RuPaul’s Drag Race Is the Nexus of Queer Culture

I’m always astounded that, wherever I travel and whomever I meet, if they’re a fellow queer, I can usually strike up a lively conversation by mentioning RuPaul’s Drag Race. The reality game show for drag performers just completed its 17^th regular season, with stronger than ever ratings. It is now in its 10^th season of All Stars (for repeat contestants) and has spawned franchises around the world. That global reach matters, with the show and its expanded universe serving as the connective tissue of a transnational queer culture that is flourishing.

I’ve previously written about gay as a culture, “a secret society of queer irreverence, overflowing with in-jokes and shared references,” and I think that definition is more relevant than ever as the brittle boundaries of our sexual taxonomy break down. In 2025, we are less drawn together by our sexual practices and gender identities than by a shared lexicon and an ever-expanding library of rainbow-coded culture.

Long after the words “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “transgender” become archaic (an inevitability with language), I suspect that the culture created by sexual minorities will call in new adherents attracted to its transgressive creativity—no matter their pronouns or how they get down in the bedroom. In recognition of the fact that this culture is not the exclusive property of the gays™, I will be using the term queer in this essay to describe our broad church—over which RuPaul presently reigns as pope.

Drag is queer folk theater, and it existed in the bars and on the pageant circuit long before RuPaul descended from the rafters. But like many a successful American businessperson (Elizabeth Arden, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and Dana White of the UFC come to mind), RuPaul took what was a highly localized niche pursuit and transformed it into a global (and highly profitable) phenomenon.

More significantly, she did it by creating an internationally televised showcase for the creativity, uniqueness, nerve, and talent of other drag performers. RuPaul essentially leveraged her negligible fame circa 2009 to pull other queens into the spotlight, rebranding herself as the queen of drag and creating a new class of multihyphenate celebrities in the process. Drag Race is WWE for queer people, and the show has produced its own Dwayne Johnsons and John Cenas.

I’ve been privileged to watch the cabaret careers of former contestants BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon grow from intimate evenings at the Laurie Beechman Theatre to an annual holiday show that packs thousands of fans into the Kings Theatre and other venues across America. Monsoon, the only two-time winner of Drag Race, has recently established herself as one of the most sought-after stars on Broadway: She is currently appearing in Pirates! The Penzance Musical and will take over the title role in Oh, Mary! later this summer.

Drag Race personalities Alaska Thunderfuck, Jimbo, Luxx Noir London, Jan Sport, and Jujubee made a splash off-Broadway this past season in Drag: The Musical. Nina West headlined a national tour of Hairspray. Monet X. Change is currently juggling gigs in opera, cabaret, and television (she’s on the upcoming season of The Traitors). And Nymphia Wind is about to make her New York theatrical debut, a little over a year after winning her season and giving a command performance for the president of Taiwan.

For these individual performers, Drag Race has served as a side door to fame. Queer actors, designers, and musicians who have been left off the guest list by the gatekeepers of the mainstream culture have been given a second chance to join the party thanks to the exposure Drag Race has offered them.

Of course, we’ve all heard the tiresome objections about the commercialization of queer culture, but I can think of few things more liberating for the creators of that culture than the ability to make a living off their art. Drag Race has not only enriched a handful of drag queens, it has also made the wider culture (especially the theater) richer with their presence.

But Drag Race is more than just a debut ball for new talent. I still recall my glee when Jinkx chose to portray Little Edie on her “Snatch Game” episode, or when Alaska dug even deeper into queer lore to play Mae West, an actor and playwright who risked professional ruin for her sympathetic portrayal of gay men in her 1927 play, The Drag, and whose saucy wit still holds up a century later. It was almost certainly the first time many younger viewers had ever heard of her, and I hope the performance sent them Googling—or even better, prompted a conversation with a queer elder.

That conversation is a two-way street. I know many longtime viewers refresh their drinks during the part of the show when the queens get ready for the runway, a segment that is often accompanied by an emotionally fraught or topical conversation. But it’s actually a hugely important part of the show, offering a platform for the contestants to tell their stories and touch on issue relating to family, discrimination, HIV, queer liberation, and trans identity. I’ve learned so much from this segment, which is often an opportunity for older viewers to hear from younger voices in the queer community. It’s a family meeting, and that kind of intergenerational exchange is crucial for any culture to survive and thrive.

I was somewhat stunned by the realization that Lydia B. Collins, who appeared on season 17 and is now dominating on All Stars 10, was 8 years old when the first episode of Drag Race aired. We are fast approaching a time when the bulk of the contestants (who tend to be in their 20s and early 30s) will not have known a time before Drag Race was on TV. We can certainly see the long-term influence the show has had on the level of artistry deployed on the runway, which gets more impressive each season as the newer queens learn from and improve upon the work of those who came before them. Just watch this video showing the evolution of women’s gymnastics over the last 70 years to get a sense of how we might see the art form of drag advance over a similar period of time.

We are living through a golden age of drag, and RuPaul’s Drag Race is the engine driving it. The show’s journey from its low-budget Vaseline filtered first season to its position today as a global brand producing a seemingly inexhaustible stream of content offers some lessons: First, don’t sniff at humble beginnings because it takes years to build an empire. Second, find a community that is underserved by the current offerings in the market (be it entertainment, fashion, etc.) and create something for it. Third, don’t be afraid of “selling out,” because if you’re selling you can feed yourself and continue to create art (branding and sponsorship have been a part of the Drag Race game since the beginning).

Fourth, and most crucial, never discount anyone based on their identity. While Drag Race has mostly featured gay men and trans women as contestants, the show has also included a trans man, a nonbinary lesbian, and even a heterosexual male. That diversity is likely to grow as a younger generation of contestants less precious about these legacy identities enters the competition—and that will be a good thing for the show and drag as an art form. Because the greatest lesson of Drag Race is that all culture is appropriation, reframing, remixing, and synthesis as we send what has come before through the kaleidoscope of our own wild imaginations.

RuPaul’s faithfulness to these principles has made her a particularly successful steward of queer culture, and the undisputed queen of drag. Long may she reign.