desire and gender nonconformity were considered mental illnesses by the American Psychiatric Association and the majority of the medical community. Its important to know these things in order to understand just how brave and fuck-you fierce our queer forebears actually were. They didnt just declare themselves in the face of societal disapproval; they did so in the face of attempted social genocide. And they just kept on going, surviving and then thriving, creating art, communities, and familiesand redefining all three in the process. These people were criminals and outlaws, punks and badass bitches. Maybe they didnt always feel like it at the time, but they were revolutionaries. More important, they won the revolution. It just took some time for everyone else to notice.