GCN__February_2018

VISAGE
VOYAGE
Michelle Visage has a reputation for tough talking on
RuPaul’s Drag Race, a reality talent show that has blossomed
into a pop culture phenomenon like no other over the past
decade. Will she be bringing the same style of judging to her
new role on the panel of Ireland’s Got Talent? And what does
Michelle think of the situation back home in America, where
the Trump administration is rolling back on many of the
things Drag Race stands for? She talks to Brian Finnegan.
It’s exactly nine years this month since RuPaul’s Drag Race
first sashayed onto American television screens, courtesy
of the Logo TV network. Since then the show has not only
become a pop culture phenomenon, but a triumphant new
strand of queer programming, credited with helping change
the face of LGBT+ representations and educating a new
generation about the fight for queer rights.
It’s also brought drag into the mainstream, catapulting
queens like Bianca Del Rio, Sharon Needles, Trixie and Katya,
and Courtney Act into the firmament of global stardom, while
its creator and star, RuPaul has ascended to become a kind of
queer Oprah – her message at the end of every show - “If you
can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna somebody else?” –
becoming the new mantra.
Sitting firmly but fabulously by RuPaul’s side since season
three of Drag Race has been Michelle Visage, and over over
the course of seven seasons of the show, and two seasons
of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, her persona as a straighttalking
ally who takes no shit has become part of the show’s
overall ethos. Alongside RuPaul, Michelle has evolved into a
kind of straight mama to the gays, helping mend the broken
kids who come through the Drag Race doors to lip-sync for
their lives.
“
People think of ‘Drag Race’ as a
camp show about boys dressing
up in girl’s clothing, but that’s
on the surface.
The contestant pool has included survivors of assault,
people abandoned by their parents or kicked out of their
homes, and people for whom being gay or trans nearly cost
them their lives. Season two winner Tyra Sanchez (aka James
Ross IV) was homeless when he entered the competition.
Season four contestant Timothy Wilcots, aka Latrice Royale,
had served jail time, while All Star contestant, Jujubee was so
used to being homophobically abused as a child, he answered
to the word ‘faggot’.
“People think of Drag Race as a camp show about boys
dressing up in girl’s clothing, but that’s on the surface,” Michelle
tells me as we chat on a break from her filming schedule with
Ireland’s Got Talent, on which she’s a judge (more of which
later). She’s impeccably made-up for the cameras, jet-black
hair coiffed, eyeliner sequined, and the Drag Race persona is
fully intact. She talks a mile-a-minute, her opinions forthright
and peppered with expletives, but at the same time she
touches my hand or arm at regular intervals, forging a kind of
instant intimacy for the brief time we have together. It’s hard
not to want Mama Michelle to like you.
“Really the show is so much more about life, about integrity,
about grit, determination, love, loss, self-endurance, selfloathing,
self-love…” she says, her intricately painted fingernails
grazing my wrist. “We actually bring families together. These
queer boys, however they identify, have lost touch with their
parents or family members because their families didn’t
accept them.
“A lot of these parents kick their kids out on the street when
they come out, and they only thing they have to turn to is
selling sex, selling their bodies. They don’t believe they have
what it takes, the self-worth, the self-love, to do anything
other than tricking. So we end up with drug issues, suicides,
homicides… LGBT youth homelessness is a big deal, so with
our show a lot of times the parents come around and say, ‘Oh
my God, I am so sorry, I didn’t see what was right in front of my
face, all you really needed was for me to love you’.
“Or if that doesn’t happen, if there is no epiphany, they realise
there can be a relationship. Maybe it’s slow, but the relationship
happens.”
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