“I Love You Dearly, Bitch”

RuPaul's cultural impact in the Philippines is unmistakable. This past Fall, Drag Race Philippines released its first season and announced the winner, Precious Paula Nicole. Following the first season's success, in December, Filipino American drag queen Manila Luzon will host the newest spin-off show Drag Den Philippines. I recently attended a drag show at O-Bar, one of the only drag bars in Metro Manila that survived the pandemic. The show's production was more expertly styled and choreographed than shows I've seen in the States, and featured Drag Race Philippines contestants like Brigiding. The queens lipsynced and danced to American pop songs such as Rihanna's "We Found Love," Tina Turner's "Proud Mary," and Gloria Gaynor's "I Am What I Am"; they also put together a RuPaul homage, with performances of "Supermodel (You Better Work)," and a mash-up track that included "American" and "U Wear It Well."

The Philippine drag queens at O-Bar and their tributes to Black American singers are just a few examples of "Afro-Filipinx queer affinities." By "Afro-Filipinx queer affinities," I mean to build on Roderick Ferguson and Grace Kyunwon Hong's theorization of "strange affinities" as political practices and methodologies within comparative race and ethnic studies that attend to "contradictions and heterogeneities."1 Afro-Filipinx queer affinities are queer relations between Black and Filipinx peoples that are neither romantic nor familial, but rather are often ephemeral moments of mutuality and understanding, descensus and conflict.  These affinities emerge on Drag Race as early as Ongina's appearance in Season 1 (2009) and include Jiggly Caliente (now a judge on Drag Race Philippines), Phi Phi O'Hara, Vivienne Pinay, Rock M Sakura, and, perhaps most famously, Manila Luzon, who routinely brings in Philippine iconography and history in her campy performances. 

In the context of RuPaul's complicated impact on the Philippines and queer Filipinx performers' homages to Black songstresses, this essay zooms in on seemingly minute, aesthetic, and haptic intimacies, to critically attune to RuPaul and Zaldy's creative partnership and to the mis-matched styles and punchy reads between Latrice Royale and Manila Luzon's on-screen friendship. Drag Race animates minor and overlooked, yet long-lived Filipino and Black intimacies that endure during and after the show's filming. These lasting intimacies are not avowed as political, nor are they responsive to major political events.2 Rather, they have been fashioned slowly over time, as for RuPaul and Zaldy, through underground parties, shared fashion and costume aesthetics, and the creation of RuPaul's supermodel of the world drag persona. Queer affinities, for Latrice and Manila, are also mediated through a the reality show platform; however, their friendship's immediacy displays how they forge relations in "real time," which invites viewers to experience these queer affinities as replete with both tension and joy.

Magical Muses: RuPaul and Zaldy

Every time the song "Covergirl" plays on RuPaul's Drag Race's runway, Zaldy Goco's designs hug, rest, brush, and shimmer on RuPaul. In the late 1980s, the pair developed a friendship when they met in the Club Kid nightlife scene in New York City. The Club Kids experimented with gender-bending and DIY queer aesthetics in underground parties, at clubs like the Palladium and Limelight against the backdrop of 1980s AIDS crisis and at the tail end of President Ronald Reagan's conservative presidency. Their costumes — outlandish, zany, and Rainbow Brite-inspired — were considered visual and subcultural art forms that broke fashion boundaries. In old photographs of Ru and Zaldy, their off-kilter personas wear ball gowns, iridescent space age jumpsuits, and platinum blonde-and-black wigs. Along with Club Kid influences, in their early careers they both modeled and posed in drag or as androgynous and genderfucked in numerous, often political, fashion campaigns. For instance, along with his early punk rock music and cult film career, RuPaul was featured in MAC Cosmetics AIDS fund campaigns. Zaldy's fashion career started in Paris, modeling women's wear for Thierry Mugler and for fashion photographers like Glen Luchford and Steven Meisel. One of Zaldy's most memorable campaigns was his appearance in a 1995 Levi's Jeans commercial where he controversially posed in drag.

On Instagram, Zaldy posted a photograph with RuPaul and other Club Kids Tanel Bedrossiantz and Mathu Andersen. Zaldy has on an all-Black wig, corset, and thigh-high leather boots. RuPaul, mirroring Zaldy's half up hair, but platinum blonde, wears a golden plated one-piece with a red belt. The caption reads "Happy birthday to my magical muse @rupaulofficial !!! You inspire me everyday!" As collaborators who make RuPaul into RuPaul, their closeness also enables queer rebellion and play, exhibited frankly through fashion and performance. For instance, in RuPaul's runway looks, Zaldy's designs often exhibit the wayward spirit of Club Kids through various silhouettes that play on structure, form, color, and texture. One of Zaldy's most eccentric designs was RuPaul's "face-kini" look, where she donned a brightly multi-colored face mask, bright-red lips, and a futuristic black visor band across her eyes. A long, straightened platinum blonde ponytail topped off the look. 

