Hi Ugly! It’s me Bussy and welcome back to Hot or Rot! Can you believe it. We’re
already back in the Netherlands less than one year after the first season of Drag Race
Holland premeried. Girl miss Envy Peru barely snatched her crown and there’s already ten
new queens chasing after her to claim it. Nonetheless, I am excited for this season.
The cast looks amazing. So, today we’re going to be reviewing the premiere of Drag
Race Holland Season 2 and tackling the tough question presented during the episode: Do
trans queens have an unfair advantage on Rupaul’s Drag Race? One of those contestants seems
to think so. But before we get into that, let’s firstly discuss some of the general
HOT changes that they have made to the franchise. Firstly, by the grace of God herself, they
made the decision to get rid of the Christmas tinsel that was plaguing the workroom and
mainstage of this franchise. They sent her right back to party city where she belongs!
And our queens are competing for 15,000 euros this time around instead of that dress. And
finally the HOTTEST change that they have made thus far - Fred has one of the best drag
glow ups that I have ever witnessed. But as you all know with every set of hots there
also some be some rots and, that’s just on Newton’s Third Law of Drag. The thing
that really killed me in the first Season of Drag Race Holland was that Rupaul kept
making these little pop-up green-screen cameos to announce workroom challenges and runway
categories. “Category is, who’s your queen.” Unfortunately, that is also happening in this
season, this time with Rupaul blasting off I guess through space? Like girl what is that?
I just feel like it kinda cheapens the production and discounts Fred’s authority. And another
thing that’s a little bit of a rot is that the casting seems strangely nepotistic. There
are 5 queens out of the 10 in this season all from the same drag house. But I truly
don’t know if that’s because the drag scene is so small that almost every queen
is related to another queen somehow, or if it’s because certain queens are shaking
hands behind closed doors. But don't get me wrong, those are small gripes. This cast is
super talented and the premiere gave us a LOT: entrances, a talent show AND a runway.
And I’ll be hitting on the highlights from those at the end of this video, but first
let’s get into the thick of today’s video topic. When I sat down to watch this premiere,
I was super thrilled to learn a trans woman had been cast on this season. Her name is
Vanessa Van Cartier and she turns out to be one of Envy Peru’s drag mothers. But the
last thing I expected was to be confronted with the rather stale narrative that trans
queens have some kind of unfair advantage over cis male queens on Rupaul’s Drag Race.
And interestingly this storyline was being spearheaded by a queen named Tabitha who as
it turns out is the other drag mother of Envy Peru. Tabitha’s main assertion concerning
Vanessa and her transness on drag race is that her being there is not really fair because
she has what she says is a “head start” when getting into drag. But why are we in
2021 still trying to assert the idea that transness and Drag Race are incompatible?
Probably because mother Ru herself reinforced this argument back in 2018 in an interview
she did with the Guardian. Let’s revisit that shall we? And buckle up cuz it’s a
bumpy ride. So in that interview, Ru was being asked a series of questions concerning Peppermint,
transness, Drag Race and drag in general. It went something like this. Interviewer:
“If transgender women must be identified as female, how can they also be men dressing
up as women?” Rupaul: “Well, I don’t like to call drag wearing women’s clothes.
If you look around this room (and he gestures around the hotel lobby), she’s wearing a
shirt with jeans. We’re wearing clothes that are hyperfeminine that represent our
culture’s synthetic idea of femininity.” Interviewer: “Would Rupaul allow a biological
woman to compete on the show?” Rupaul: “Drag loses its sense of danger and its sense of
irony once it’s not men doing it, because at its core it's a social statement and a
big f-you to male-dominated culture.” Interviewer: “So how can a transgender woman be a drag
queen?” Rupaul: “Mmmm, that’s an interesting area. Peppermint didn’t get b[___] implants
until after she left our show; she was identifying as a woman but she hadn’t really transitioned.”
Interviewer: “Would Rupaul accept a contestant who had transitioned?” Rupaul: “Probably
not. You can identify as a woman and say you’re transitioning, but it changes once you start
changing your body.” Oof. And before we go any further here, I do want to quickly
clarify my stance. Personally, I believe all drag is valid. That includes kings, queens
and nonbinary royalty inbetween. And I also want to assert that transness can not and
should not ever be measured based on the amount of physical change that someone has undergone
with their body. Now, back to that interview. Needless to say, this rocked the drag community's
boat. And the next day, alumni from the show were sounding off on twitter left and right.
