‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Matters Now More Than Ever

If you would’ve told me in 2009 that RuPaul’s Drag Race was going to be one of the most popular reality programs of all time in 2023, I might’ve laughed in your face. The show where drag queens competing for a cash prize had to work even harder to show off their makeup skills through a Vaseline-smeared lens? The series where a ladder once lingered suspiciously in the foreground of a shot, like a leggy sixth contestant? That Drag Race?

Don’t get me wrong, of course. Anyone watching the early seasons of Drag Race knew it was a deliciously campy dish, even from the very start. But could such a small, seemingly niche competition show last? After all, reality television was so polished back then! Who can forget the poise and panache displayed in other shows that debuted the same year, like Jersey Shore, NYC Prep, and Paris Hilton’s British Best Friend?

But last, it did. Unlike those other shows, which have either faded into obscurist Twitter jokes or spun off far from their humble boardwalk beginnings, RuPaul’s Drag Race had a secret weapon no other show has been able to mimic: Pure, unfettered, queer determination. What made Drag Race such a phenomenon was the amount of sheer talent on display in every frame; what was once underground blossomed on-screen. Even when queens didn’t live up to the judges’ expectations, viewers couldn’t help but admire their courage and artistry. The show encouraged people not only to live out loud, but to live period.

Despite growing in leaps and bounds, with millions of dollars poured into it and 239 franchises across the world running at all times, Drag Race is still just as important as it was back then. Some of us (including the beautiful and talented writer you’re reading right now) have criticized the ways that the franchise has commodified a radical queer art form in recent seasons. But today, exactly two years after the insurrection and amid a terrifying push from alt-right groups to label queer people—particularly drag queens—child groomers, those criticisms pause. Tonight, let Drag Race be anywhere and everywhere.

You see my friends, it’s an international holiday: The season premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the original recipe. Season 15, to be exact. (“Turns out that 15 isn’t just the number of years that Bianca Del Rio has left on earth,” I say at the Roast Challenge, to no laughs and a shady rattlesnake sound effect.)

And to celebrate the big one-five, Drag Race has prepped its biggest season ever. Sixteen16 new queens are walking into the workroom in this year’s jam-packed, two-part premiere. And with more strong personalities than ever dominating the workroom, we’re being served several scoops of sweet, sweet uber-gay drama.

[Spoilers for the Season 15 premiere follow]

The queens are divided into two groups to kick things off, with tensions flaring right out the gate as Irene Dubois and Luxx Noir London greet each other and immediately tiff about whether or not Luxx’s wig is really 40 inches of human hair. (Spoiler alert: It is, she is very tall, and Irene is shit-stirrer.) Irene and Luxx are quickly followed by Aura Mayari, the self-professed trade of the season. We know that she’s the “best looking” because she flexes her biceps compulsively in every confessional to the point that I believed she was going to check her underarms for lumps like I do in fits of manic anxiety.

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Marcia Marcia Marcia—aka Antoni Porowski in drag—enters next. Despite being a walking kitsch reference, she’s somehow not annoying. Following Marcia are Anetra, Malaysia Babydoll Foxx, and Princess Poppy. Every year, the queens’ names get either longer or stranger, and this year is no exception. Finally, we’re treated to Sasha Colby, drag royalty and drag mother to Season 14’s Kerri Colby. And that’s not the only family dynasty in the room, but more on that in a moment.

Already, it’s clear that the overarching storyline for the season will be the competition between more experienced, older queens and the younger queens who got their start on social media. But before a wig can be pulled or a six-inch acrylic can be stabbed through anyone’s padding, a familiar face arrives. Look over there! Season 6’s Vivacious? No, it’s Ariana Grande, holding a replica of Ornacia up with her inhumanely strong ponytail.

Once the queens have a moment to fangirl, RuPaul enters the room, looking superimposed in every scene as always. Ru reveals that the cash prize has been upped for the second year in a row, to $200,000 smackers. With enough money for a lifetime supply of Got2Be Glued dangling above them, the queens are shuffled outside to create the mini-challenge from Season 1, where they’re hosed down for a photo shoot. Irene wins the challenge, and the girls are once again shuffled to the main stage where they’ll practice choreography for the customary season premiere maxi-challenge talent show.

