Earlier this week, I was rewatching episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 6 as I was sick and didn’t really have anything better to do. When I was watching the third episode of the spin-off show, Untucked, one of the queens, Darienne Lake, expressed fear that she wouldn’t be able to find a nice man, but one of the other queens, a thin, skinny, blonde one called Courtney Act reassured her that she could. That didn’t bother me, but a few episodes later, another queen, Adore Delano, who is quite young, said that she was afraid she had a “hog body”. Courtney was there again, saying that it didn’t matter if Adore had a hog body, because she just needed to have confidence in herself. While Courtney’s statement was surely appreciated by Darienne and Adore (who really shouldn’t be worrying about anything, because she’s only slightly thicker than Courtney), I couldn’t help feeling annoyed. Courtney’s body type, being skinny and tiny, is so privileged by society that she shouldn’t really be talking about having confidence: she has confidence by default because everybody loves her body type. She has no struggles [ed: I’m sorry, I thought this was fucking obvious. She HAS NO STRUGGLES WITH FAT. Not now, anyway.], so her reassurances mean nothing.

Thin privilege is believing that you’re helping others even though you don’t have any basis to do so.

Mod comment:

Do not even get me started about that show. Awesome, drag queens should totally have shows about them. They do not need to be transphobic, misogynist and fatphobic.

-MG