Gia Gunn tweeted: “Although I do feel the separation from being a drag queen and now
a trans woman, there should not be any reason to be not accepted when it comes to the art
of drag. You should be judged based on your art, not your gender identity.” Sasha Velour
tweeted: “My drag was born in a community full of trans women, trans men, and gender
non-conforming folks doing drag. That’s the real world of drag, like it or not.”
And Peppermint tweeted a series of emojis with frowny faces, sad faces and a zipper
face. Rupaul saw all of this happening and then doubled down on Twitter the next day.
He tweeted: “You can take performance-enhancing d[___] and still be an athlete, just not in
the olympics.” Later he seemingly realized his mistakes and tweeted this: “In the 10
years we’ve been casting Drag Race, the only thing we’ve ever screen for is charisma,
uniqueness, nerve and talent. And that will never change.” Which wasn’t exactly an
apology but was apparently an attempt to smooth things over - with one problem. Attached to
that tweet was a picture of the trains flag. You heard me right, the trains flag - not
the trans flag, but a digital image of an artwork by Ellsworth Kelly called “The Train
Landscape”. Most regrettable Rupaul tweets for $500 please. And the next day Rupaul tweeted
this: “Each morning I pray to set aside everything I think I know so I may have an
open mind and a new experience. I understand and regret the hurt I have caused. The trans
community are heroes of our shared LGBTQ movement. You are my teachers.” And following all
of this we have seen the return of trans queens from the franchise including Gia Gunn on All
Stars 4 and Kylie Sonique Love on All Stars 6. So has Rupaul changed his mind about trans
people doing drag? I don’t know. But at least the show is making efforts to be more
inclusive today. And my point of rehashing this story is not to paint Rupaul as some
big, bad transphobic meanie, but rather to point out that if all of that had never happened,
we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion right now. Because while watching this premiere
I couldn’t help but notice Tabitha’s analogy of Vanessa being an aqua person in a swim
race was strikingly similar to Rupaul’s tweet about doing performance-enhancing d[___]
and competing in the olympics. And I’ve already told you my general opinion on drag,
but I think the problem is that statement was never actually walked back by Ru. And
the question in some people’s minds remains - do trans people have some sort of unfair
advantage over cis male or even nonbinary queens in the competition? So let’s try
to reason through and definitively answer that question. The reasoning of Tabitha’s
argument as given in the show is that Vanessa does not have to shave, put on a b[___] plate,
or as Keta Minaj adds in a confessional, tuck. Let’s say shaving might take 10 minutes,
tucking might take 5 and sliding your head through a b[___] plate might take all of what
60 seconds. But to be generous to the Ru’s and Tabitha’s lets go ahead and round that
up to an even 20 because let's say our fictional trans queen here also has something like lip
injections that make applying makeup easier. So sure maybe a trans queen can save 20 minutes
getting into drag but the advantage ends there. Because 20 minutes saved putting on drag is
not going to make any queen regardless of gender a better seamstress in a design challenge,
more fashionable on the runway, funnier in snatch game, a better singer for song Ru-mixes,
a better performer in a lip sync, a better actor in acting challenges. You get my point.
The crazy thing is that Drag Race actually already does an excellent job of leveling
the playing field in their sense ironically making it the perfect place for queens of
all genders to compete. And it never has been a competition that examines presented femininity
as the qualifier of who should and shouldn't’ progress to the next round. And I’d also
like to point out that these arguments completely fall apart when you look at who’s actually
competing on Rupaul’s Drag Race. There are plenty of cis male or nonbinary queens that
have these unfair advantages described by the Ru’s and Tabitha’s. Many of these
queens laser their faces to avoid shaving, shave their eyebrows to avoid guling them
down, get lip injections, don’t wear b[___] plates at all. And I’d also like to flip
this argument on to people like Ru and Tabitha who have bald heads. Is it not an unfair advantage
that they can just slip their wigs right on with room for plenty of wigs underneath when
a trans woman might have a full head of hair that she has to stuff under that very same
wig. Point being prep time and prep steps do not a good drag queen make. At the end
of the day the only thing that people at home care about is charisma, uniqueness, nerve
and talent and those qualities have no gender. What is that Ru always says you’re born
naked and the rest is drag. So I can confidently say no - trans queens do not have an unfair
advantage when competing on Rupaul’s Drag Race. But I do have a little conspiracy theory
for you all. I suspect this topic was actually brought up to spark discussion exactly like
we’re having here on this video. Remember what I said earlier about Tabitha and Vanessa
being co-drag mothers of Envy Peru? Like they're friends, sisters, in the same drag family.
