RuPaul's Drag Race legends Bob the Drag Queen and Peppermint had a kiki to talk about racism among the show's fandom in an enlightening new video.
The queens are out of drag and speak candidly about their experiences with racism after the show and navigating through the sometimes toxic fandom. Bob has spoken about the topic before but most recently, some fans took issue with Bob appearing on Celebrity Drag Race for the second time.
Over the course of the hour-long chat, the duo takes a deep dive into the fandom's favoritism of white queens on platforms like Instagram and double standards when it comes to favorites—and villains.
"It's implicit bias," Bob points out, comparing Gigi Goode's (now) 578k followers to Jaida Essence Hall's 275k. Both Season 12 girls are slim, smart, hilarious, and fashionable queens who have comparable records so far, but have clearly received different levels of engagement from fans.
Bob and Pep also discuss the bullying of Season 12 queen Brita off social media altogether. Brita has deleted her Twitter and Instagram accounts after receiving an onslaught of hate for her Drag Race run. Bob specifically cited an email to Brita that read, "If I see you on the subway, I won't hesitate to push you in front of a train."
Bob believes it's racialized. All the fandom sees is this big person of color bullying a white queen, in this case Aiden Zane, and "jumps on them." The sentiment aligns with the fandom's harsh judgments on other queens like Roxxxy Andrews, The Vixen, and Phi Phi O'Hara over the years. And oftentimes, white queens who say similar things get away with it without consequence. Take Alyssa Edwards reading Jade Jolie for filth in Season 5 or Morgan McMichaels dragging Mystique in Season 2 for example.
"They love it, they became memes!" Peppermint chimes in. "All people get some hate...people were coming for [Alyssa], but never in the way that it seemed like it was an attempt to push her over the edge."
It's a powerful conversation among the two friends, and things get emotional when they discuss the video-recorded murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black Georgia man whose violent death went viral this past week.
Watch Bob & Peppermint's full chat below.
