Instead, it’s a combination of the authentic representation of the queer experience and the repackaging and smoothing that mass media puts on uncomfortable topics like homophobia and HIV. These experiences, genuine and authentic as they may be, are being commodified for the mainstream.Īt the end of the day, this isn’t the queens being real. As many of the queens say, the real drag happens in the off-air dressing room, not the Werk Room.
Drag queen makeup mainstream tv#
However, it’s important to take a step back: This is a reality TV show. On the surface, these vignettes seem like poignant insights into the lives of queer people, and in some sense, they are. Queens talk about their experiences with HIV positivity, moments in queer history like the Stonewall riots, their personal battles with religion and growing up with homophobic parents.
Kim Chi has two left feet and vertigo.”) and teary moments take place. While the queens get ready for the runway or sew dresses out of recyclables, some of the most memorable banter (“Go back to party city where you belong!”), shady confessionals (“This is sad. The parts of drag race that really resonate with viewers, however, are the scenes that take place in the Werk Room. In terms of reach, 1.3 million people tuned into MTV to watch the season 15 premiere. Each episode’s loser is decided by a Lip Sync For Your Life, and the queen that does not objectively slay harder sashays away. At its core, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is a weekly reality competition show where drag queens compete in maxi challenges and a runway. Drag has evolved into a way for people to explore different aspects of gender or completely deconstruct the binary and is now a form of artistic self expression more than anything else. First, drag is an art form that started as primarily gay men dressing up as women and exaggerating feminine gender signifiers through padding and makeup. Despite bringing what was once a crime onto the cultural mainstage, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has veered from representation and education into the commodification of queer culture for the mainstream, in turn, illustrating how the media machine as whole lacks nuance in its representation of queer culture.įor all of you normies who aren’t aware of what drag is or why it matters so much, pull your head out of the sand and get on Twitter. But, now that Aura Mayari has won a challenge and Marcia Marcia Marcia has put on some makeup, I can rest easy and talk about the franchise as a whole. It does not store any personal data.Season 15 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is currently airing and because of that, this article has been at the bottom of my to-do list. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies.
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