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Victoria Scone On Why RuPaul Should Stop Leaving Drag Kings Out
"It brings variety to performance as well as the fact that everyone deserves a seat at the table."
Drag culture is thriving with more drag-centric shows than ever gracing tv screens across the world, but there is still one group that is noticeably absent from this supposedly inclusive art form — drag kings.
In recent years, RuPaul’s Drag Race has begun welcoming drag queens who were assigned female at birth (AFAB), but have yet to make drag king’s a part of the show
Drag Race UK star Victoria Scone, who was the first AFAB queen to appear on any of the show’s franchises, spoke out in a recent Digital Spy interview about the lack of diversity.
"Diversity is just always going to be a plus in every sense,” she told the publication. ‘It brings variety to performance as well as the fact that everyone deserves a seat at the table, regardless of what gender you happen to be assigned at birth.”
Scone, who appeared on Drag Race UK season three, and made the top four on Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. The World, opened the door for more AFAB queens to be a part of the drag juggernaut and also broke ground by becoming the first queen to perform as a drag king, a decision that won her that week's challenge.
“I did a drag king look on Canada Vs the World so obviously that's something I'm very passionate about – getting drag kings on Drag Race,” she said in the interview. “I just don't know why it's taken so long at this point to be honest. I would really love to see it. There's absolutely, in my opinion, no reason why they couldn't be. I think it would give the show a lovely little shake up and keep it fresh.”
Scone says it’s also shortsighted to not welcome drag kings onto the show with open arms because it’s “blocking out a big chunk of the queer community that watch the show.”
Since appearing on Drag Race UK there has only been one other AFAB performer to grace the stage of any of the shows in the franchise — Clover Bish on Drag Race España — and although Scone performed as a drag king in a single episode, a true drag king has still yet to be on any of the Drag Race shows across the globe.
“I was just doing it to prove a point and it did alright, it won that week,” she explained. “So, there we go. There's no more reason not to have them on there.”
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
