Pageantry has been an important part of the drag community ever since the Stonewall era in the 1970s. These pageants, based on the beauty pageants made for cisgender women, allow drag queens and transgender women to compete for titles. There are illustrious pageants like Miss Gay America, Miss Continental, and Miss Gay USofA, as well as hundreds (if not thousands) of smaller, more localized pageants. To discount a queen on Drag Race because she’s “just another pageant queen” would be to discount one of the oldest and most respectable drag traditions.

Drag pageants are quite a spectacle (I definitely encourage you to go to one if you’ve never been). There are wigs styled for the gods, larger than life personalities, breathtaking gowns, and more elaborate lip sync performances than you’ll ever find at a bar or club. The fact that pageant queens are dismissed on Drag Race as uncreative, closed-minded, and too competitive is asinine considering that pageants include a wide variety of drag styles and some of the most creative lip sync numbers in the world. Furthermore, Drag Race itself is a competition, not unlike a pageant, so a little competitive spirit isn’t exactly a bad thing to have.

In fact, Drag Race is basically just one big, televised pageant. While competing in a national pageant like Miss Gay USA or Miss Continental used to be one of the best ways to make your name known in drag, now all a queen has to do is get on Drag Race and she’s got it made. Past contestants like Jasmine Masters and Thorgy Thor have been very vocal about how RuPaul's Drag Race has royally fucked up drag. Jasmine released a video explaining that she only applied to Drag Race in the first place to get a pay raise because she was sick and tired of seeing local queens get on Drag Race then demand more money when they return. As Thorgy summed up, "RuPaul's Drag Race has sort of killed drag for queens who are not on the show.” Perhaps the producers of Drag Race purposely demonize pageant queens in order to make sure Drag Race serves as the only way for queens to get national recognition even though pageants have been around for much longer than eight years.