This profile is part of Queerty’s 2023 Out For Good series, recognizing public figures who’ve had the courage to come out and make a difference in the past year.
Name: Adore Delano, 34
Bio: Adore Delano is a drag performer and singer-songwriter. She first captured the hearts of millions when she appeared on American Idol at the age of 16 in 2008.
Two years later, she swapped microphones for wigs and heels when she joined the Season 6 cast of RuPaul’s Drag Race. There, she made it to fourth place before getting eliminated – amassing a following who simply ahem, adored her likability, humor, and attempts to make even Party City look chic.
She came back for season 2 of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, eventually leaving the show for personal reasons.
Coming out: In late July, the Drag Race alum revealed via an Instagram video that she is transgender – an announcement that was instantly celebrated by fellow Drag Racers Jinx Monsoon, Kornbread and Willow Pill, actresses Selma Blair and Maisie Williams, and more.
“I wanted to let everybody know that I am transitioning, and I kept it really hush-hush the first three months because I wanted to go through the beginning stages of the puberty privately,” Delano said in the video. “I’ve found that it’s been very enlightening and has made me probably the happiest I’ve ever been in my adult life.”
In the video, Delano shares how getting sober helped her come to terms with her identity.
“I feel beautiful,” she said. “This is a feeling from dysphoria to euphoria.”
Delano first came out as bisexual at the age of 13, then gay.
In high school, Delano felt she was “in a completely different body that was not my own,” so she lived her life as a girl all through high school.
Then American Idol came along in 2008 – forcing her to choose between her identity and her career.
“I suppressed everything. I threw it away. I burned it. I tried to reinvent myself. It’s something that I’m really good at doing as a Scorpio rising, but I reinvented myself into something that was so uncomfortable,” Delano said. “It was almost like a sacrifice in order to get what I wanted career wise.”
Delano continued to put up her shield when she first appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2010.
“Looking back at old videos, you can see the glimmer in my eyes and the sadness,” she says of her time on the show. “I would look at videos of myself and just drink the day away because these emotions that I did not want to deal with, were just in the backseat, with no seat belt.”
Now that she is out, Delano shares in the same video that she is now hopeful and loving life again.
“I’m still your party girl. I’m just sober now,” she said.
“I feel like I’m giving my teenage self the permission to be my true self now and it feels so liberating. It feels so good to walk like this down the street and not give a g**damn.”
Delano ends her video with the ultimate declaration of self-love.
“I am transgender, my pronouns are moving from, me not wanting to offend anybody to… going by she/her,” she said. “‘They’ still feels a little cute but she/her just feels yummy on this cupcake, even though I don’t like frosting.”
Since coming out, Delano has been (rightfully) focused on herself and continuing her journey.
“You have to be selfish in the beginning (of your transition) because you have to break the idea of what you were,” she told Out in an August 2023 interview. “You’re still the same person, but you have to recalibrate.
“Right now, I’m just focused on getting surgeries in November, and then my mom is coming out to just take care of me,” she told the pub. “[I want] to go into the new year feeling more confident and euphoric.”
We’re glad Adore is taking the time she needs and can’t wait to see what she serves the world in 2024!
ShaverC
It’s beginning to look like every “drag queen” is really a trans woman, so is it even still “drag”?
LumpyPillows
Not sure of the dynamic in play. What is true is that a lot of these new trans women, like Dylan Mulvaney (who loves his penis), aren’t transgender, they are just transvestites. No shade intended, but it is what it is. Gender dysmorphia is a rather specific condition that is very rare. Wanting to be a woman or dress like a woman is not the same thing as gender dysphoria. It’s part of what the lunatic left gets wrong – often on purpose.
CatholicXXX
Some biological women do drag and it actually looks like drag but a lot of these drag race “trans queens” look the same in drag as they do out of drag. Lip gloss and eye shadow =/= drag. They’re not drag queens if they’re going out in mall makeup. They are mediocre performers not drag queens.
Ricanthony
The ignorance in the comments. Pure bliss. Why worry about straights hating our community when we have it within our own. SMH
LumpyPillows
Smack harder Ric and you might start to get it. Make a point or keep your dismissive and unhelpful comment to yourself.
ZzBomb
@ Ric
They’re not our community and I recommend reporting them. I did.
ShaverC
ZzBomb, Yes I am gay which makes me part of the “community”, you just dont’t want to accept it.
Terry
I think it’s complicated – all of it. And it’s not really up to us – and I’m speaking here for gay men – to define what is and isn’t a transgender woman, or to demand answers about any of it really. But it IS our responsibility, as part of the LGBQTIA+ community, to be supportive. Thats it. Just be supportive. It may not make sense to us, I know it doesn’t to me, but I also know that THAT is how straight allies felt when they first started supporting us. They decided to just BE SUPPORTIVE, from a place of love – even if they didn’t “understand”.
ShaverC
Terry, The gay movement didn’t win people over just by shrugging their shoulders and tell people “love is love”, they made straight people understand what a gay person is. There is a definition for a transgender woman, it’s a man who has gender dysphoria and through surgery and hormones alters his body to resemble a woman’s. People need to know what they are supposed to support.
Mr. Stadnick
She is super talented and ever so enjoyable to watch.
SUPREME
i often wonder if there is a difference between some who’s a transgender woman and someone who is just “a big sissy” who has the desire to be a woman.
ZzBomb
Moderators? Anything you want to do about the trans hate here in some of these comments?
BUELHER????
Baron Wiseman
ALERT! ALERT!
Everyone: the Queerty police have been alerted. Someone did not censor themselves and tried to ask genuine questions.
Stick to the script, peasants!
ShaverC
Thought crime! Danger.
Terry
Adore is hilarious, and seems like a genuinely good person. As far as the other comments on this thread, I know we all want to analyze every little thing as part of a larger movement, but I also feel like it’s “ok” for an individual – Adore – to do whatever she feels is right, for her. It has zero to do with anyone else, a TV show, nor is it part of a “trend” etc. It’s just Adore being Adore.