“A Way to Sell Your Records”: Pop Stardom and the Politics of Drag Professionalization on RuPaul’s Drag Race

Abstract

RuPaul’s Drag Race (Logo TV, 2009–present) tethers drag culture to pop stardom by structuring challenges around host RuPaul’s recording career and eliminations around lip sync contests that promote guest judges’ music. By its fourth season, it began substantially rewarding contestants for using pop music to showcase their own branding and musical skills. By analyzing the program and its surrounding industry discourse, this article identifies a Season 4 infomercial challenge promoting RuPaul’s catalogue as a turning point in the program’s relationship to pop music due to its winner’s ascent as a recording artist. As a result, many white and light-skinned cast members were far better able to mount their own recording careers after appearing on the program than their counterparts of color. Thus, this article argues that Drag Race uses the recording industry as a site for contestants’ professionalization that reinforces pop music’s and reality programming’s entrenched neoliberalism and post-racial politics.