“The reality-television competition that began nine years ago has evolved to reflect an era fixated on gender and identity — and the boundary-pushing spirit of its star [RuPaul Charles].Drag has been featured in popular culture for decades. Movies like ‘Kinky Boots,’ ‘Tootsie,’ ‘The Birdcage’ — even ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ — have showcased men, some gay, some not, who dress and perform as women. But most tended to treat drag as high jinks. Nothing about the inner lives of queens has hit critical mass quite like ‘Drag Race’… But Charles belongs to a different generation, one that fought so hard for visibility that they feel they’ve earned the right to eschew all political decorum and enjoy the anarchy of reinvention…” J. Wortham, the New York Times

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Excerpt: Is RuPaul’s Drag Race the Most Radical Show on TV? by Jenna Wortham, The New York Times

“When ‘Drag Race’ first began, it seemed like a fun window into an underground culture, but over the nine years it has aired, the show has evolved to reflect America’s changing relationship to queer rights and acceptance.

Drag, to Charles, is about the perversion of our understanding of gender, and by extension, ourselves. ‘We queens take on identity, and it is always a social statement,’ Charles explained to me. ‘It’s all nudge, nudge, wink, wink. We never believe this is who we are. That is why drag is a revolution, because we’re mocking identity. We’re mocking everyone.’

Anyone familiar with reality television will recognize the premise of ‘Drag Race’: Loosely modeled on ‘America’s Next Top Model,’ hosted by Tyra Banks, the show features 12 (or so) contestants who gather to compete for the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar and a cash prize that varies per season but can be as much as $100,000. To determine who will advance to the next round, the queens are given elaborate challenges, like creating haute-couture runway looks from scratch or starring in music videos.

‘Drag Race’ is entertaining in the way that every show that structures itself around transformation is: There’s a pleasant thrill that comes from watching a bland room metamorphose into something out of Architectural Digest, or the creation of an impossibly elaborate meal in under an hour, or a generic-looking man morphing into a gorgeous and statuesque woman.

At first, “Drag Race” wasn’t an easy sell. Even when Viacom’s L.G.B.T. channel, LogoTV, picked it up, Charles had to fight to realize his vision for the show…Each season is imbued with a sense of optimism in the face of relentless adversity; Charles believes that is central to the gay and queer experience. ‘There is a sisterhood here,’ he told me. ‘It has to do with the shared experience of being outsiders and making a path for ourselves.’

Amid the glitz and glamour of drag, the show doesn’t obscure the violence and terror that accompanies the life of the marginalized. On the first season, a contestant named Porkchop described being shot at while standing outside a gay bar… Trinity K Bonet talked about living with H.I.V. When I asked Charles if there was a deliberate decision to infuse the show with overt political messaging, he shook his head.

‘It’s inherent in our experience. We don’t have to do much to infuse a consciousness into the show. It is such a part of our story, and we walk with it.’ That awakening feels familiar to him because he went through it himself at 13. He looked like a girl, with sharp cheekbones, a soft brow…

He saw his first drag performance: Crystal LaBeija, an icon in drag-queen history, was singing Donna Summer in black fishnets and a bustier. Charles was floored. He drafted the first iteration of his new persona, blending the new-wave punk aesthetic of Bow Wow Wow, the goth freakiness of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’…all finished with a pile of hair whose volume rivaled Tina Turner’s.

He started bands, made music videos with friends, appeared on public-access variety shows and worked as a go-go dancer. He papered downtown Atlanta with handmade posters of himself that read, ‘RuPaul Is Everything,’ and ‘RuPaul Is Red Hot.’.. ‘Since “Drag Race’ first aired in 2009, the conversation around identity and gender has shifted tremendously.

For all the show has done to challenge its audience’s notions of masculinity and femininity, it has shied away, until the most recent season, from any serious discussion about the ways the drag community intersects the trans one. There have been trans queens on the show, but the topic is a touchy one in the drag community.

The centerpiece of the show is the contestants’ transforming themselves into queens, and then, after each competition, taking off their wigs and removing synthetic breasts to reappear as men…In 2015, Charles and World of Wonder created RuPaul’s DragCon, a multiday convention about all things drag. Charles had mentioned to me it several times — he is nothing if not media-savvy — as the future of his empire and a way to widen the culture of drag beyond a television show and nighttime acts.”