The Tao of Drag Race

I just finished RuPaul’s Drag Race season six. I know, I know… I’m tardy to the party. The main reason I didn’t start watching back in 2009 and joining a watch party at any one of several local gay bars is the work I do didn’t really allow it. At the time, I was working six or seven days a week, sometimes from six in the morning until ten o’clock at night, so watching a bunch of drag queens read each other for filth after getting my ass kicked all day wasn’t really something I wanted. So, I stayed away.

I’d see the memes and the gifs and laugh appropriately, and I’ve always loved RuPaul. I had an employee named Cameron and every time he’d walk in at work, everyone would cry “Cameroon!” I laughed, but it was a couple years before I really understood the reference.

Now that I no longer work in that hellhole and my evenings are mine, I found the series on Paramount+ and thought What the hell, I’ll see what all the fuss is about. And I was warned about the first few seasons. “Just start at season six, with Bianca del Rio,” they said. (I recognized the name, but wouldn’t understand the meaning until… well, until I got to season six!) But, no. I started at the very beginning, because Julie Andrews had always assured me that was a very nice place to start.

I wasn’t surprised by anything I saw. The queens were catty, the judges were catty. The judges argued with the queens. The queens argued with the judges. The queens hated each other, and by the end of each season, they loved each other and always had. RuPaul hawked her new singles, which were all available on iTunes. And Absolut vodka. And wigs, jewelry, one-of-a-kind gowns, all the trappings of drag culture. It was “reality” TV, the gay answer to the Real Housewives franchise mishegas that had permeated every other corner of American society.

I didn’t hate it. I didn’t like aspects of it, but I didn’t hate it.

So, I watched season two. Tyra Sanchez bored me shitless with all her desperate Beyoncé name dropping, but I stuck with it. It was pretty much the same template as the first season, and I still don’t agree with who was crowned… but I went straight into season three without even pausing to consider whether or not I should. It was again the same template, with some new and interesting challenges added, but mostly it was a whole lot of the same: reading, cattiness, unfinished hems, unoriginal remarks from the judges, Absolut cocktails, a new music video for RuPaul’s latest single.

And yet, I continued straight to season four.

RuPaul’s Drag Race is absolutely cookie cutter pageant queens from small towns across the southeast thrown into the den of iniquity that is Los Angeles to compete against seasoned big city queens to often hilarious results. It is absolutely predictable arguments from queens in defense of their bad runway choices. It is absolutely predictable (but still funny) one-liners from RuPaul and Santino and Michelle Visage as the girls walk the runway. And you know that LaToya Jackson is going to show up at some point. But if you watch enough and really pay attention, RuPaul is spitting wisdom. “No tea, no shade, hunty,” is coded language for “Listen to what I’m about to tell you, because I know. And I know because I’ve been there. Take notes. Learn this and live it.”

RuPaul has been doing drag since 1982 and, indeed, has a lot of wisdom to impart—if people would just listen. The problem is, people (in general) don’t want to listen. They want to do what they want to do and they’ve convinced themselves by doing so, the world will just realign itself around their vision. They call it being true to themselves. “I just have to be true to who I am and do what I do,” the queens often say, and I may be paraphrasing, but you get the idea. “If the judges don’t like it, well that’s on them!” is heard quite often throughout every season I’ve watched.

I started in my own industry four years after RuPaul started doing drag. I’m nowhere near as well known, but I have gained a lot of knowledge in those thirty-six years and I deal with people who think they can just do things their way and the world—nay, the universe—will either fall in line for fall behind. It’s maddening. I get what RuPaul must feel when he tells a queen to bring their A-game, because Drag Race is basically the Olympics of drag, which causes the queen to go off on a rant about living their truth and being true to their vision, and not accepting any responsibility for the unfinished hem or the clunky shoes or the Spirit Halloween wig.

