Drag experienced its next major evolution in the 1960s. On June 27th, 1969, a standard police raid of a local New York City queer bar, The Stonewall Inn, turned into a scene of resistance and bravery. During the raid, officers began directing patrons to different areas of the club based on their perceived gender, where clothing and genital inspections took place.

“Untitled (transvestite in a police van”) Circa 1941. Photo courtesy of Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Purchase through the generosity of Melvin R. Seiden. Source.

In response, a few Black and Puerto Rican drag queens who had been performing at the club began to complain to the officers about their treatment, and wider refusal to cooperate soon spread throughout the venue. The protest eventually moved out to the street, where officers and patrons fought vigorously. While nobody was killed at Stonewall, the Stonewall Riots were a turning point in queer history and in the history of drag. Individuals became bolder and the fight for queer equality continued in earnest.

“Celebration after riots outside Stonewall Inn, Nelly (Betsy Mae Koolo), Chris (Drag Queen Chris), Roger Davis, Michelle and Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt June 1969” Circa 1969. Photo courtesy of The Harvard Fine Arts Library, Digital Images & Slides Collection d2020.01818. Source.

The underground nature of drag continued somewhat into the late seventies. As Lady Bunny notes, 

“[d]rag was very special when I was little, because the only place you could go to see it was in a gay bar. . . now you can see everything online, and as much as I love to watch stuff online, if  you’re not paying a cover charge, you’re killing the venue for that drag act, and you’re killing the drag act. . . before it was on TV and before it was mainstream, [drag] was something you had to go to.” 

“Joey Arias and others, at sites in Rome, Italy” Circa 1980s or 1990s. Courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection MSThr1915.

In the early eighties, drag began to step into the popular consciousness after more performers incorporated the artform into their shows— but not everyone wanted to bring drag into mainstream society.

For example, David Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging” music video featured the artist in several drag presentations, and after showing the video, the BBC received a deluge of complaints from offended viewers. Similarly, the rock band Queen released a music video for their hit “I Want to Break Free” that featured the band’s members in drag, and MTV outright refused to show the video. 

In the early eighties, drag began to step into the popular consciousness after more performers incorporated the artform into their shows— but not everyone wanted to bring drag into mainstream society.

Despite the decades that queer communities fought for this sliver of representation, it seemed the world still wasn’t ready for drag to enter the mainstream.

The nineties and early aughts brought drag even more to the forefront. By this time, drag had established itself in cities across the country, but as BenDeLaCreme emphasizes, “drag used to be so regional; drag queens were wildly different from city city— the cultures they built were wildly different.” 

The nineties were also the time when many were first introduced to drag culture through “Super Model of The World,” RuPaul Charles.With her quick wit and infectious positivity (or as Lady Bunny calls it, “regurgitated therapy,”) RuPaul, and drag, soon broke into the popular consciousness with “The RuPaul Show,” a variety and talk show that aired on VH1.

RuPaul in drag celebrating the release of her Starrbooty DVD. Photo courtesy of David Shankbone. Source.

RuPaul’s Drag Race

Almost ten years after this show ended, RuPaul introduced the world to a new kind of drag show through the aptly named “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” (Drag Race)– a television competition where drag queens participate in various challenges to see who will become “America’s Next Drag Superstar.” 

Each week, Drag Race asks participants to complete a challenge, asking them to, for example, act in spoofs of queer media, write original jokes for a roast, or sing and dance to a selection of musical numbers. 

After these challenges, queens don outfits associated with that week’s theme and present their looks on the runway. The elimination mechanism is a simultaneous lip-sync battle-royale, where the week’s two “weakest” queens attempt to convince RuPaul that they deserve to stay in the running. 

Today, Drag Race is in its seventeenth U.S. season and has spurred several spin offs and now has iterations of the show in sixteen countries. The success of Drag Race has also led to the show being moved to increasingly prominent television channels, which, as Tempest DuJour notes, “means there’s more corporate control over Drag Race.”

