We have recorded our history and contribution to the culture through music, and with this list we acknowledge and remember the forerunners that have made possible the positive changes we’ve seen over the decades. And like Jasmine Masters, Shangela foregrounds entrepreneurialism in a way that’s a world away from pre-internet drag in its explicitly anti-capitalist and marginal modes.How does a song become a gay anthem? Like the LGBTQ+ community itself, our soundtrack is vast and diverse. The song fetishes hard work and tenacity. The significance of the term is vividly captured in fan favourite Shangela’s song Werqin’ Girl, a braggadocio track in which she boasts about her status as a paid professional. In a Drag Con (the Drag Race fan convention) panel titled “The Business of Drag”, Latrice Royale makes clear that, today, “Drag is not a hobby, it’s a career.” This claim marks a radical departure from the pre-internet drag and highlights the imperative of “work” – or, as they say in LGBTQ+ culture, “werq” – in today’s drag culture. Many have prolific careers that include touring, YouTube series, film and television roles, book publishing and even music. ![]() Other Drag Race alumni have spun their social media popularity into offline success. Despite performing poorly on both of her seasons, she remains a fan favourite largely through the virality of memes produced from her YouTube channel. Masters has in fact mastered the use of social media to self-brand. You are a brand from that point, you know, so you have to treat yourself as a market, as a business. Once you’re on, you are a reality celebrity. For instance, Jasmine Masters (S7 and All Stars S3) has said: Moreover, Drag Race contestants frame their social media participation through the discourse of entrepreneurial self-branding. There are also frequent debates about whether contestants are “social media queens”, who exist solely online, or are “stage queens”. In more recent seasons, the size of online followings is a constant topic of discussion. RuPaul routinely directs viewers to “participate” in the programme through hashtags, and audiences are encouraged to support their favourite finalist similarly. A professionalised social media presence is all but compulsory for Drag Race contestants. It is in this space that Drag Race emerged. With this, drag and internet culture became dominated by entrepreneurialism. ![]() Instead, it offered vibrant spaces for self-expression and information sharing, from early bulletin board systems to the eclecticism of personal webpages.īut the turn of the 21st century saw the emergence of now-familiar brand names like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and the extractive economic models that turned these sites into big money-makers. ![]() ![]() Like drag, the early world wide web was not initially regarded as a means to a career. The drag balls (a competition scene where people, often drag queens, perform different drag genres and categories) portrayed in these productions offered temporary respite from the cultural and economic exclusion queens faced outside queer spaces. Other queens – like those in the arthouse documentary Paris Is Burning (1990) and Ryan Murphy’s television series Pose (2018-19) – similarly operated on capitalism’s margins.
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