Here we are again...Arise.... for the next crowned Queen...Vanessa Van Cartier, the latest queen to win the crown of Drag Race Holland... and yet again, another trans female to follow Sonique as a winner, and about high time these trans sistas get their due. Vanessa has long been very well known and is usually pretty stiff competition if you follow the drag pageant system. Vanessa is truly one of a kind. As a transgender drag queen and performer, Vanessa is the only queen from Europe to win and hold the title of Miss World Continental, where she beat out the world's most popular and talented queens when it was held in Chicago, and then getting placed on the second season of RuPauls Drag Race Holland, where she pretty much ate up the competition without as much as breaking a sweat. No small feat, as the season had some of the stiffest competition yet for one cast. And About damn time these trans queen are allowed to compete. As I have said before, drag is drag.
We must remember that just a short few years ago, one of the preeminent drag queens in the world expressed his resistance to trans woman participating in Drag Race because when it's not cis men doing it, "drag loses it's sense of danger" And Ru added a trans woman have a "up" by taking hormones, which to him are nothing more then "performance-enhancing drugs." Don't get this wrong though. RuPaul knows that drag queens and trans sisters are and were part of same club and night scene. Ru never had anything against our trans sisters, but I think just had the old fashioned thinking of drag shows were just for cis males competing. Even some of the queens recently like Dahlia Sin and Adian Zane had issue with trans queens competing. Since many seasons have ended, there have been many queens who went on the transition, many more then most know, most notably recently is the fabulous Gigi Goode. But it wasn't till the last season that a fully trans queen finally got on, in the form of Gottmik. Ru has since opened the flood gates. Over the past decade with the show's success, Drag Con events, and festivals like Bushwig, drag is experiencing yet another sort of renaissance. Drag queens have become interchangeably our self help gurus and seasonal look books, and make up tutorial how- to's. "Who's your favorite drag queen" is the new "What's your astrological sign" you ask me.
So it's high time trans can compete. Trans people have had to differentiate and distance themselves from drag queens, asserting that their identities are entrant and permanent, This distancing has come with good reason considering the historic prevalence of transmisogyny with in drag spaces. Where do trans find themselves today: they are burdened with the task of always proving themselves, of the real in a society drunk on the myth of it's own naturalness. In a world where ideology masquerades as biology, they have to convince the doctors, the feminists and the partners and parents they they are real in order to be recognized, let alone respected. These trans performers have just as much right to perform drag as cis men. It blows my mind that as drag queens who have also had it hard with being rejected by members of the community, that no one would date because their considered to "fem" that they wouldn't accept a trans person doing drag. It is all art after all! So I take my hat off and roll out the welcome mat for our trans sisters and brothers to bring their best drag personas.. So I condragulate Vanessa Van Cartier and Sonique on their crowning's.
FAB.U .LOUS!!!
She just may be the funniest queen on the show since Bianca Del Rio. The hilarity ensued already in the first half hour, where she had RuPaul already in hysterics.