Tempest DuJour. Photo courtesy of DVSROSS.

Importantly, while Drag Race as a program may be entertaining, not everyone agrees that the drag presented on Drag Race represents “true” drag culture. Lady Bunny perhaps summarizes the difference between “real life” drag and Drag Race best when she says that “[the kind of drag on Drag Race] is cleaned up for TV, and it’s also riddled with sob stories that are the bane of reality TV. . . [Drag Race] puts the queens through challenges that most of us would never face.” 

“Every time I don’t lip-sync a pop song people are like ‘I thought that’s what drag was?’” 

DeLaCreme recognizes a similar influence that Drag Race has had on broader perceptions of what drag is. “Every time I don’t lip-sync a pop song people are like ‘I thought that’s what drag was?’” 

Lady Bunny. Photography by Steven Menendez. Photo courtesy of Lady Bunny.

But hey, if it works, it works, right?

And so far, the show has worked; the program has not just been popular among dedicated viewers but has also nourished a broader interest in drag. Drag Race and RuPaul have received numerous Emmy awards, while the show’s success has allowed new concepts like HBO’s “We’re Here” and the Boulet Brothers’ “Dragula” to independently thrive.  

Even queens themselves seem to appreciate the diversification of content, as Tempest DuJour exclaims, “when the Boulet Brothers came along I was like ‘oh, thank God, there’s something that’s as popular as they are now and that’s not Drag Race!’”  

A local Boston drag queen performs at The Wilbur Theater. Photo by Grayce Burns.

Outside of media circles, drag brunches now exist in almost every city in America, and President Biden hosted several drag queens and queer advocates at the White House in celebration of last year’s Pride.

Altogether, the past two decades have seen a major shift in the popularity of drag both domestically and internationally, thanks in no small part to Drag Race. 

The Corporatization of Drag

The increased success and popularity of drag has, unsurprisingly, allowed many individuals to launch careers that center around the artform. BenDeLaCreme owns a production company, and Tammie Brown stars in Apple TV’s “The Browns.” These two are not the only examples of successful drag artists— many performers and industry professionals now use the artform to make a decent to excellent living thanks to the “Drag Race Industrial Complex.”

Unfortunately, these new opportunities have also increased corporatization, commodification, and homogenization of drag queen culture, particularly when it comes to RuPaul’s Drag Race and the influence the show has over contestants and drag culture itself. 

BenDeLaCreme sums up the situation with a succinct, if not wistful reflection, “like anything else that becomes hugely commercially successful, it is diluted in a lot of ways and it is flourishing in others.”

The “professional drag queen” has been around for decades, albeit only a few performers could make a comfortable living off of doing drag. Traditionally viewed as more a labor of love or a hobby than a full time career, drag queens made money through cash tips from patrons; for viewers, entry to shows was free or carried a nominal fee, but they were expected to tip nonetheless. Top drag acts may have been able to command their own independent fee simply for performing.

Sasha Colby, Winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, and two backup dancers, perform in Boston, MA during her tour, “Stripped.” Photo by Grayce Burns.

Discussing her time spent working as a drag queen before Drag Race even existed, BenDeLaCreme recalls that, when she started doing drag “you did it because you loved it, not because it was going to be especially lucrative or get you especially well known.” Lady Bunny similarly feels that drag, to her, “is an artform—it’s not just about making money.”

Drag Race, Lady Bunny highlights, represented “the first time that a variety of queens can actually make good money; you know, some of these queens are buying houses!” 

As the popularity of drag has increased, so has the potential earning power for drag queens. Some of the franchise’s most successful queens are now estimated to be worth anywhere between $2 and $10 million. This shift is arguably due to the success of Drag Race and programs like it, which now provide a widely known “brand” to which queens may attach themselves to. Drag Race, Lady Bunny highlights, represented “the first time that a variety of queens can actually make good money; you know, some of these queens are buying houses!”

