By Monique
Just when you thought this season of RuPaul’s Drag race was going to continue to be boring, the show came back in the rarest of rare form with its reunion episode.
Everyone: Awww, this is RuPaul's Best Friend Race
Season 9 Reunion:#DragRace pic.twitter.com/MTrOU9z7Yz— lonely mcentire (@whatzupbarb) June 17, 2017
Thank the Drag Race Gods that the reunion and the finale have been separated, so the queens can properly get into all of the shenanigans we viewers weren’t privy to. There was so much drama, reading, and downright nastiness going on–I haven’t felt this verklempt about a reunion since…Season 2?
Let’s get into some quick takeaways from this reunion episode:
• Valentina is the new Queen of Snakes: To paraphrase someone from Twitter, Valentina has now succeeded Alaska in earning the crown and title of The Queen of Snakes. Valentina really showed her true colors right at the end of the episode when she snapped and told Farrah–who had said Valentina wasn’t a true friend to her–to “just shut up.” Her snap came on the heels of Aja and others disagreeing with her being crowned Miss Congeniality and with her lack of reining in her fans on social media.
Look, I’ll be upfront and honest and say that if there’s one character trope I love on Drag Race, it’s a good, glamorous villain. And by “glamorous,” I mean a villain who owns the fact that she’s a villain and runs with it. Phi Phi O’Hara was like that in her season (before she tried to change her stripes in All Stars 2, only to fail), Raja and The Heathers were like that in their season, Raven was like that in her season, and now Valentina has truly revealed herself to be the classic Disney villainess her Princess Realness look foreshadowed her as. Think back to that look–it was a sweet ice skatery look but had the sidekick fairy that said, “hate everyone.” Looks like that’s how Valentina is in real life, and I lowkey love it.
Maybe it’s because I’ve always had a soft spot for Veronica over Betty, but I just love a character who knows she’s terrible and is still determined to live her life and her truth, however wrong that truth may be. And isn’t that characteristic kinda at the root of why we love some of the people we love, like Naomi Campbell and Mariah Carey? They’re divas who are, in actuality, prickly, but they live the “I don’t give a f***” life we all wish we could live deep down. Valentina gave me a lot of that in this reunion. The comment about how she feels she represents something akin to Selena for her fans gave me a lot of that Mariah Carey vibe that only a diva would have.
Valentina is no Selena, let’s make no mistake about that, but I have seen from her fanbase, particularly the young, ravenous fans, that they do see her as the Selena-esque star Valentina believes herself to be. Jiggly Caliente even brought it up in one of Hey Queen‘s recent Drag Race finale videos that when she was hosting a viewing party for the episode featuring Valentina’s departure, there were Valentina stans at the bar crying as if, to paraphrase her, they were seeing Selena’s death all over again. So her core fanbase helps prop up Valentina’s vision for herself, which is to be one of the great divas of her time.
I guess my personal feelings on Valentina are this: I knew she was a cunning, smart and savvy queen. I knew she was all about perfection in her public persona. I get it and I’m quite okay with it. As Twitter user @MarioSanchezx said, Valentina is totally Eve Harrington from All About Eve–someone who puts on an “I’m just a little girl” act to get where she needs to go in life, and is ready to slyly cut anyone out of her way to get to her goal.
