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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.”
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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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ShiningSex
Willow was always a favorite of mine.
I really hate Daya. She was a bitch and didn’t need to be one. I hate bitch queens. They are just tacky and not worthy of being famous. Diva is not a bitch person. Shouldn’t never be. Have some class and treat people who support your work with grace and kindness.
Leash
Calm down Roberta it’s a entertainment TV show first and a drag competition second, without Daya this season would have been boring af.
I think Daya is nice, but who says drag queens have to be nice? I can tell you who doesn’t say that: drag queens.
I wish you would take your own advice to “have some class” and “treat people with grace and kindness” when writing queerty comments.
missvamp
i loved her from the moment she entered the werk room. she’s so amazing. another disabled queen & as a winner- amazing!! i know she will go on to do great things!!
SFMike
I am a Willow Pill fan but I have to confess I’m conflicted about how I feel about all the trans drag queens popping up. To me a drag queen is a male artfully dressed as a woman. If we are to accept a trans man as a woman then they can’t be a drag queen but just a woman dressing up real fancy.
ggore
I agree. That is the “traditional” definition of “drag”, but it is not now politically correct. There are supposedly cis-female drag queens, although I must admit that over the course of my entire gay life, I have never seen a cis-female drag queen. Not once, but I guess there are really millions of them, I just never knew it.
Then there is the matter of trans drag queens. If the definition of “drag” was a cis-male concealing their genitalia and using makeup to transform into a “female Illusion”, then are trans people and those who have already had gender-reassignment treatments and surgeries still considered “drag queens”? Since they have had the surgeries, they are no longer creating some sort of illusion, they are only being themselves, a real woman, which is what they are claiming to be.
Maybe I am analyzing too much, but when half the cast of a Drag Race season comes out and says they are not really men but are women, then to me, the whole concept of what a drag queen is just goes flying out the window. The art form is supposed to be men transforming themselves into something they are not through the use of whatever it takes to do so. Someone please correct me if I am wrong in this.
Leash
To me drag first and foremost pushes boundaries on society’s idea of what gender is. For queer people to completly ignore that aspect and try to define who can or cannot do drag is ironic to me and kind of stuffy.
You make it sound like tucking away your penis is the most important part of being a drag queen. When really its portraying a exaggerated version of femininity, which you can do no matter what you have between your legs.
Cam
When Willow did that first routine with the bathtub, that was it. I was thinking “Who the hell is this queen, I want to see more!”