These success stories have made the pursuit of a career as a full-time drag queen an increasingly popular option for queens after they are featured on a television show like Drag Race. Instead of drag performers participating in the craft out of their sheer love for the artform, DeLaCreme says, “you get people doing it who, if the drag economy crashed tomorrow, would move on and find a different thing.”

A merchandise table at Sahsa Colby’s “Stripped” tour. The shirt listed for sale at $40 appears to be sold out, while other items can be seen throughout the background. Photo by Grayce Burns.

As drag has become more lucrative for top performers, industry professionals have similarly benefitted from increases in popularity. 

Once a queen finds success, it is usually not long until agents and other industry insiders reach out offering to represent them—for a cut. Some of these professionals are members of the queer community or build their client bases around representing queer artists.

One such organization that prides itself on its representation of many “Ru Girls” is Voss Events, famous for their “Werq The World” tour that many queens join immediately after their season airs. Voss advertises itself as “a multidisciplinary creative agency” that specializes in “[c]onnecting brand and corporate clients to the powerful LGBT community and other niche markets.” 

Like other talent agents, the professionals representing popular drag queens make it their mission to make their client, and themselves, as much money as possible. 

However, this sort of contract that ties payment to the amount earned per performer may support less-than-ideal behavior from talent managers. For instance, one popular agency for Ru-Girls has been accused of allegedly asking performers to lie about their COVID test results to avoid canceling booked performances. Another scenario involved an agency being accused of negligently allowing dangerous working conditions, leading one queen to request $600,000 in damages after an injury sustained during a rehearsal.

This is not my full career, but for most of them, ninety-nine percent of them, drag is their career, so every dollar really counts. . . if they want to go out and do something else [besides performing] then they can do it.”

Beyond performances, producers and queens may make profit through meet and greets. These interactions, where fans pay money in addition to a ticket fee to take a photo or have a brief conversation with a queen, are divisive among queens. 

Referencing the iconic Mommie Dearest, Tammie Brown says that “my fans, they’re life and death to me.”  Tammie goes on to explain how much she enjoys meeting fans, but also makes the interesting point that drag queens are some of the only celebrities that are expected to regularly make themselves available for fans through meet and greets. 

Tammie Brown. Photo courtesy of DVSROSS.

Lady Bunny has similar feelings but breaks down the economics of the situation a bit more, noting that, when it comes to meet and greets, the producer almost always comes out ahead. She emphasizes that, 

“[w]hen you’re on tour, you’re literally driving in a tour bus for a few hours, you get to the hotel room and you have about ten, twenty minutes to lay down, check your email, and then you have got to start getting in drag at 4pm for a show at 8pm, because you’ve got a meet and greet at 6pm—and you’re not getting paid any extra, the promoter gets it. So, what is supposed to be an hour-long show turns into four or five hours of you just sitting there with your beard growing through your makeup.”

For queens who prefer other opportunities, agents can still help their client make money beyond booking them for shows by obtaining features for them on different programs or convincing advertisers to pay their client to promote their product.

Brand partnerships and drag are an especially difficult combination, as Lady Bunny underscores, since lots of queens feel pressured to “make everything [about their brand] squeaky clean because that’s what you [as a company] want your spokesperson to be.” 

Taking a slightly different stance on the issue of alternative income methods, Tempest DuJour thinks that these opportunities for queens to make some extra money are an important income stream. She underscores, “I look to stand up for my sisters and for Drag Race. This is not my full career, but for most of them, ninety-nine percent of them, drag is their career, so every dollar really counts. . . if they want to go out and do something else [besides performing] then they can do it.”

In all, it seems that drag’s increased popularity has not just benefitted queens themselves but has also created a whole new industry of performers and the teams behind them.

