Interview: The RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Cast Are America’s Real-Life Superheroes — See Photos

It’s not the glittering constitution oregon towering hairsbreadth that begets specified fear. It’s the radical who payment from the empowerment of the glitz and the glam. “When Dustin Hoffman does [drag in Tootsie], nary 1 says anything. When Tyler Perry does it, nary 1 says anything. When Martin Lawrence is successful drag, cipher says anything,” says Naysha Lopez of Drag Race’s eighth season. As Jaymes Mansfield from play 9 elaborates, “That was seen arsenic halfway harmless entertainment. But the 2nd it’s queer, it's a problem.”

Things similar an eye shadiness palette oregon a tin of hairspray mightiness beryllium mundane items to some, but erstwhile utilized successful the discourse of drag, they transportation a powerfulness from wrong that cannot beryllium contained. “Once you enactment connected the wigs, the lashes, the nails, and the heels, the insecure idiosyncratic you were retired of drag, that idiosyncratic nary longer exists wrong you,” explains Kandy Muse, play 13’s runner-up. “You become, really, a superhero. It's an otherworldly feeling.”

For play 13 Miss Congeniality LaLa Ri, it’s the mendacious lashes that propulsion it each together. “When I popular connected my lash, honey, I'm conscionable the eventual superwoman successful the world,” she says. “It conscionable makes maine consciousness similar I tin bash anything.” Heidi N Closet, play 12’s Miss Congeniality, finds spot successful embracing the civilization of Black women. “[My drag] is astir being a beardown Black pistillate successful a satellite that wants to enactment you astatine the bottommost of the totem pole,” she explains. “So I emotion to explicit my civilization and my hair. I love a bully braid. I emotion a bully Afro. Ooh, I emotion an Afro.”