I have just realised that the title of this post probably makes no sense to any sane person who may be reading this, but don't worry, all will become clear.
First things first- RuPaul's Drag Race is the name of the programme I cannot seem to get enough of as of late. Basically, if America's Next Top Model and Project Runway had a child, this is the show they would birth. Except it's infinitely more funny. And replace the almost-models with drag queens. I know. Amazing. If you can't quite picture it, I'll insert some promotional pictures for some of the series here:
Put simply, the show begins with a group of drag queens from a surprisingly large range of backgrounds, and as the weeks go on, they have to 'battle it out to become America's next drag superstar', competing in an array of tasks including decorating a pair of platform heels to reflect a given cocktail, and dressing up puppets to create the most catty and inherently hilarious caricatures of their fellow contestants. Each week the two queens who, according to RuPaul, have not performed fabulously enough, risk elimination and must 'lipsync for their life (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)' in order to stay in the competition. Those who are sent home are told by RuPaul to 'sachay away'. It's so tense. Real edge of your seat stuff. If I'm not portraying the drama well enough, here's a video of some of the best bits:
It's witty and outrageous, but there is a real rapport created with the contestants. Unsurprisingly, under all the drama and sass, the girls had faced harsh amounts of prejudice not only from people they didn't know- ignorant arseholes, basically, who have little or no knowledge or understanding of the drag community and would outrightly abuse them verbally and physically in public, but most sadly from their own families. There were countless stories of parents who had disowned their biological sons because they enjoyed dressing and expressing themselves as women, and some accounts were genuinely heartbreaking. At many points I was made to question and criticise my own society for its general lack of acceptance and tolerance for a community that was completely harmless, and that I percieved as genuinely beautiful. Honestly and genuinely it was difficult for me not to cry a little bit when Latrice Royale was sent home. The show embraced and celebrated the exploration of gender and femininity which is such an unexplainably important thing to do, but it also revealed a lot of the sickeningly negative attitudes towards anything that shows itself to be remotely different from the excepted norms of society, from many members of the public.
What I loved most about the programme was, to paraphrase the band Little Comets, the 'atypical portrayal of the feminine role'- I'll come back to them later. I adored that RuPaul's drag race was an excellent example of how femininity can be celebrated by anybody at all. It conveyed perfectly that anybody can be a feminist! We aren't all insane and extreme. And we aren't all biologically women.
Furthermore, within the seasons themselves, the drag race conveyed the equality and shared beauty of all kinds of women. That is, the women in each series were all entirely different and not at all alike, but each of them were equally beautiful. Specifically, one of my all time favourite contestants that I have watched so far was called Sharon Needles. She portrayed a character who dressed as though it were always halloween and constantly looked like she had stepped out of a horror film, wearing white contact lenses and having fake blood spilling from her mouth at one of her runway looks. I loved it. She was so outgoing, in fact, that her performances were a shock even to the most experienced in the drag community on the show, and she went on to win her respective series (she definitely deserved it). Conversely, but equally as beautiful, was another of my favourites, Chad Michaels. She sported plastic surgery that she had undergone in order to look like Cher, who she admitted was her idol; and of course, Latrice Royal was completely different again. She was definitely plus-sized where the others in the final four were considerably more petite, but never was this conveyed as a negative aspect of her appearance. It was always fully embraced and used to her own advantage.
In these ways I kind of wished while watching the show that my life was more like RuPaul's drag race. I wish that in my own society, what was different was celebrated rather than abused, and that feminism was recognised as something not exclusive to biological females themselves.
Here is where I link this whole anecdote back to the aforementioned lyric, and explain 'Feminist Little Comets', the second component to the title of this post. Little Comets are a band who I first discovered at a very small music festival in Canterbury, and I really think their song The Blur, the Line, and the Thickest of Onions relates to my views surrounding RuPaul's Drag Race flawlessly. I considered writing two separate posts about the show and the song, but later decided they are much more effectively discussed in unison as the song highlights perfectly the more serious connotations of the otherwise lighthearted and fabulously bitchy Drag Race.
Luckily, Rob Coles, singer of Little Comets frequently writes his own blog posts about the lyrics to their songs and what they mean. Here is what he has said about The Blur, the Line, and the Thickest of Onions:
'It is with great sadness that every other song either purrs with a bland fecundity or proffers an image of society that I don’t want to recognise – and the chief irritant in a sea of misogynist bile was plain for all to see.
That’s what this song is a reaction against: the incoherent lack of effort to connect with a lyric. The type of laziness which at the same time suggests that all is ok in society – we can recline, we can produce meaningless music, debase women, promote violence all because we’ve cracked it. Parliaments are full with democratic agendas, with all ethnicities, genders, sexualities and regions well represented, business is not an entirely brigand based masculine affair, whilst mass media is of course populated by positive role models for young women, typical gender roles aren’t constantly reinforced and the workplace is not a sexist wasteland of ignorant design.'In the song, Coles and the rest of the band speak out about many of the corrupt features of our own society, including the minimum wage and the more relevantly, the portrayal of women in the media. Overall the song conveys the importance of writing and discussing what is important and what needs to change, rather than using music and the media for 'the typical portrayal of the feminine role. I have never been more appalled'. I'm not sure if these were intentional, but I did notice the repetition of the use of 'blurred vision', and 'you write about a non-existent blurred line, but not about abortion rights'. I thought these might be references to the infamous Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines which caused so much controvosy earlier on this year.
Coles asks 'why empower misogyny when violence towards women grows?' and acknowledges that body image is used 'as a form of control'.
So both Little Comets and RuPaul's Drag Race challenge typical and accepted gender roles. I don't think the more poignant messages in the Drag Race about the importance of self expression and the truth about the range of people who can be feminist that are hidden in the humour and drama of the competition could be more eloquently presented than the song by Little Comets.
Admittedly, I doubt RuPaul's Drag Race was intended to be particularly political- it really is that kind of light and rubbish entertainment that is purely addictive. But some of the women on the show were genuinely some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. And I can't ignore that it is important to celebrate the beauty of femininity in ALL forms, (and to simultaneously give an empowered 'fuck you' to society).
I have recently discovered that RuPaul does have a follow up to his Drag Race series. It's called RuPaul's Drag U and will be the source of my entertainment for many weeks to come.
Daisy
