I'll admit, I've always loved drag queens. It may be the least "high-minded" and stuffy-nosed of performance art, but at least it's goddamned entertaining. I can't remember any significant period of my life when I wasn't enchanted and delighted by these trampy-campy gender clowns (to tap another branch of popular performance art oft afforded about as much respect as drag queens).
All the same, I love very few things more than to grab a few drinks at Godfrey's in Richmond and watch the girls rock it pretty hard for an ordinary Wednesday evening. It relieves a pretty and intelligent little working girl like me, constantly bitten and hounded by the tacit social demand to apply a full face of whore paint every morning to serve pancakes to a horde of usually jovial rednecks, to see the mask of adornment that defines classic "femininity" taken up by men in masquerade. It reminds me what is costume and what is play.
And now for the show. As far as daytime dribble makeover/amateur sing-and-dance bits go, this is exquisitely fuck-the-important-novel-I-was-reading-glued-to-the-couch-trash entertainment. The show centers around Ru Paul, the "academic dean," so to speak, of Drag U, and some choice picks from the two seasons of Ru Paul's Drag Race. Fans will remember Raven (personal favorite), Jujubee, Pandora Boxx, Morgan MacMichaels, Ongina, and that Flores fellow. She's a fellow of Drag U, right? Each episode the reigning queens compete to affect the most dramatic transformation in some dour hetero-female hausfrau, motorcycle enthusiast, grad student, whatever. A very distinct melange of superb bitchiness ensues.
So whether you skim by on youtube and resolve quickly never to watch an entire episode or fall in love with the wide-eyed and rhythymless pupils of Drag U, I leave you with this to ponder: If you're going to watch trash T. V. at all, why not pull out all the stops?
