Fourteen years in, and RuPaul’s Drag Race continues to surprise. Hot off of crowning its youngest winner ever (Krystal Versace on Drag Race UK) in a season featuring the franchise’s first cis woman, the flagship American series announced its Season 14 cast last week with a notable first of its own.
Maddy Morphosis, a self-described “camp queen” from Arkansas, will be the first straight cis man to compete on any RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise when Season 14 kicks off in January.
The casting decision was met with skepticism from many queer fans—with some underscoring the fact that the show has yet to feature a drag king.
Others defended it, pointing out that there is a long history of straight folks cross-dressing and engaging in drag.
I don’t doubt the long history of straight folks engaging in drag culture. And I also don’t doubt that Maddy Morphosis is a talented queen who deserves an opportunity to showcase her art on the biggest stage possible.
But this decision signals changes to Drag Race the TV show, a show that rose to fame for its frank, open and specific depictions of queer culture. Casting a straight cis man changes the baseline, and marks another step away from its niche queer roots and towards something else entirely.
But looking at Drag Race’s herstory, we shouldn’t be too surprised.
The evolution of Drag Race
With 13 American seasons and dozens of spin-offs and tie-ins around the world, RuPaul’s Drag Race is no longer a scrappy, gel-filtered, poorly produced underdog. It’s now an entertainment behemoth with films, global tours, fan conventions, endless merch and name recognition well beyond gay bars. Trixie Mattel is making over motels. Symone has been featured in Vogue. Taylor Swift cast a bunch of former Drag Race contestants in the video for “You Need to Calm Down.” There’s a RuPaul holiday movie. People have Gottmik tattoos. And my mom not only knows what Drag Race is, but has her own list of favourite queens (she loves Bob the Drag Queen).
It’s already a fundamentally different show—especially in the case of the American seasons—than it was when it first premiered on Logo TV in 2009. Back then, the grand prize was $20,000, an ad campaign and a photo spread in Paper Magazine. Now, beyond the $100,000 prize for the American franchise, former contestants have walked the Oscar red carpet, starred in blockbuster movies and made yearly appearances at DragCon; viewing parties at straight bars attract throngs of attendees; kids are growing up aspiring to be on the show—just look at Krystal Versace, the 20-year-old winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 3, who was eight years old when the first season of Drag Race aired and was doing drag herself by the age of 13.
Is Drag Race objectively better now with more money, a bigger platform and a slew of Emmys under its belt? The show is certainly different. Its fanbase has gotten measurably younger, whiter and more female over the years, as legions of straight teen girls have embraced Trixie and Katya or flocked to Shangela shows.
And while Drag Race has become more mainstream, it’s important to note that it’s still taken the show an embarrassingly long time to properly reflect trans sides of drag. Many trans contestants from earlier seasons have spoken out about being mistreated by production, whether that was being asked to put off gender-affirming surgery until after their time on the show or being told to stay quiet about being openly trans.
RuPaul faced backlash in 2018 after an interview where he argued that drag only works when it’s men dressing as women, and when he tweeted, “You can take performance enhancing drugs and still be an athlete, just not in the Olympics,” in apparent reference to trans people competing on the show. And of course, there was that time he memorably tweeted out a “trains” flag when trying to apologize for his comments and affirm his support of trans rights.
It’s only recently that the show started making progress when it comes to supporting trans and non-binary contestants—this year, in particular. On Drag Race UK Season 2, Ginny Lemon and Bimini Bon Boulash had a candid and emotional conversation about being non-binary. That was followed by Gottmik’s participation as the show’s first trans man in Season 13 and Kylie Sonique Love’s triumphant All Stars 6 appearance as the first openly trans winner of an American edition. But that progress is still inches in the grand scheme of things.
The fact it took that long for the franchise to celebrate trans representation—despite repeated calls from the drag community to do so—is demonstrative of a franchise uncertain of what it wants to be. It’s also beyond wild that amidst its growth the show has barely acknowledged the existence of drag kings, and has never cast a masculine-of-centre drag performer. (Not to mention the fact that certain iterations, like Drag Race UK and Drag Race Down Under, also have bad track records when it comes to casting BIPOC performers.)
Maddy Morphosis’ impact
And that brings us back to the straight man in the room. Like Gottmik and Kylie Sonqiue Love in the U.S. and Victoria Scone on Drag Race UK (a lesbian who was the first cis woman to appear on any of the franchises), Maddy Morphosis is another notable first in the show’s recent run, whose casting has dominated the news cycle around Season 14.
But she’s openly acknowledged that her situation is different than someone like Gottmik or even Victoria Scone.
“I’m not here to show the world that ‘straight guys can do drag,’” she wrote in a social media statement responding to the backlash. “For anyone saying that I’m representing an underrepresented group, I appreciate you, but straight men are not a persecuted and excluded group in the drag community.”
That self-awareness is reassuring, as is Maddy’s acknowledgement of the challenges actually faced by trans, BIPOC and AFAB queens in the drag community.
I don’t dispute that drag can be for everybody, and I think most other fans skeptical of the casting don’t either. As the LGBTQ2S+ community has come to better understand the fluidity of gender and sexually, it’s far from my place—especially as a non-binary person who thrives in shifting between gendered perceptions—to gatekeep what people of certain genders or orientations can and can’t do, especially for something as experimental and creative and individual as drag. And Maddy Morphosis is not the issue, either. From first impressions, she seems to be a passionate artist with deep connections in her local drag scene.
Rather, my skepticism and a lot of skepticism in the fanbase, comes from a well-earned mistrust of Drag Race the TV show.