I regularly advise my employees based on my own experience and get similar pushback. “Getting to work on time is half of it,” I’ll tell them,”and you’ll be surprised how much easier the rest of your day flows because you aren’t thirty minutes behind and you don’t spend the rest of your day scrambling to catch up.” Seems pretty logical to me, but they always have reasons they can’t get to work on time: there was traffic, there was a(nother) family emergency and they had to take care of something that turned out to be inconsequential anyway, they didn’t feel well when they woke up. Hell, I haven’t felt “well” (whatever the fuck “well” is) since about 1998.

“Wear good shoes,” I tell them. “You’ll be on your feet a lot.” Then they’re surprised when their feet hurt because they wanted to wear their cool shoes. Or when they ruin their J’s.

Clip your fingernails. Make sure you eat because we’re going to be busy today. Wear good deodorant. Don’t stay up all night drinking or gaming. Drugs are only fun while you’re doing them. Don’t bring your relationship drama to work—your job should be a retreat from all that. On payday, pay your rent and your utilities first—trust me.

I learned all that the hard way and I don’t want anyone to go through what I did in my 20s, primarily because I don’t want what they’ve put themselves through to impact everyone who will inevitably have to pick up their slack. They don’t like to hear it. I don’t care.

RuPaul doesn’t care, either. I recently watched as he read a queen (Laganja Estranja, I believe) after a disastrous runway. “Look, we’re just telling you what it takes!” Laganja didn’t want it, at least not then. She came around by the “Reunited” episode at the end of the season, though. Just like my employees come around, but how RuPaul keeps from losing his mind with these people, I will never know. I’m in awe. And as RuPaul read Laganja on that episode, I got it: the advice that RuPaul is dispensing to the Drag Race contestants doesn’t just apply to drag. It applies to LIFE.

“If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” We’ve all heard that one, long before we even knew RuPaul existed. Our grandmothers used to tell us that!

Here’s what else I’ve picked up on watching the show.

If you’re going to do anything, be anything, or change anything—start with yourself first. Take writing, for example. I didn’t just sit down one day when I was ten years old and declare that I would write the next great novel. I read a book and a light turned on inside my head and I knew I’d found what I needed to be doing. But I was bad at it. Hell, I was only ten! I was supposed to be bad at it! But I didn’t lie to myself and convince myself I was better than I was. I just read the kind of books I wanted to write. I studied those novels. Then I reread them. Over and over, again and again. To learn. And I’m still learning.

Don’t sabotage yourself. We all do it, though, to some degree, but the trick is to develop a daily (hourly?) practice of silencing that voice in your head that tells you not to even bother trying, because you’ll probably suck at it, or someone else will do it better than you will, or whatever. Do it anyway.

“It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to fall down. Get up, look sickening, and make them eat it.” That one’s not from RuPaul but the always fabulous Latrice Royale, but it’s just as important and relevant as the wisdom RuPaul spits. Make your mistakes. Own them. Learn from them. Then get up, fix your hair, pop your collar, and make the world eat it.

Don’t try so hard. This one seems contradictory, but it’s not. Absolutely try hard. Absolutely work hard to achieve what it is you want to achieve. But a lot of times, if you just take a minute and reflect on what it is you’re doing, you’ll realize that you don’t have to work that hard or do that much. Don’t overthink it, basically. Because there is such a thing as too much confidence.

Edit. This particular nugget came from Michelle Visage and it concerned over-accessorizing or too many ruffles or too much jewelry. I forget which. It could have even been all three. It ties into not trying so hard, too. In other words, before you present what you’re going to present—be it red carpet premiere eleganza on the runway or a face-to-face with your boss to ask for a raise—edit yourself. Make it tight. Bring just what you need to get the point across.

And lastly…

Know what makes you, you. This is a big one, especially these days when influencers (I fucking hate that word, almost as much as I hate the people who have labeled themselves with it) are telling people who and what to be and people are listening to them! Know yourself, inside and give the world that. We already have Beyoncé. We already have Kim Kardashian. We already have Stephen King and Neil Gaiman and George R. R. Martin. Figure out what you have to give the world, and then give the world that. And no, it isn’t easy. It’s a simple concept, but the work is not easy. Anything worth having is worth working for.

Now, can I get an amen up in here?