The “You Better Work” Ethic and the Spirit of Drag
The “You Better Work” Ethic and the Spirit of Drag
By Nadav Wall
2008 was a tumultuous year in the United States. The stock market bottomed out, unemployment soared, and banks too big to fail did exactly that. Amidst this crisis, a sense of hope for a more just future gained political momentum. Barack Obama dethroned Hillary Clinton as the predestined Democratic presidential nominee and same-sex marriage celebrated early victories in California and Connecticut. That summer, a reality tv competition quietly pitted nine drag queens against each other, sparking a cultural phenomenon that still reverberates in queer communities across the globe today. LOGO TV, a fledgling Viacom subsidiary targeted at LGBTQ audiences, greenlit the soon-to-be canonized program: RuPaul’s Drag Race. The show was a perfect blend of widening LGBTQ acceptance, a politics of hope, and the austere fiscal policies characteristic of the late aughts. The network recognized a financial opportunity in the relatively cheap labor of drag queens who could sing, dance, act, and sew, all while barking quips and throwing shade. The show’s parallel trajectory to the U.S. economic recession and subsequent shaky recovery was no coincidence. In frugal times, who better than a drag queen to milk a dollar for all its worth?
The inaugural episode of the series challenged queens to create “drag [outfits] on a dime” made up of dollar-store items. In the years that have followed, that resourcefulness and economic prudence has been a recurring theme both on the show and in the hundreds of careers that have sprouted in its wake. The most successful queens have proven to be flexible entrepreneurial brands, hawking merchandise through nightclubs and theaters across international borders while producing an endless stream of social media content to satiate their fervent fanbases. The avenues to success in this industry, though queer in appearance, provide a compelling picture of the neoliberal virtues and capitalist logics anthropologists have identified that have proliferated in a post-recession landscape. Successful drag queens both on and off the show illustrate what Ilana Gershon calls “neoliberal agency”. They market themselves as “a bundle of traits and skills—improvable assets—that they own and manage as a business”. (Gershon 551). RuPaul embodies this tenacity and rewards contestants that follow his lead. He’s a singer, songwriter, actor, author, television and podcast host, model, producer, and now a (questionable) guru. While this entrepreneurial spirit is often satirized on the show, it’s been the winning formula for drag queens hoping to do well in the competition and have longevity in their careers.
Season 7 contestant Trixie Mattel — a country musician, makeup mogul, and comedian — on the cover of Autoharp Quarterly
“You better work!” has been the underlying political message of the show and a common refrain heard in gay nightclubs. Popularized by RuPaul in the 90’s and sung 20 years later by Britney Spears in her hit song “Work Bitch”, the phrase has soundtracked and celebrated the commodification of queer culture. Alumni of the show have found themselves in an overcrowded market, reciting protestant tropes of the privilege and desire to work, and expressing gratitude and professionalism in their career trajectories spanning from dive bars to Hollywood red carpets. For those who have managed to stay relevant in a sea of competing acts, success has been astronomical. Drag queens have gone from mimicking “executive realness” in ballrooms a la Paris is Burning (1990) to now giving sought-after management advice in Forbes Magazine. An article published in 2015 by that business magazine instructs readers to “build fan loyalty like RuPaul and America’s top drag queens”. Other industry publications have followed their lead. A queer house no longer just refers to fictive kinship, it is now something you can aspire to and read about in Architectural Digest and People, where prior contestants’ sleek cosmopolitan homes have been profiled.
Season 9 contestant Sasha Velour (bottom right) pictured with her husband and dog in their Brooklyn apartment for People
Much like drag itself, this meritocratic work ethic and its lucrative rewards turn out to be an illusion. Behind the glitz and glam of drag stardom looms a precarious existence. While contestants are encouraged to take performative risks on Drag Race and expose their emotional vulnerabilities, the real risk-taking happens before they ever step on set. Queens have confessed to spending upwards of $30,000 on designer outfits in preparation for the show. To put this figure in perspective, the winning prize in 2008 was a paltry $10,000 (before taxes). Contestants are pressured to take out loans in order to meet the increasingly unattainable fashion standards the show’s audience expects. This is a radical departure from drag’s roots, which can be traced back to marginalized queer POC, often homeless, without disposable incomes or access to a creative class of designers and stylists. Unfortunately, many of the show’s contestants are eliminated early in the competition, left with designer wardrobes never to be seen on television and staggering financial debts to be repaid.