It doesn't make any sense that Tabitha would be discrediting Vanessa’s drag on a national
platform. Unless of course they saw an opportunity to develop a storyline and create some drama
because storylines and drama mean what? Screen time. And what do I have to back this up?
Well we know their relationship is good because Vanessa did a Q&A on her instagram several
weeks ago that said this: “Tabitha is my sister in crime. I love her. She is the one
that gave birth to Envy. I educated her. Tabitha is the best.” And in fact I think what they
have done is actually kind of brilliant. They’ve created a safe space through which they can
discuss this tough topic and hopefully break down negative stereotypes. I predict that
within a couple of episodes Tabitha will get to show her growth realizing that trans queens
don’t have an unfair advantage, and at the same time Vanessa gets to share her story
about being a trans woman doing drag. But that’s just my little conspiracy theory.
Let me know what y’all are thinking about all of this down in the comments below.
Now let’s break down the rest of this episode top and bottom style. Top and bottom style.
Derp derp derp. My top three HOTTEST entrance looks go to Keta Minaj who’s giving me spooky
pirates of the caribbean demented clown seawitch realness, Vivaldi who is I think giving a
nod here to Crystal Methyd’s reveal look back from Season 12 and Vanessa Van Cartier.
It’s very like latex Chanel [____] who works as a flight attendant on the flight straight
to h[__]. And my ROTS go to Tabitha, Reggy B and Juicy Couture. And considering that
talent show I will say it seemed a little bit rushed like maybe everyone didn’t have
quite enough time to practice their talents, but I did enjoy it overall because we got
to see a huge diverse array of talents and learn a little bit more about each of these
queens. My HOTTEST three performances are from Love Masisi who sang an original song.
I think her stage presence was one of the best among the entire cast and the song itself
was beautiful, and My Little Puny who did like a choreographed pole routine and Keta
Minaj who did a magic dancing choreographed routine. My least favorite talents came from
Tabitha whose salsa dancing looked really fresh like she just kinda felt uncomfortable
on the stage and Reggy B who did like a b[___] track number. The song itself didn’t sound
like it was produced very well and the overall performance just fell really flat for me.
And my least favorite of the whole bunch - Juicy Couture's. I will say her song actually sounded
good, better than Reggy’s in my opinion, but her stage presence was so so lacking,
and to her credit it is because it was literally the first time she had ever performed so yeah,
she deserves credit for that and kudos to her but at the end of the day it doesn’t
really matter if it’s the first or thousandth time you’ve performed, you’re competing
on Rupaul’s Drag Race and her performance just didn’t hold up to what her drag sisters
did that night. And finally let’s break down some of those runways. The runway category
was night life extravaganza. My hottest three looks go to Keta Minaj, My Little Puny and
Vanessa Van Cartier. And I have exactly two rots to hand out. The first goes to Tabitha
who is covered in b[____]. She done already b[___] herseses. Girl I don't know what is
going on here. The second goes to Ivy-Elyse and oh my god. This is “um child” one
of the worst looks to ever curse the stage of Rupaul’s Drag Race and I do not say that
lightly. Like girl what is going on here. She’s giving me super mario brothers little
fire flower mixed with Pikmin wearing a diaper. And Keta Minaj ends up taking the win this
episode - surprise surprise. She brought it every single time she was on the screen - entrance,
talent and runway. She really is a keta mina[____] of talent I guess you could say. And our bottom
two queens are Reggy B and Juicy Couture who honestly both put up one h[___] of a lip sync.
I was like oh there we go miss Juicy there’s that fire and passion that we needed in your
main talent show performance. She had it she just didn't know how to show it until it was
too late. And the judges end up keeping Reggy B here which I think makes sense overall because
she is more experienced in general and Juicy just felt underwater before the competition
even started. And if you want to catch my full reaction to this episode you can watch
that over on my Patreon at patreon.com/bussyqueen. That’s my members-only website where my
patron family gets access to exclusive videos, early access to my main channel youtube videos,
access to the Bussy Queen discord server and more. And finally as for my hottest HOT in
the talent show I choose Keta Minaj. I also asked my patrons to vote for their hottest
hot and they’ve also chosen Keta Minaj. My hottest HOT on the runway also goes to
Keta Minaj and my patrons voted for Vanessa Van Cartier. As always I want to say thank
you for watching this video and give a special shout out to Pablo Beltran Salva , Barrett
and Toddy Polido who've all just joined my Patreon at the HOT tier. And
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Queen Collector tier. See y'all later. Love ya, Bye!