With all of its clownery and buffoonery, RuPaul's Drag Race really can bring people—and families—together. A recent Reddit post by a concerned father showed just how powerful LGBTQ media can be.
When his 15-year-old son began throwing around phrases like "the shade" and "gagging," this single dad was worried his kid was quite literally choking. But when he found an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race paused on his son's Netflix, he began to piece the puzzle together.
He promptly took to the RuPaul's Drag Race subreddit to ask some of the show's biggest fans how he should approach the topic with his closeted son.
"Hey guys/gals
Okay so I’m a single parent of two amazing boys (4 year old and 15 year old).
My 15 year old has a tough time at school, being shy and having a stutter.
I was cleaning up his room while he was in the shower and I need this show (rupaul) was paused on Netflix. He has been using different kind of phrases like 'the shade' and 'I’m gagging' (that one worried me at first). I googled the shade and found it was a drag term but I didn’t understand it.
Is there any advice you can give me? I won’t embarrass him and start quoting the show but when he said he was 'gagging' I had no idea how to react. I would like to know how to react. I was hoping I could get a crash course on this sort of chat.
Any tips would be awesome and any stories or general advice would help.
I’m sure he is gay too for other reasons.
TL;DR single dad looking for help on rupaul chat for my son who isn’t out."
Drag Race fans rallied around the dad and applauded him for wanting to be there for his son.
"Give him space and let him grow but always reassure him that you’ll be there him because it’s so easy to convince yourself that nobody loves you," replied one commenter. "I wish you luck."
Wholesome Daddy replied, "That's sweet of you. I just really want to know how to react when he shouts 'shade,' but I'll be sure to assure him regardless."
Another user chimed in, "You react by hollering back, 'The shade! The shade of it all!' in your best Latrice Royale voice."
Sound advice!
Fans educated Wholesome Daddy on a few Drag Race cornerstones, the herstory of drag in cinema, and he even got around to dragging Monet X Change for her not-so-obvious sponge look.
"I wish I could adopt you all haha," he wrote in one of the later comments.
Now that's what we call parenting!