“You are put through months and months of hell, wondering, do you have to quit your day job? Do you have to ask your parents for money? Do you have to get rid of your house? Just to get on the show and be eliminated first takes thousands and thousands of dollars and you leaving everything that ever made you comfortable behind.”
Although documentaries like Paris is Burning showed glimpses of the financial burdens of drag, the precarity those performers faced was deliberately divorced from their drag personas. Queens living in abject poverty without access to formal employment networks were celebrated for serving opulence and looking the part of an unobtainable lifestyle. However, this fantasy isn’t as seamlessly constructed by queens on Drag Race. Recent contestants have come under fire for actively self-producing themselves while filming. One popular method for making money after the show is selling t-shirts with catch-phrases that were either intentionally or unintentionally said on camera. This has resulted in strained efforts by queens to coin catch phrases before departing that can then be milked through an endless roll-out of merchandise and music videos. Some queens have even coordinated outfits and performances to reinforce these catch phrases and reduce their drag to a memorable slogan. Rather than preparing for the show with winning the crown in mind, queens now often focus their attention to a future t-shirt business to maximize profits in the small window of fame the show guarantees.
Season 10 contestant Monique Heart, pictured in a brown cow-inspired outfit, performing her song “Brown Cow Stunning” named after her popular “brown cow stunning” catch phrase.
A triumph-over-adversity storyline and a memorable sound bite shift the commodification from performance abilities to the performance of identity, which has become a necessity to make a living for queens already in debt during filming. A sympathetic personality and a knack for presenting a well-crafted backstory turn out to be the most valuable skills in a drag queen’s toolbox. Contestants have revealed in tender moments that they are HIV-positive, homeless, disabled, and battle with addiction. Others have bravely talked about being abandoned by their parents, their experiences in and out of prison, and attending sexuality conversion camps at a young age against their will. Many have remarked that through drag, they found an unshakeable confidence and hope that they did not possess beforehand. This gives a new meaning to David Harvey’s “accumulation by dispossession”. The dissolving work-life boundaries that these queens experience means that they can find surplus value in their own dispossession as marginalized queer people, so long as they have an arsenal of entertainment and marketing skills to to fold their disenfranchisement into.
Although often lauded as revolutionary queer entertainment, Drag Race does not signal a distinctive rupture from the American dream. Familiar tropes of hard work pulling people from rags to riches are abundant on the show, though coated with a palatable queer glaze for an audience that has often been betrayed by American ideals. When debating whether to eliminate a floundering contestant this season who had unsuccessfully applied for the show 11 years in a row before finally being cast, RuPaul remarked that “it would be un-American to send her home so soon”. This nexus between neoliberal agency, queer livelihoods, and American values in the shadow of a paralyzing economic recession is arguably what makes the show such a successful phenomenon.
We’re seeing a similar nexus emerge in rising presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg’s campaign, built on his traditional American military values, vague economic policies that mirror the language of private enterprise, and an alleged queer sensibility. Drag Race might not be the source of hope it started out as, but the creative adaptation to austere constraints it showcases might provide useful clues for what’s to come. Its ebullient spirit — in contrast to a ceaseless commodification of labor and intimacy — relies on a balance of humor and empowerment often missing in most anthropological analyses of neoliberalism. Paying attention to this (however misleading) hope and its contingency on precarity could broaden our understandings of how LGBTQ acceptance has been articulated through capitalist logics that produce very few winners and continue to marginalize everyone else.
References
Gershon, Ilana. “Neoliberal Agency.” Current Anthropology. 52.4 (2011): 537-555. Print.
Harvey, David. The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Huba, Jackie. “Build Fan Loyalty Like RuPaul And America’s Top Drag Queens.” Forbes Magazine
Martin, Michael. “An Exclusive Look Inside Alyssa Edwards’s Glitzy, Glittery Glam Room.” Architectural Digest, 22 Jan. 2019
Price, Lydia. “Inside Drag Race Star Sasha Velour’s Eclectic & Enchanting Brooklyn Home, Where ‘Kitsch’ Meets ‘High-Class.’ ” PEOPLE.com, 4 Mar. 2019,
YouTube “Roscoe’s RPDR S11 Viewing Party with Scarlet Envy & Sharon Needles!” (5 Apr. 2019)