Like any reality TV program, Drag Race is a production. Storylines are crafted, narratives are drawn and from casting to filming to editing, the team creates a product for consumption. For many years, that product was deeply, wonderfully gay, rife with innuendos and horniness and the “we’re all queer here” mentality. But in recent years, it’s shifted in various ways, for better and for worse, towards making drag accessible to straight audiences. That shift has grown the franchise and its message of self-love and empowerment.
We can already see production at work in the clips chosen for Maddy Morphosis’s intro video.
And similarly, in the full cast promo, where she’s labelled as a “wildcard.”
The show is already leaning into this unique moment to highlight the performer’s heterosexuality as something that’s storyline worthy. Taking into account the show’s history, the worries that I and many other fans have are twofold.
First, a lot of us have concerns about how Maddy Morphosis’ straightness will be handled in the world of the show. RuPaul—and by extension, Drag Race—has a bit of a messy and self-congratulatory streak when it comes to making a big deal out of how “progressive” the show is. In the few Drag Race UK episodes she appeared on before having to exit after a knee injury, Victoria Scone was showered with praise and commentary on not just her work, but the show’s work in casting her. And in reverse, trans contestants like Kylie and Gottmik have been praised for their “bravery” and for “living their truth,” but with little acknowledgement from Ru of their transness or the show’s history of excluding or mistreating trans contestants.
So will Season 14 be the season of “drag is for everyone”? Will we get a RuPaul speech about Maddy Morphosis’ bravery for coming into a queer space as a straight man? Will we get mirror moments focusing on Maddy Morphosis’ heterosexuality? Given the show’s record of amping up its “firsts,” I think it’s fair to worry that airtime focused on Drag Race’s first straight male contestant will take away from the stories of queer and trans contestants that we’ve come to know and love from Drag Race (by no fault of Maddy’s).
And second, there are things Drag Race just can’t do in the same way with the presence of an openly straight cis man. Take the episode of Canada’s Drag Race that aired the same night the Season 14 cast was announced: the show took the usual makeover challenge and turned it into a heartfelt moment of queer community as the contestants made over queer and trans teens for prom. Each queen bonded with their teen in a uniquely queer way, whether it was Icesis Couture giving her number to her teen with a promise that she’ll “never feel alone again” or Pythia and her teen Clover bonding over being non-binary and subsequently showing that shared experience on the runway.
Those moments may still be there, but salacious jokes about the pit crew, flirtatious references to the “trade” of the season and other aspects of gay sexuality will read differently with a straight contestant. And this fear is grounded in the fact that the show has already moved away from more sexual content.
Back in 2019, even before a straight queen entered the fray, Xtra’s Drag Race herstorian Kevin O’Keefe acknowledged a shift away from the more sexually explicit side of gay culture on the show, with the elimination of the glory hole-esque puppets challenge and some of the more sexual jokes.
“Drag Race needs to get gay again, and not just in the sunny, positive, family-friendly fashion it is now,” he wrote. “A Drag Race that embraces a subtle joke about a glory hole is the Drag Race us queers fell in love with all those years ago.”
It’s safe to assume that casting a straight cis man could mean less glory hole jokes, not more, going forward.
That’s not to say there won’t be positives from having a person who doesn’t have deep roots in a certain aspect of queer culture in the room. Victoria Scone had several great quips from her lesbian experience on Drag Race UK when the topic of having sex with men was brought up. And on Canada’s Drag Race, having some of the non-binary queens educate an elder gay man (Kimora Amour) about they/them pronouns created a wonderful moment of allyship and learning.
But queer people rightfully distrust changes to our valued queer-only spaces. Gay bars have long been invaded by straight, cis bachelorette parties to the detriment of queer folks in the room. Even RuPaul himself called it out on a podcast appearance in 2017.
“People who live in the mainstream and the status quo think that everyone else is there to serve them,” he said. “They think: ‘Oh, you must be here to make me look good. That’s what gay guys are right? You’re an accessory for my straight life.’”
Queer-only spaces are a rare and dying breed—especially in a pandemic world where gay bars are struggling to survive. But these are some of the only spaces we can make those bawdy jokes in a space of like-minded folks without fear of persecution or judgment.
The rules of those kinds of jokes can change when a straight cis man is in the room.
The future of Drag Race
So where does that leave us and Drag Race? Like any piece of popular media, Drag Race has changed as it’s grown. It was changing long before Maddy Morphosis was cast, but bringing a straight person directly into the fold solidifies that change more than ever before.
Those of us who long for the return of the puppet challenge and glory hole jokes are probably going to be disappointed by Drag Race’s continued evolution. That’s not what this show is about anymore, just the same as it’s not about homemade outfits or cis men dressing as women anymore.
This is a show that will “yas queen” Nancy Pelosi while refusing to acknowledge the existence of drag kings; it’s a show that systematically harmed trans women for years before rushing through a wave of acceptance and progress in a single calendar year; and it’s a franchise that still has a terrible record in how it treats Black queens.
It’s also a show whose popularity has made it easier for a generation of queer kids to talk about queerness with their family, and one that’s bred a generation of new drag performers. It’s a show your mom probably watches because she loves the outfits, and your gay friends watch because we’re culturally obliged to at this point (even if we do just make “RuPaul is fracking” jokes throughout).
Whether we like it or not, RuPaul’s Drag Race is a lot of things to a lot of people, but it can’t be everything to everyone.
Now, it’s a show with a straight drag queen. That’s probably going to change some things—it would be naive to think it won’t. if we truly value the show as a queer-only space, maybe Drag Race isn’t for us anymore.
Why you can trust Xtra