Examining Drag Race

However, the rapid development of the drag industry has also created environments rife with exploitation, particularly illustrated by the dynamics at play throughout RuPaul’s Drag Race, as top-tier stakeholders seek to maintain control of their influence and profit streams. As DeLaCreme summarizes, “drag used to be ‘fuck the system,’ now drag is the system.”

BenDeLaCreme. Photo courtesy of bendelacreme.com.

It’s no secret among drag queens that going on Drag Race can be the ticket to stardom. Reflecting on the changes she’s seen within the drag community, BenDeLaCreme notes that “the big distinction for me now is how many drag queens become drag queens just to get on Drag Race.” 

What many fail to recognize, it seems, is that the costs associated with taking this leap are far from insubstantial. 

First, the financial cost of participating in RuPaul’s Drag Race can be, quite honestly, staggering. Tempest DuJour recalls, “[i]t was ten years ago that I was on the show, and I still have debt from the costumes, and the hair, and the shoes, and the makeup.” 

Tempest DuJour goes on to note that the increasing complexity of looks expected from queens on Drag Race has only increased the financial burden that queens are expected to take on in exchange for a shot at stardom. She describes that, “I know, in the past few seasons, girls that spend $30,000 or $40,000 getting their looks together—and these are kids that do drag for a living who may or may not have a gig that week. I don’t know how they’re surviving, how they’re paying their bills.” 

Going on Drag Race also requires queens to pay non-financial costs. For example, the “Drag Race Non-Disclosure Agreement” (NDA) has become somewhat of a meme within the queer community in recent years for its ironclad inclusions. 

Reports of previous years’ NDAs allege included provisions that require queens to get projects approved by Drag Race’s producing team for one year after they are on the show, mandate that queens sign with a specific talent agency, require the queen to return for up to five additional seasons, and “grant the Producer a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable, sub licensable license to reproduce, transmit, display and distribute your name, image, and likeness in and in connection with the Series.” Oh and also, they get your first-born.
But shouldn’t queens feel grateful for the chance to participate in Drag Race, even with these strict contracts in place? Surely, the kind of consistent revenue from the show makes these arrangements worthwhile?

Well, maybe not. As of the show’s fourteenth season in 2022, queens were paid $500 for each episode they appeared in (and no, “recaps” of previous episodes and season reunions do not constitute “episodes”). For appearing in subsequent seasons, the pay for each episode increases 5%; a second season would pay the performer $525.00 per episode, a third season would pay $552, and so on.

Clearly, $500 an episode is hardly enough to survive as a full time drag queen after appearing on Drag Race. Some queens try to use their time on Drag Race as a way to make additional income by embracing a memorable line or quip that they make on the show and printing it on t-shirts, coffee cups, and underwear. 

“We’re just calling it out for what it is. This is publicity isn’t it”? 

This, Lady Bunny identifies, is the tendency for Drag Race to push queens towards “fame based on a catchphrase.” BenDeLaCreme also highlights this phenomenon, “many queens play specifically into their Drag Race brands. . . their catchphrase.” 

Not content to give up this revenue stream, Drag Race has increasingly co-opted this alternative income source. As Tammie Brown recognizes, “people are always going to find what they can exploit. . . and they’re going to exploit it.”​​

Speaking of Tammie Brown, one mini challenge from the most recent season illustrates this phenomenon well. While the show did not mention any influences behind the challenge beyond referring to a cult t-shirt design from the late 1980s featuring a recreation of Tammy Faye Bakker’s smeared makeup, the similarities between Tammie Brown’s artworks that she has produced since 2018 and the product of the show’s recent episode are uncanny. 

When asked what she thought of this recent challenge on the show, Tammie Brown remarked, “We’re just calling it out for what it is. This is publicity isn’t it”? 

Ever the resourceful group, Drag Race did not let the results from this challenge—facial impressions smeared on t-shirts— go to waste. Instead, these depictions were recreated en masse and made available for purchase almost as soon as the episode aired.

Did the queens responsible for creating these works receive any cuts of these revenues? Guess we’ll have to wait until the NDAs expire to find out.

