5 Things Drag Queens Can Teach Us About Psychological Well-Being

Several years ago, when I was asked to start watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, I was neither enthusiastic nor particularly interested. First, I never liked reality television, and secondly — I knew next to nothing about drag queens. In addition, my knowledge of pop culture is severely limited by my somewhat snobbish and elitist tastes in art and music. To cut the long story short — reluctantly, I began watching season 5. And then somewhat less reluctantly I started season 6. (One doesn’t give up one’s resistance so quickly.) And by the time Bianca Del Rio let Adore Delano borrow her waist cincher, I was already binge-watching all the seasons, and learning about waist cinchers! When Valentina sashayed away on season 9, I was as gagged as every other hardcore fan of the show.

There is a lot each of us can learn from Drag Race alumni. There are profound lessons there, about empowerment, agency, resilience, self-creation, etc. To stop myself from writing a monograph, I’ll limit this to just 5 lessons, all to do with psychological well-being. After all, that’s what us therapists are most interested in.

Lesson #1 “You were born naked and the rest is drag.”

One can read Butler, Gergen, Kelly, Foucault, Lacan, Goffman or any number of impenetrable and complicated psychological theorists to arrive at the conclusion that every drag queen already knows. Our social roles are defined by rules that society puts in place and that we silently accepted by virtue of being socialized and inducted in its specific set of values.

Drag makes us acutely aware of this fact. Justin puts on a wig and a dress made of garbage bags and becomes the adorably bizarre Alaska Thunderfuck 5000. And if you correct me and say he doesn’t become Alaska but plays Alaska, you’d be right. Only, he’s also playing Justin. Because without these different “clothes” we remain naked — without a sense of self. Justin’s advantage is that he’s aware that there are several roles that he can play and he chose to invent one that suits him well.

To use an example from a different context — when I am a psychotherapist, I have a specific set of rules that regulate a range of behaviors, from the way I dress to what I am allowed to say and how. While I do psychotherapy, this comes as naturally as anything else, even though there is nothing natural at all about being a psychotherapist — all of it is taught in schools and rules were established and somewhat changed over time. When I change my clothes, and go to the beach, I behave very differently and it’s also quite natural and spontaneous. The difference between this and drag is only that drag is visually more radical. But in essence, we are all equally naked and we drag ourselves up for different roles every day.

Drag persona is not fake, unless all our identities are fake. A lot of work is put into creating a drag persona. To become “the only high-class Russian whore”, Katya (well — Екатерина Петро́вна Замоло́дчикова — and yes, I can pronounce that correctly) Brian McCook had to learn Russian, learn how to pronounce it correctly and then how to mispronounce English with the Russian accent. I can’t even begin to imagine what it takes to create an alter ego like Tammy Brown, Sharon Needles or even Raja, the impossibly fashionable season 3 winner.

Seeing identities as different forms of drag that we wear opens a number of possibilities. It sends us a strong message that we don’t have to be what we are and that we can become something else. We can pick and choose and customize social roles and our personal desires and come up with the weird, bizarre, loveable, appealing or appalling personas. And we can wear them for as long as they fit, and when they don’t, we can change them again. This brings us to point 2.

Lesson #2 “It’s not personal, it’s drag.”

Because I am not who I think I am, there is no need to be overly attached to the way I see myself. Drag is infused with irony. A drag queen is an ironist in the way Richard Rorty defined the term — as someone who has learned the first lesson, that our identities are contingent, incomplete and constructed by social and/or personal values; even if we live them, we don’t have to be enslaved by them.

There is great emancipatory power in drag because it sends the message that it’s not personal. As paradoxical as it sounds — life becomes much easier once we don’t take our personality as personally. As I’ve already said, this opens up a very creative space for change, because it gives us permission to create ourselves. It does, however, send yet another message — if you don’t take your identity personally, then criticism of it isn’t personal either.

Lesson #3 “Unless they gonna pay your bills, pay them bitches no mind.”

Our society has become incredibly sensitive. It is, of course, good to be kind and compassionate and to try not to offend people on purpose, but sometimes we tend to take this to extremes. If you manage to follow all the outrage happening all the time about (well…) everything, you can’t help but wonder, how did we get to the point where so many things offend us and scare us and hurt us so deeply?

Drag has an amazingly effective cure for that, hidden in lesson 2. We don’t always have to take criticism personally because it’s not personal — it’s drag. In the world that is becoming increasingly vulnerable, drag is a breath of fresh air. RuPaul’s Drag Race is filled with truly incredible stories of resilience and strength, narratives about people not allowing criticism to hold them down, not allowing themselves to become victims of ignorance and bigotry. Drag is wonderfully unapologetic. In the words of the wise Alaska: “We’d be happy to take your complaints after the show at the corner of fuck you and go fuck yourself avenue dot com, I’ll see you there!”

This lesson comes from RuPaul’s mother. And it is a simple lesson — you are the one who gives people the power to validate or invalidate you. It’s up to you to take that power away from them. Not everyone’s criticism can be equally important.

Lesson#4 “Brenda, shut the fuck up!”

When Katya was a guest on RuPaul’s podcast at the end of All Stars 2, she described how she overcame her crippling anxiety problems that very well cost her the victory on season 7. First, she named the critical voice in her head — Brenda. When Brenda showed up to scare her and make her doubt herself and feel anxious, she simply told her — “Brenda, shut the fuck up!” I don’t know if Katya ever dabbled in narrative psychotherapy or personal construct psychotherapy, but if she did, she’d recognize this technique as many therapists use it daily, only under a slightly more pretentious name “externalization of problems”.

Katya didn’t stop there. She then introduced Karl into her inner psychological world. Karl’s support and kindness counterbalanced Brenda’s castrating harshness. Brenda’s voice wasn’t the only voice anymore, and Brenda’s perspective wasn’t the only perspective. When you have a competition of ideas, the best one will win. And moreover, when you have a polyphony of voices, they are all individually less important, less personal… more drag. 

Lesson #5 “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

And in the end, the most important lesson of all, one that RuPaul repeats at the end of every episode, pretty much like a mantra. It touches on a very human point, one that seems pointless to even intellectualize, one that is so simple that it’s self-explanatory.

I know by now you’re scared this blog will never end. Well, it ends here with the words of RuPaul herself — Can I get an amen up in here?