Drag Race UK star Ginny Lemon thinks show started out ‘misogynistic’ and ‘cookie-cutter’
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star Ginny Lemon. (BBC)
Drag Race UK star Ginny Lemon has said the competition was “misogynistic” and “pedestrian” before more diversity was introduced.
Ginny Lemon went down in infamy after eliminating themself from the competition, becoming the first queen ever to walk out of a lip-sync.
Speaking on FUBAR radio’s Access All Areas, the drag queen addressed the iconic moment, and said: “I went in there to break the binary, to be myself and to f**k it up!
“It was getting so pedestrian, so boring, and, you know, it needed to be shaken up and stood on its arse.
“And that was part of my job as a drag performer to do.”
With Drag Race UK the “main platform for drag, hands-down”, Ginny said it was important that there was now “a diversity of the people and type of performers coming onto the show”.
“It’s taken itself a little while, but you know, it’s letting all of us on now, which I think is absolutely amazing,” they added.
Before season two of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, Ginny Lemon said there was “such a generic form of drag that was kind of being represented on that show”.
“It was basically, you know, hip pads, tits, contour, this and that, going for a very hyper-feminine female illusion, which is, you know, frankly quite outdated in 2021, it’s quite misogynistic,” they said.
“I just didn’t want to see these kind of cookie-cutter drag queens that I was seeing, you know.
“I wanted some queer art, not just people prancing around and having a laugh. I mean, that’s all great and well done, but there are some truly talented performers out there who haven’t got that platform.
“As queer people, what else do we have apart from Drag Race to cling onto, and to kind of perform with? You know, what do we have?”
Ginny Lemon added that after their on-screen chat with Bimini Bon Boulash about their non-binary identities, they had a “huge positive reaction” from the public who appreciated them “being myself, f**king the system and living my life”.
