“I’m drawn to the 50s and 60s, old Hollywood,” Blair St. Clair, the latest queen to sashay away on Season 10 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, tells them. in a phone interview. “That was such a glamorized time period. But it wasn’t glamorous to live in, especially for women. It’s such a façade.”

For anyone who watched the show on Thursday night, fashion might seem like an odd topic of discussion given Blair’s heart-wrenching confession on the main stage: that her first sexual experience was being raped at a college party. That event, she said, is why she gravitates toward the dainty, pretty aesthetic at the heart of her drag.

“I feel dirty,” she said through tears on the show, after judges told her that she sometimes seemed too sweet both in her demeanor and her style choices. It was a moment that undoubtedly spoke to survivors both within and outside of the gay community, including myself. She didn’t just reveal to the world that she had been raped. She explained how it affects who she is today as well — that she has yet to put it behind her, and that she is still seeking out coping mechanisms for that trauma.

Blair’s fashion-focused drag plays its role in coping, and her revelation added a layer of complexity that many viewers, myself included, had perhaps not considered about the conventionally beautiful, glamorous Blair St. Clair, whose jarringly youthful appearance out of drag drew comments from both her fellow competitors and RuPaul. “It’s like in life,” she tells me, speaking about her aesthetic. “There’s beauty on the outside, but inside, there’s struggle. These past few months, I’ve come to that conclusion.”

When Season 10 kicked off, Blair was the last queen I thought I’d relate to. Though she too hails from a small town in flyover country (she’s from Indiana, and I’m from Oklahoma), her act seemed too Broadway, and her take on drag, while visually stunning, isn’t what I’m typically drawn to. Her sweet-as-pie personality made her a likable (if not forgettable) presence on the show, where she settled comfortably into the middle of the pack after scoring high on the first week’s outfit design challenge. But her willingness to share something so intimate on national television — not just what happened to her, but how she processes and wrestles with it — inspired an immense amount of respect, and I found myself relating all too well with what she was saying. Particularly, when she said she felt “dirty.”

It reminded me of when I first came out as gay in rural Oklahoma, and of the first party I ever went to as an out gay man, when I was 20. The host, a guy I’d never met before, told me to take my shoes off, and without my knowing he took them to his bedroom. When I tried to leave, he told me to go get my shoes. He followed me into his room, closed the door behind him and pushed me on the bed. He held me down while he forced himself on me. After a struggle, I was finally able to get away.

This event germinated in the recesses of my mind, and at the time I processed it as a mere fact of this new gay world that I didn’t yet understand — one already fraught with sexual terminology I didn’t yet know, experiences I didn’t yet have context for, and conflicting advice from my peers, some of whom, I later learned, eagerly jumped to take advantage of other young, recently-out men before they could get their bearings. I mistakenly believed these unpleasant encounters, like the one at the party, were part of some sort of tradition, necessary to better understand myself and my new identity.