GCN__February_2018

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“ If we keep informing them, letting them know the history and not letting them forget… then they’ll get it, and they’ll know why they were able to come out of the womb shitting rainbows and glitter. Visage herself is the mother of a queer child – her 18 year-old daughter, Lillie identifies as bisexual. “I knew I’d end up with a queer kid,” she laughs. “I just thought it would be a choreographer, or an interior decorating boy or hairdresser, but it ended up being a girl who is still questioning and finding her way.” While a bi kid couldn’t hope for a more clued-in mother, Michelle says it’s only recently that she’s come to accept the viability of bisexuality. “Back when I started with the community, in the 1980s, it was close to a death sentence to come out as gay. It was safer for the boys, not the girls, to come out as bisexual even though they were gay. So, it’s only in the past three years or so that I’ve realised bisexuality is a viable way of being. “My daughter identifies as bi and non-binary. She’s dealt with some pretty serious depression issues, so she’s finally coming out of that now and exploring her bisexuality. She’s 18, so it’s later in life, whereas some kids might do it at 13, so I don’t know if she even needs that validation yet. She might, in university, realise how important it is, because bis and trans get the shitty end of the stick. It’s not fair. Being the mother of a bisexual kid, I will scream louder for her rights, which do matter and are real.” Although the America in which Lillie is coming of age is a much more evolved place than when her mother was living it up on the New York underground with her best buddy, the young RuPaul (aka Andre Charles), one year into the Trump administration, with the roll-back of protections for trans people and rhetoric, along with the erasing of gay recognition, there are clear efforts to turn the evolutionary direction backwards. “It’s very hard in America right now,” says Michelle. “But the stronger and louder we are, and if we band together, we will be heard. Our brothers and sisters did not fight in Stonewall all those years ago for it to go back to the way it was. We’re no longer being pushed back into the closet; we’re no longer being silenced. “As a mother of a queer kid, I can only look to the future. It’s a lot easier to be under the queer umbrella these days than it has ever been, in my life, so I want those kids to know why. If we keep informing them, letting them know the history and not letting them forget… then they’ll get it, and they’ll know why they were able to come out of the womb shitting rainbows and glitter.” Visage herself was born to an American-Irish mother in 1968, then adopted by a Jewish family in New Jersey and christened Michelle Lynn Shupack. “My mother couldn’t have me, other circumstances got in the way, but she loved me enough to give me up for adoption,” she says early on in our chat, but later, when we’re talking about Drag Race again, it becomes apparent that this presented its challenges. “If it were me growing up, my self-loathing, and the hatred I had for myself, not knowing why I’d been given up for adoption, if I’d had a show like Drag Race, maybe I wouldn’t have had an eating disorder, maybe I wouldn’t have thought I was ugly, or didn’t fit in or had nobody who didn’t understand my weirdness,” she says. “But I didn’t have that, so I had to go through all that shit, to come out the other side and realise, I’m not going to sit back and let somebody bully somebody 22 g
else the way I was bullied.” Perhaps it was the tracing her birth mother and learning that her grandmother was from Cork that somehow originally brought Michelle to Ireland’s media. Ireland’s Got Talent isn’t her first time to appear on our airwaves. “I did radio here in 1997 for three years on 2FM with Dusty Rhodes,” she tells me. “He’d have me on once a week to take a bite out of the Big Apple, sponsored by Cidona. He flew me to Ireland a few times to do events. Then in 2009 I was back on 2FM with Michael Cahill at the weekends. So, I’ve always had a relationship with Ireland.” This relationship should be further enhanced when Ireland’s Got Talent begins broadcasting on TV3 on <strong>February</strong> 3. Is she going to get shady as she searches for charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent amongst the Irish public, or will she be more Mama Michelle? “In RuPaul’s Drag Race I have a very specific role,” she says. “I grew up in this community since I was literally weaned off the plastic tits of a drag queen. I have a background and standard that I’m holding these queens to, when I know they can do better. I’m a lot tougher on them because I need to be. “If a child comes up on Ireland’s Got Talent or somebody who has something but they’re not quite ready, I’m not going to shoot them down and tell them this sucks, because that’s not who I am. I want to encourage everybody to follow their dream. If they don’t have that talent I’m going to tell them, ‘I don’t know if this should be your dream, you should have a back-up dream’. But I’m not going to stop anybody from chasing what they want. “I like to give constructive criticism. It’s not going to help me to cut someone else down; it’s going to help me help somebody else. I’m a Virgo; I want to help everybody. I want everybody to be happy.” As a certain drag queen might say: shantay, gurl, you stay. “Our brothers and sisters did not ight in Stonewall all those years ago for it to go back to the way it was. ‘Ireland’s Got Talent’ begins on TV3 on <strong>February</strong> 3. Listen to our Q+A podcast featuring this full, unedited interview on Apple Podcasts. It’s sickening. Michelle and RuPaul with fellow Drag Race judges, Ross Matthews (left) Carson Kressley (right) 07 g
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GCN__February_2018

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