werk it

Willow Pill’s ‘Drag Race’ journey was one for the history books

 

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From the moment Willow Pill walked into the werkroom on season 14 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, we all knew we were watching something special. The Denver queen was rocking platform flip-flops, a white miniskirt and a crop top reading “ANGLE” in glittery pink letters. “Where am I?” she asked, and we were instantly obsessed.

Four months and 16 episodes later, Willow was crowned the winner of the season, taking home $150,000 dollars and the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar. But it was Willow’s journey, not her destination, that made the oddball queen so remarkable.

 

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Like her sister Yvie Oddly before her, Willow brought much-needed visibility for chronically ill people on TV. Willow has cystinosis, a genetic disorder that causes tissue and organ damage throughout the body, and she never shied away from sharing her experience with the disease.

​​”This season broke so many boundaries and had so many firsts,” Willow said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “What’s important to me is that I’m representing people who are disabled and chronically ill. That’s not something we see on television — especially not on reality television, because people who are ill and disabled are amazing, fun, nasty, and catty, and they’re everything anyone else can be, times 25.”

Midway through the season, Willow made another step forward for representation on Drag Race when she came out as trans femme, using they/she pronouns and going by Willow in and out of drag.

“During quarantine, I started to explore my feelings about my illness and unpacked a lot of medical PTSD and self-hatred,” Willow wrote on Instagram. “But only in the last year have I really started to realize that I’m not happy with my gender identity either. Much of that is due to being on Drag Race and feeling euphoria being Willow for the first time since quarantine and being around a bunch of queer and trans friends on set.”

 

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Willow’s coming out made her the fifth trans queen of the season, joining her sisters Kerri Colby, Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté, Jasmine Kennedie and Bosco. That officially made season 14 the trans-est Drag Race season ever, and it was all the better for it.

Willow also opened up about the intersections of her identities as trans and disabled.

“Transitioning with a chronic illness is not simple,” she wrote in her coming out post. “Any further medicalization of my body scares me because of my medical PTSD. I’m currently discussing a very low dose of hormones with my doctor and will have to take things very slow because I’m on a variety of intense medications. It may be that it’s not for me because my health comes first but I want to try. I want to cry more, have softer skin and a fatter ass. Happiness would also be nice.”

We’re proud if Willow for so many reasons. When snatched the crown in the season 14 finale, she became the first out trans winner of the main Drag Race franchise. Whatever her reign entails, we can bet it’ll be cute, absurd, ugly and fabulous.

 

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