Tammie Brown’s facial impression artwork. Circa 2024. Photo courtesy of Tammie Brown.

Tammie Brown’s facial impression artwork. Circa 2018.

A T-shirt for sale on Drag Race’s official website copied from the results of a recent mini-challenge featured on Drag Race Season 16. Photo courtsey of World of Wonder.

Stringent contracts and lost income streams aren’t the only things that make the modern Drag Race seem like a glittering dystopia. Perhaps one of the most jarring aspects of Drag Race today is the sheer emotional toll that producers expect contestants to weather in exchange for this chance at fame.

Many authors and researchers have examined the emotional cost associated with competing on reality television. Like other “reality” television shows, Drag Race relies on contestant interactions to keep audiences engaged; but, the behind the scenes producing needed to get this material undeniably impacts contestants. Drag Race itself seems to recognize this as an occupational hazard of sorts: as of Season 14, the Drag Race participant contract required contestants to “expressly assume the risk of any physical or emotional injuries I may suffer.”

Yes, some drag queens are mean (see, e.g., Bianca Del Rio,) and participants go into the show acknowledging that it will be emotionally difficult. Still, one wonders whether the producers behind Drag Race recognize the irony in making a show meant to uplift queer voices by intentionally manufacturing anger, pain, and hurt among prominent members of the queer community and packaging this product for public consumption.

Consider BenDeLaCreme’s often-debated departure from Drag Race All Stars Season 3, a spin off where the contestants are all queens from previous seasons of Drag Race. 

Before joining that season’s cast, BenDeLaCreme had remarked in an interview that the rules of Drag Race All Stars were far from ethical. Then, BenDeLaCreme was “invited” back to the show (or perhaps, required to return,) where she remembers that producers “played dumb” about knowing of the article, but nevertheless felt “very certain that they did it [invited her back] specifically because of that statement.” Still, she “went on the show anyway, because it’s a monopoly and because they’ve cornered the market.” 

Things went well on the show for BenDeLaCreme— she was slated by many to be the runaway winner for the season. But, workers on the show soon “read that article to other queens in their confessionals and said, ‘Do you think it’s hypocritical that she’s here?’” BenDeLaCreme decided to leave the show, having realized that, 

“Drag Race is based on a capitalist structure, it is a capitalist conceit . . . even the idea of this type of competition is rooted in capitalist ideology. And that, I don’t think, is in the spirit of drag, which is, I think, sort of inherently an anarchist artform. I felt really proud and still feel really proud of making essentially a statement against that, even if. . . I knew I was never going to be able to articulate it in those words on camera.”

Conclusion 

The shift that drag has undergone over the past two decades is nothing short of remarkable. The success of RuPaul’s Drag Race has launched careers, businesses, and perhaps an entire industry around an artform that used to be outright illegal. To be sure, it is hard to overstate the positive influences that Drag Race and RuPaul have had on the public perception of queerness.

Yet, these developments have not been without their shortcomings. As drag and Drag Race become even more ubiquitous, we must decide whether the juice is worth the squeeze, so to speak. 

Should we be asking young performers to take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt just for a chance at fame? Are the sort of contracts that performers have to sign to compete on the show morally acceptable? Should Drag Race be praised for uplifting queer voices despite its ongoing facilitation of emotional trauma among queer community members for entertainment? 

While we may never agree on the answers to these questions, Tammie Brown echoes a sentiment that rings true regardless of your opinion on the corporatization of drag— 

“Things are being exploited— that’s for sure.”

Unfortunately, BenDeLaCreme’s experience on Drag Race is not unique. Lots of queens report this kind of emotional distress as a result of their time on Drag Race. 

Even fans fall into the trap of believing everything they see in the program as truth; Lady Bunny underscores “every other season, fans are making death threats [against participating queens] because they get caught up in the sob stories.” 

But hey, at least they can get another Emmy out of it, right?