Gia Gunn Postponed Gender-Affirming Surgery for All Stars

Gia Gunn’s run on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 4 was rocky at best, and now the fan favorite is revealing that she postponed having gender-affirming surgery in order to appear on the show.

“Good drag is expensive, and anything that you’re going to show on HD television, you’ve got to pay for it,” Gunn recalled during an interview on pop culture podcast Lemon. “It is very expensive to be sickening.”

Gunn split viewers when she appeared on the fourth installment of All Stars. While many celebrated the inclusion of a transgender drag queen and Gunn’s endlessly memeable asides, she created plenty of tension with fellow competitors like Farrah Moan. Since the show aired, Gunn has revealed that she had an unaired confrontation with RuPaul and claimed she was only cast to “clean up somebody's mess” following the host’s comments to The Guardian about not allowing trans queens to compete on the show.

“When that article came out, I wasn’t on All Stars yet,” she said. “It wasn’t until after that, that people had decided, ‘OK, we better support trans [queens].’”

While Gunn said Ru’s comments were “unfortunate,” she’s glad to know where he stands. “It’s like, OK, this is how you feel, thanks for letting us know. Because now it’s not this big myth, now it’s actually being said by mother herself, in her own words.”

Of her confrontation with RuPaul, Gunn said that she “was not having the best day that day and I was kind of looking for her to be more supportive in the moment and I just didn’t feel that from her.” She added, “I felt a very cold sense of being shut down, and not really any compassion. That made me feel sad, unheard, and unseen.”

Gunn felt that being brought on the show for the sake of diversity rather than an acknowledgement of her transformation “was hurtful.” She continued, “[RuPaul] can comment on Valentina’s pants and how far Trinity’s come with her acting, but, like, what about me, mother? I’ve done so much self-discovering and I’m a brand new person! B**ch what? I spent all this money to come on your show, and you can’t even look me in the eyes and say something genuine? That sucks.”

Ultimately, Gunn feels that she was “used by the show” and that RuPaul has “sold out,” claiming that the world’s most famous drag queen “doesn’t really care [about] much anymore, other than her paycheck.”

Listen to Gunn’s full interview below, because there’s plenty more tea where that came from.

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