The producers scamper back to the workroom to pull a quick cleanup. Suddenly, eight more queens arrive and I get carpal tunnel trying to take notes. The first into the room is Salina EsTitties, who I assume was named after her grandmother. The second queen is Amethyst, who begins her tenure by mentioning her TikTok virality—remember, social media queen controversies are afoot! Jax, who is just about as short as her name, is third. Fourth is Loosey LaDuca, who I’ve decided has my favorite name ever only when it’s said by RuPaul.

And then, they start pouring through the door. Mistress Isabelle Brooks, an instantly endearing and outspoken Texan big girl; Robin Fierce, the third Connecticut queen of this season; and Sugar and Spice, two ditzy Bratz doll twins to cap off the cast. It’s when the second group of queens are introduced that Season 15 then hinges itself to two gimmicks: The twins, and the fact that Robin Fierce and Amethyst used to do the dirty back on the docks in Connecticut. Yes, somehow, it took Drag Race 15 seasons to find two queer men who had dated and get them on the same season.

After Loosey LaDuca wins a quick photo shoot mini-challenge of their own, the two groups of queens cross paths and are immediately forced to choreograph a dance number. From here, it’s business as usual, including most of the talent show maxi-challenge. Ninety percent of the queens opted for some kind of lip-syncing (of course), with performances ranging from disappointing to completely gag-worthy.

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The best performances of the night were courtesy of Mistress Isabelle, whose titties bounced separately from her body; Marcia Marcia Marcia, who humped a photo of The Hilarious Ross Matthews; Sasha Colby, who escaped a straitjacket to The Cranberries; and Jax, who jump-roped with her own damn hair. But no one was more impressive than Anetra (“Six letters, three vowels), who duck-walked so hard I could estimate the cost of her future titanium kneecaps, and broke not one but two boards with her body.

The first week’s typical, “Show Us Who You Are” runway was a bit of a dud, with only a handful of memorable looks from Luxx Noir, Marcia, and Sasha Colby. Seeing who these girls are is always nice, but what we really want to see is how they adhere to a strict theme. And aside from their novelty factor, twins Sugar and Spice failed to make any major impression on the main stage or the runway. That is, if you don’t count Ru spotting Spice’s high-hemmed dress and saying, “Fashion alert! Fuzzy slits.”

Anetra, her shattered kneecaps, and the splinters in her hand won the talent show challenge. And despite winning the first mini-challenge, Irene Dubois fell into the bottom two after failing to make a tutorial on concocting ice water funny. Imagine that! Amethyst, whose one-note, one-joke talent show performance landed her next to Irene, looked set to give a bombastic, high-energy performance of Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings.”

Turns out, neither Amethyst nor Irene had much in them, and the first lip sync of the season was disappointingly tepid. A cut to Malaysia in a confessional saying, “It’s a close one!” summed it up. A close one because both performances were dull. Lacking was the fight that I would’ve wanted to see from two queens who just got there and could have it all stripped away so soon. But in the end, Amethyst won and will stay another week.

Despite a flat lip sync, RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 is off to a well-oiled start. The fun thing about the show—whether you like it or not—is that it’s still finding ways to challenge our perceptions of the definition of drag. In Season 14, the franchise welcomed its first-ever straight contestant. This year? A few baby queens who do drag almost exclusively on TikTok and have never performed. Most of the seasoned queens would consider performance to be an integral part of “real” drag—the kind that puts yourself out in the world at risk of danger, spitting in its face and stepping a heel on its carotid artery.

How those two forces push against each other for the rest of the season will surely provide both scintillating drama and enough conversation to push the art even further. As Mistress Isabelle Brooks so plainly put it when talking about her lack of automatic reverence for the younger look queens, “You have to earn my sisterhood.”

But the best part of Drag Race is still good old grandpa Ru, who is consistently delivering hilarious one-liners and even more gut-busting infectious cackles. Surely, everyone will be looking to the queens to deliver the next three months of Twitter memes. But it's Ru winkingly saying that the queens need to work on something for their “big, juicy opening” that is so perfectly disgusting, totally brazen, and ridiculously queer that it’s hard to imagine there was any time when this show was not the ultimate comfort food.

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