Michelle Visage is now hosting Drag Race Down Under. It’s a milestone for cis women in drag
- Written by Yves Rees, Senior Lecturer in History, La Trobe University
Drag Race Down Under is back for a fourth season, only this time something is different. The Australasian franchise is no longer helmed by the eponymous RuPaul. Instead, this season the main judge and host is RuPaul’s long-term “best Judy” Michelle Visage, a woman from New Jersey who came to fame in the late 1980s as a member of dance-pop group Seduction.
Visage has worked as a panellist and judge on all US variations of Drag Race since 2011, and on the UK and “Down Under” (Australia-New Zealand) spinoffs.
On Down Under, Visage has now become the authority who determines who sashays and who stays in the fierce contest between ten queens.
This promotion has significance far beyond Visage’s own career. Importantly, it has prompted debate in drag communities that brings to light tensions across queer gender politics, and also reveals shifts in drag culture – for which Drag Race’s huge global popularity is largely responsible.
The mother of queens
On one hand, Visage’s elevation to host can be seen as a milestone for cisgender women in the world of drag, a culture long dominated by cisgender gay men such as RuPaul himself.
Along with the rising mainstream profile of drag over recent years, a growing number of cis women have identified and performed as drag queens (a category sometimes called “bioqueens”).
In 2021, UK Drag Race contestant Victoria Scone made headlines as the first cis woman to compete on a Drag Race franchise.
More recently, runaway pop sensation Chappell Roan – famous for elaborate costumes and makeup – has claimed the mantle of drag queen. Cis women have also performed as drag kings for decades, though “kinging” remains comparatively marginal and under-resourced.
Visage taking the reins is something categorically different: a position of power and authority within the drag world conferred by no less than RuPaul, the world’s preeminent drag artist.
It’s one thing for a cis woman to self-identify as a drag artist; it is quite another to be anointed as a drag gatekeeper by the individual who almost single-handedly brought this queer artform to the mainstream.
Although notoriously reluctant to allow trans women to compete in Drag Race, RuPaul has no qualms about extending queendom to Visage. In the foreword to Visage’s 2015 memoir The Diva Rules, RuPaul wrote Visage “knows the world of drag (she’s a drag queen herself)”.
Not so long ago, cisgender heterosexual women in gay culture were often dismissed as “fag hags”, a sometimes misogynistic (and also homophobic) label that reduced them to mere hangers-on.
Now, Visage is in the spotlight. The season’s blocking, editing, wardrobe and dialogue all position Visage as direct successor and equal to RuPaul.
There can be no doubt: on Drag Race Down Under, this cis woman is now the mother of all queens.
More than an ally
Since Visage was announced as host, Drag Race fandom has been alight with debate, with many concluding Visage lacks necessary credentials.
Online disputes among Drag Race fans flared on Reddit, asking if “they couldn’t find an Aussie?” and questioning whether Visage could legitimately be considered a drag queen herself.
Most conspicuously, Willam – a US Drag Race celebrity alum – was indignant “a drag ally is the host of a drag show”.
On the podcast Race Chaser, Willam said:
Why would you have someone who is not a drag queen hosting a drag show? […] It’s like someone who is coeliac hosting a baking competition.
But Willam seems to have missed some new developments, as well as certain histories, in drag culture.
Visage and RuPaul first met in New York’s ballroom scene, a subculture established in the mid-20th century by Black and Latinx queers, especially trans women (or “femme queens”) in response to racism in white-dominated drag spaces.
In ballroom, individuals are adopted into Houses, who then compete in categories such as “Vogue” (a dance style inspired by fashion modelling) or “Face” (a beauty category that focuses on the contestant’s face) at regular balls. Ballroom and drag are not synonymous, but ballroom has been a strong influence on contemporary drag culture and Drag Race.
Visage entered the ballroom world in the late 1980s, adopted into the House of Magnifique, becoming a top vogue dancer. As she said in her memoir, she was a “wild drag child”.
As a white, cisgender heterosexual woman, Visage was an outlier in ballroom but, nonetheless, the community became her “surrogate family”. During these years Visage created her drag persona. Born and raised as Michelle Shupack, she changed her named to Visage (French for “face”) after winning the Face category at many balls.
Drag and ballroom were once necessarily peripheral. They were spaces marginalised queer people carved out for themselves where they could celebrate, empower and compete, setting their own rules.
Yet, in the past decade, the global Drag Race phenomenon and social expansions of gender categories have changed how people engage with these previously underground subcultures.
All drag is valid
In this new drag-world order, Visage can ascend to a rightful place as a bona fide drag queen – a status she claims with “drag queen” tattooed on her upper thigh.
For Visage, all genders have equal claim to the artform:
I think that trans women do drag just like biological women do drag, just like trans men do drag […] all drag is valid, and all drag is welcome.
As the drag artist Michelle Visage, her name has become synonymous with a distinctive aesthetic: leopard print, exaggerated make-up, big hair, long nails and (until recently) artificial DD breasts – a high-camp nod to her New Jersey roots.
Michelle Visage’s elevation to Drag Race Down Under host is a milestone for cis women in drag.
Stan
“This is my shield, my superhero costume,” Visage explains. “When I put on my makeup, my drag, I feel like I can take on the world.”
She may not yet have conquered the world, but this queen has certainly conquered Drag Race, forging a new frontier for cis women in drag culture.
Authors: Yves Rees, Senior Lecturer in History, La Trobe University
