RuPaul Chastises Mainstream Culture Shortly After Major VH1 ‘Drag Race’ Debut
LGBT icon RuPaul has taken a defiant yet queer stance against the intermingling of straight women at all-male bars just a day after his hit Drag Race series moved to VH1.
During a recent interview with The Dinner Party Download, an online podcast, the 56-year-old entertainer was asked by a fan what he thought of the uprising of bachelorette parties that take place at drag shows and gay bars.
“You better check yourself before you wreck yourself,” the diva responded, as The Gaily Grind notes.
“You know, this is an important thing: People who live in the mainstream and the status quo think that everyone else is there to serve them.”
Ru went on to explain that his presence in the spotlight has often led heterosexual people to seeing him as a stereotype with nothing more to offer to the world than makeup tips, a-la Queer Eye for The Straight Guy.
“So I’m a brown-skinned gay man,” the Drag Race host continued, “[and] you know, I do drag. Early on, I learned that I could do it well and make money. So people automatically ask me about beauty tips. And I get kids who write me and say, ‘I wish you could do my makeup for my prom?’ or, ‘I wish you could do my makeup for my wedding?'”
“I’m like, ‘B***h, I’m not a makeup artist. I’m an enter-taint-er! OK?'”
Incidentally, RuPaul’s perspective of such acts comes less than 24 hours after Drag Race, initially shown on the lesser-received LGBTQ-themed channel Logo, made a significant move to the more mainstream VH1 network after nine years of production as a way to allow the show’s audience to continue to grow far beyond the LGBTQ community.
“Drag Race leaving Logo is monumentally significant for the network,” Huffington Post writers James Michael Nichols & Cole Delbyck said of the switch, “[as their] relevancy has largely been predicated on the show’s success.”
“[Furthermore], the shift from Logo to VH1 speaks to a conversation in the LGBTQ community about visibility in a post-marriage equality world and the importance of safeguarding the queerness of spaces and culture. While there’s apprehension that something will be lost in this transition, both Logo and Ru are encouraged by the opportunity to expand the reach of the show.”
That reach was also surely helped along by a handful of mainstream accolades in the form of four Critics’ Choice Award nods and one Primetime Emmy win for Drag Race in 2016, one year before its VH1 move and two months previous to an ABC News interview where RuPaul, once again, proclaimed that mainstream audiences and the LGBT community would never find common ground.
“I don’t think the show could ever go mainstream because drag is the antithesis of the matrix,” he expressed.
“I think [that’s why] I haven’t been accepted in mainstream media outlets like The Tonight Show or Ellen or the late-night shows because the only way they could actually have a conversation with me is to make fun of me, or if they could somehow make a joke about what I’m doing,” RuPaul concurred.
In an ironic twist of fate, RuPaul would go on to appear on an episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers earlier this March to promote the latest Drag Race season on VH1, with fellow guests Amy Schumer and pop-rock group Panic! At the Disco, two entertainment entities who are considered by most to be “mainstream celebrities.”
Furthermore, recently unveiled plans to translate Ru’s life story into a weekly sitcom, as Deadline reported, would push the self-stated “Supermodel of The World” and all of his projects and ideologies even further into the mainstream, making her continued thought process all the more troubling and exclusive — except when it comes to his bank account, it seems.
When asked by interviewer Rico Gagliano on how straight women could better show respect to drag performers, Ru retorted, “I can tell you [how] in one word: cash.”
New episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race air Fridays at 8 p.m., 7 c. on VH1.
[Featured Image by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]
