“Are you asking me if I’m gay?”
“No man, nothing like that, I’ve known you too long to ask you something like that.
I mean and even if you were it’s none of my business.
Are you?”
Remember the time RuPaul went over to LL Cool J’s house to teach him about drag?
Strange as it sounds, this was an actual episode of primetime TV that aired in the mid-90s,
at a time when many people dismissed drag as a punchline.
The episode helped break down outdated rules about who’s supposed to wear what, and that’s
great -- but it also makes the drag gatekeeping that still happens today all the more frustrating.
All aboard and welcome to Matt Baume’s Culture Cruise, where we take a deep dive on queer
milestones in the entertainment we love.
This time we’re looking at RuPaul’s appearance on the show In The House, which came at a
pivotal moment for TV depictions of drag and gender roles -- a moment almost as pivotal
as the one we’re living in right now.
Culture Cruise is made possible by everyone who pledges their support on Patreon -- folks
like Jeremy Pond.
Thanks Jeremy!
I couldn’t make these videos without you -- head over to Patreon.com/mattbaume to check
out all the rewards for backers.
In the House was a family sitcom starring LL Cool J as Marion, a retired football player
who rents out some rooms in his house to a single mom and her kids.
On the episode Boyz II Men II Women, Marion’s friend Kevin comes to visit.
And although audiences at the time might not have recognized him out of drag, Kevin’s
played by RuPaul.
(You can tell that he’s trying to fit in with straight people because he’s wearing
clothes that don’t fit.)
"The look this season is clothes that don't fit correctly."
Kevin’s visiting town after some travel in Europe.
He clearly has something he wants to talk to Marion about, but he’s being a little
evasive.
“Actually, I’ve been considering a new career.”
That career, of course, is drag -- but he’s too nervous to come clean.
Marion misunderstands what Kevin’s trying to say and thinks he’s talking about buying
a nightclub, instead of performing in them, but to be fair Marion’s also a little distracted
right now.
One of the other characters, Tiffany, needs his advice -- she’s reluctant to go out
with a friend who just shaved her head.
“When we hang out together, people stare and make cracks.
I mean why can’t she just be like everyone else?”
“Look, Tiffany, your friends are your friends.
If you care about them, you live with the choices they make.”
Kevin overhears that exchange, and that gives him some encouragement.
He lines up a gig for that night and is rehearsing in what he thought was an empty house, when
Marion’s housemate Jackie makes a discovery:
[Audience cheers]
“Oh my God.”
“Too much rouge?”
Listen to how excited the audience is by this ruveal.
In part, that’s because behind the scenes, Ru had invited a bunch of drag queen friends
to the taping that night, so what you’re hearing is a bunch of drag queens cheering
in the audience.
But the audience is also probably excited to see Ru in full glamazon mode.
Her star was already on the rise when this episode aired -- two years earlier, the song
Supermodel was a huge hit, and she had started appearing everywhere in the media.
On Saturday Night Live...on Sister Sister… even on Walker Texas Ranger.
“And she’s just getting started.”
“I am poised for world domination!”
“And by the way… she is a he.”
This was happening at a pivotal time for drag in general.
In the early 90s, drag had a problem -- namely, that a lot of people had no idea what drag
was, thanks to decades of misrepresentation on TV and movies.
In decades past, if you did see a man wearing a dress, it was likely to played as a punch line
-- for example, in Some Like it Hot, or Tootsie.
The joke, such as it was, was that it was humiliating for a man to stoop so low as to
dress as a woman -- which isn’t so much a joke as just misogyny.
And on the rare occasions when you did see actual drag, it was often bizarrely
misrepresented.
I don’t know who told Murder She Wrote that this is what a drag show looks like -- an
upscale lounge where a snooty maitre d in a tux tells you that you can’t get in without
a reservation.
“Have you noticed there’s something a little strange about this place?”
For a long time, the effect of seeing men in dresses was to re-enforce gender roles.
The point was to make fun of people who didn’t conform to traditional rules -- that men must
wear suits and women must wear dresses.
People who switched up their gender presentation were often depicted as dangerous, like in
Psycho; or desperate like on Bosom Buddies, or deceitful, like on MASH.
These characters weren’t powerful, and it was seldom their choice to dress as women.
You could argue that the roles were drag, but few of them were queens.
With the possible exception of Bugs Bunny.
“Oh, Bwoonhilda, you're so wovely.”
“Yes, I know it, I can't help it.”
Now and then you’d get a more nuanced character, like Beverly LaSalle on All in the Family:
“Are you in show business?”
“Yes.
I’m a female impersonator.”
But you really didn’t get to see many powerful drag figures on TV until the 90s.
Things began to change in part because of Ru’s prominence in the media, but also because
there were a lot of other innovative artists gaining attention -- folks like Flotilla DeBarge,
Pepper LaBeija, and Lady Bunny, whose Wigstock festival was the biggest thing in drag through
the 80s and 90s.
Divine had appeared in Hairspray just a few years earlier, movies like Priscilla and Too
Wong Foo showed drag queens as powerful figures, and Paris is Burning brought ball culture
to a much a wider audience, first in the documentary itself and then in talk show appearances for
years afterwards.
This was a huge shift from the Bosom Buddies of the past -- it wasn’t just more of the
same man-in-a-dress jokes, but real drag artistry, by real drag artists.
They weren’t the butt of the joke, they were making the jokes.
So that’s the context in which Kevin reveals his new career.
But when Marion finds out what’s actually going on, he's upset and forces Kevin to defend
himself:
“I consider wearing a dress just part of my job, just like a cop wears a uniform.”
“What cop, Cagney and Lacey?”
It’s important to note that Marion’s distress isn’t about Kevin’s sexuality.