https://twitter.com/MarioSanchezx/status/875905563963666433
Two final things on Valentina/Villaintina–yes, she should tell her fans to cut out all their bullshit. Excuse my language, but if I complain about Beyonce never collecting her fans when they get on folks’ social media and dog them out, then I have to do the same for Valentina. If you have a fanbase and you know they’re acting out of bounds, then you, as their leader, need to get on your social media platform and tell them to cool it. Now, of course, that won’t stop everybody, but it will make enough of them cower enough, I feel, to make them stop doing as much stuff as they were doing before. When these types of fans think they’re dragging folks in someone’s honor, they’ll go to any length to defend their queen. But this also speaks to today’s fandom culture as a whole–Y’ALL NEED TO STOP HAVING FAVES. Like, have the people you like, but this “fave” nonsense? As if a person can be a perfect vessel for an idea or a concept? Y’all need to stop that. And by “y’all,” I mean “the people that believe their favorite celeb can do no wrong.” Beyonce can do just as much wrong as doggone Keyshia Cole, and Valentina can do just as much wrong as anyone else on this show. At least go into the “fave” world knowing that your fave probably is going to be a “Problematic Fave,” because at the end of the day, ain’t nan one of us perfect and we’ve all said something or done something that we are not proud of. *End of soapbox rant.*
Second, while Valentina has clearly showed her colors, I do respect that she went into this playing the game. She went into this telling herself she was going to make it to the top–she didn’t go into this to make friends, she went into this to become a star and become a star she did. Maybe if she had said this upfront, like Bianca did, none of this surprise would have happened. More than likely, Valentina will learn how to do this and incorporate it into her brand so she can seem more…realistic and less of a soap opera character functioning in real life. But I am completely at peace with the fact that she didn’t try to keep up friendships with anyone on the show. Valentina has said before in an ABC News video that she keeps drag queen as colleagues and not as best friends, so…there you go. And also, it’s not a requirement to keep up certain friendships throughout our lives, right? How close were Farrah and Valentina, anyways? I believe Farrah’s emotions, but how close were they in actual life?
• Nina Bonina Brown needs to find peace: This is not me reading Nina or shading Nina or whatever. I’m actually being quite sincere, since I’m coming from a very personal place. I know Nina’s struggle well and I know exactly how her depression and darkness has been able to feed itself. She said herself in the confessionals that she still lives at home with her parents, she’s working hard to achieve her dream and to have that dream be her full-time career, while her family would rather her work so she can support herself. Basically, it’s that her family has felt like she was chasing a dream that they felt should just be a hobby and no a full-time profession.
Plus, Nina felt like she was being constantly excluded from the drag scene, and she probably felt like that inhibited her ability to make drag a profitable career. I understand exactly what it feels like to be working towards what seems like an impossible goal while trying to find a way to support yourself and meet the societal expectations of “adulting.” I also know what it feels like to see how the hivemind works–even in spaces where you feel you should belong, there’s always the idea that you still have to follow the crowd and what they believe in order to fit in and get somewhere. Just like how it works like that in the drag scene, it works like that on social media. Anywhere, really–the high school herd mentality is something that never really leaves.
In short, I get Nina’s pain, way more than I’m going to reveal in this article. I know that when the soil is primed and fertilized with this kind of pain, only the weeds of self-doubt, paranoia, and disillusionment can grow, and those weeds are hard to kill. You can literally tell yourself, “I need to stop thinking this way,” and you’ll still go back to thinking like that seconds later. These are hard habits to kill because they are partially hard-wired into the brain because the brain itself gets used to thinking in a certain way. But that’s not to say that you can’t defeat those demons. Nina has to take it upon herself to stop letting paranoia, self-doubt, and defensiveness run her life. As someone who is working on some of those same things, I know it’s a lot easier said than done. But you are the master of your mind. Whether that means going to therapy, mediating, getting a prescription, or doing yoga, you have to find mastery over your mental habits and inner demons, because it won’t happen just because it wish it would. It takes actual hard work. Will Nina put in that work? I think so. Or, rather, I hope so, because she is so talented and amazing. She deserves to have the life she wants.
• I’m rooting for Trinity to win: I know everyone’s expecting either Shae or Sasha to win, but I’m rooting for Trinity because she, like Valentina, has been playing the game to win, but Trinity has been upfront about it. She’s also been one of the most real queens this season–she hasn’t put on a persona or a facade; she’s been the direct, yet caring queen and she’s remained as such throughout the season. Also, she’s from Birmingham, so it’d be nice to have Birmingham make it to the top of the drag world for a little while (even if she’s repping Orlando).
That’s about it–what did y’all think of the Drag Race finale? Give your opinions below!
Julian 