Why Drag Is the Ultimate Retort to Trump
RuPaul Charles, America’s most famous drag queen, sat on a gold lamé couch at a luxury hotel in Midtown Manhattan one Tuesday in March, doling out advice for the white working class. Wearing a patterned suit jacket and black slacks—one of his signature out-of-drag looks—he made a hand motion to suggest widgets being moved from one part of an assembly line to the next.
“If you were a factory worker and your job was to put this to this from 9 to 5, we don’t do that anymore,” he said, his soft voice carrying the imperious, jokey edge familiar to viewers of RuPaul’s Drag Race, his reality-TV show. Then he referenced a viral video from Ts Madison, a transgender activist and former porn star: “You better step your pussy up. Get on a business, bitch!” He delivered this spiel with the clipped, decisive tone of a therapist on the clock. “Nature will not allow you to just sail on through doing some factory job,” he said. “We don’t do factories anymore.”
At 56, RuPaul is in little personal danger of being phased out; he is, to the contrary, one of gay pop culture’s most enduringly relevant figures. Over the past quarter century, he has done more than anyone to bring drag to the American mainstream. At the same time, he has used his platform to act as life coach to the queer masses, counseling self-love and hard work