Any potential gay panic is quickly resolved:
“I’m straight.”
“I knew that man.”
“You know there are straight female impersonators, Marion.”
You could possibly read this as Kevin being closeted, but let’s take him at his word.
Because he’s right -- there ARE straight drag queens, just as there are women who do
drag, and drag kings, and nonbinary performers.
Playing with gender presentation is something that anyone can do.
Marion accepts that Kevin’s straight, but he’s still not happy.
His discomfort isn’t about Kevin’s sexuality, just his clothing.
His presentation.
The way he dresses.
Marion’s friends, on the other hand, don’t have a problem at all.
“You look wonderful.”
“Bye Kevin.
Killer shoes.”
Again, this response to a man in a dress is something new for television.
Instead of cross-dressing reinforcing gender roles, now we’re seeing that drag can actually
be a source of personal empowerment.
“Why would you pick this for a job?”
“Because it’s fun.
Because I’m my own boss.
I get to travel.
And let’s face it, I look damn good.”
Eventually Marion awkwardly says that he accepts Kevin.
But he doesn’t sound happy about it.
And even the audience doesn’t seem to know whether or not they should applaud.
“There is no issue.
You’re my friend.
We’re cool.”
“Cool.”
“You mean it?
I mean, you’re not just saying that?”
“Kevin, please, I’m starting to feel like I’m really talking to a woman.”
Kevin’s planning to make his American stage debut that night at a club, and he expects
Marion to be there to support him.
But Marion can’t bring himself to go.
“Kevin’s counting on you coming to the club tonight.”
“I’m not going.”
That’s Debbie Allen playing Marion’s friend Jackie.
In real life, Debbie’s done a lot of work for LGBTQ equality and HIV awareness -- she
produced A Different World, which was one of the first shows to acknowledge AIDS.
And her character calls Marion out as a hypocrite.
“Kevin’s the same friend he’s always been to you, whether he’s wearing pants
or a dress.”
And it’s particularly hypocritical of Marion to drop Kevin as a friend after the advice
he gave Tiffany:
“What was all that hype you were telling me about standing by your friends and accepting
the choices they make?
… Marion, maybe think about taking some of your own advice.”
Marion is essentially shamed into coming to the show.
And when he walks in, here’s what he sees --
“Dude looks like a lady…”
Marion’s obviously uncomfortable.
He keeps his distance.
When Kevin wants to pull someone up on stage from the audience, it’s not Marion but Marion’s
friend.
He’s still going to need some time to process this whole thing -- but at least he showed
up.
And afterwards, they have a talk.
“How do you walk in these things?”
“It's not that hard. It may look like a pump but it feels like a sneaker.”
That’s a jokey reference to a commercial that was running on TV at the time…
“Looks like a pump, feels like a sneaker...Looks like a pump, feels like a sneaker.”
Kevin makes Marion laugh, and in spite of the feather boa and wigs and heels, they’ve
found the groove of their old friendship again.
This last scene of the episode mirrors the first scene where we saw Marion and Kevin
together.
In both cases, they’re hanging out as friends, joking around.
But this time, instead of Kevin carrying a secret, they’re having an honest conversation
about how much they value each other.
“Well, hey, whatever works for you, it’s your thing.”
“Hey listen.
Thanks for coming tonight.
I didn’t think you were going to show for a minute there.”
“Well at first I wasn’t but then I realized if the crosstrainer was on the other foot
you’d have been there for me, so.”
When this episode aired, drag performers had their work cut out for them.
Audiences had picked up a lot of bad representation over the years, so if drag queens wanted to be
taken seriously they had to overcome that stigma and show people what drag ACTUALLY
is.
One sitcom, late night show, and police procedural at a time, Ru showed that breaking gender
roles isn’t a punchline.
It’s empowering.
But it’s also a little frustrating to look back at these roles.
Twenty years ago, Ru used her fame to dismantle the old-fashioned rules about how we’re
allowed to present ourselves.
And that’s great -- but more recently, Ru's made negative comments about women doing drag,
and about drag performers who are trans.
To the show’s credit, Drag Race has more recently included trans women.
But the fact that it was controversial, and took this long, is disappointing -- especially
in light of episodes like this, where Ru takes pride in breaking down TV’s outdated rules
about gender presentation.
Her reluctance to accept trans performers more recently feels as hypocritical as Marion’s
refusal to accept his friend.
Fortunately, attitudes about drag and gender don’t need any one performer’s blessing
in order to progress.
Just to give you a sense of how much has changed in the last few decades, take a look at
this clip that just appeared on the show Doom Patrol:
I am proud of the person I see in the mirror.
My face is beat, my look is flawless, and I am dusted from head to toe.
The only thing I am not is scared of you.”
The fact that a superhero show set in the DC universe felt comfortable giving us a drag
hero says a lot about how far TV’s come.
Entertainment used to tell us that dressing in drag was shameful and embarrassing.
But a major component of Ru’s rise to fame in the ‘90s was turning that attitude around,
and showing the world that expressing yourself authentically isn’t shameful -- it’s actually
a source of personal power.
That might seem self-evident today, but back then it was pretty revolutionary to go on
TV and tell America:
“You’re born naked and the rest is drag.”
Land ho!
We’re pulling into port.
Thanks for cruising along with us!
And thanks to everyone who makes the Culture Cruise possible with a pledge of support
on Patreon, folks like Jeremy Pond. Thanks Jeremy!
There’s some lovely rewards for backers -- head over to patreon.com/mattbaume
or click the link in the description to check out the perks.
And now if you’ll excuse me -- Ru, would you like to take this?
“And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go deal with a little boy who won’t wash
behind his ears.
This time I get to be a matador.”