As their careers developed across various iterations of queer politics, underground party cultures, and the fashion industry, they first worked together on RuPaul's 1993 "Supermodel (You Better Work)" music video where they both "created the archetype of RuPaul, supermodel of the world."3 Inspired heavily by 1980's New York City queer ball cultures, RuPaul parodies a rags-to-riches image of a platinum-blonde supermodel diva. Throughout the video, RuPaul sashays and poses in the streets in Zaldy's gowns in front of flashing cameras. At the 3-minute mark in the video, there is an ephemeral exchange between RuPaul and Zaldy. They are in the dressing room as Zaldy puts a necklace on RuPaul who takes it off, in protest, mouthing "No way!" In this over-the-top performance, RuPaul plays the supermodel diva she sings about: "Linda, Naomi, Christy, Cindy, Claudia, and Niki." RuPaul's character has the final say over her looks, suggesting that the persona she and Zaldy co-create — rather than each of them individually — ultimately has the last say. This is a doubly ephemeral gesture: of the two in a dressing room as a scene in the video, and of RuPaul tearing off a necklace and insisting on her (winking) authority over Zaldy's vision. Yet what is clear from even this brief example is how their co-created character, a megastar and an abstraction, illuminates the intertwined sensibilities developed through the various underground and mainstream drag cultures and styles that they pull from.

Just like their brief interaction in "Supermodel (You Better Work)," RuPaul and Zaldy are rarely presented on the show together, and it is only in later seasons that Zaldy appears as a guest judge on four episodes. On the judging panel, the pair rarely converse with one another. However, Zaldy's presence materializes on every single runway when RuPaul appears and struts to "Covergirl." In contrast to the "Supermodel (You Better Work)" music video, their queer affinities are not portrayed through immediate body-to-body contact, but instead mediated through an extrasensory aesthetics and repetition. RuPaul wears their relationality in every design and in the many registers of her aesthetics. In their own words, RuPaul and Zaldy live out their friendship through intuitive, intersubjective, and aesthetic means. For example, in an interview with Vogue, RuPaul says: 

Zaldy knows RuPaul's vision and body better than anyone, as one reporter writes "RuPaul is virtually stitched into his DNA."  As they've grown up together, Zaldy and Ru's collaborations offer queer Afro-Filipinx affinities through aesthetics and dress that are energetic and playful. RuPaul describes their styles together as "telepathic," and Zaldy describes their connection as "psychic," since after all this time they have the "same emotions, same emotions, and same inspirations that keep [them] moving forward."5 Personal photographs, with tender shout-outs like these, produce a running archive that publically showcases their closeness. Because of this shared telepathy, Zaldy has the freedom to "improvise" and "trust" without much communication between the two. Their on-screen partnership operates implicitly and is discernible on RuPaul's body through fabric, structure, form, and the results of their intertwined sense of aesthetics. Zaldy and RuPaul's descriptions of their relationship — through the body, transference, and an innate intersubjectivity — shows how in-tune and trusting their relationship operates and how time has allowed their work and careers to flourish, even across a demanding platform like reality television.

In a recent interview with Vulture, Zaldy remarks that his designs repeatedly focus on seven rules while dressing RuPaul, including attention to her shadowed silhouette at the start of her runway walk and her body's proportions. While seemingly innocuous, Zaldy's attention to how the dress looks in studio lighting as an event (as something that happens to Ru's body emerging from shadow), in which the body shot only lasts for ten seconds, sets the tone for the runway walks. With the studio's lighting narrative in mind, Zaldy creates outfits based on how the fabrics of the dress shimmer and glint once the spotlight hits. He seeks to perfect RuPaul's silhouette every time she appears on the runway about to be lit up, in more and more careful combinations of color and texture.   In this subtle and quick, yet vital repetition on the show, queer Afro-Filipinx affinities manifest in the reception of RuPaul's character.  Her runway looks pivot between the soloist's talents — RuPaul and Zaldy, separately — and the duo's shared artistic visions. Every time RuPaul stands before the panel of judges — Michelle Visage, Carson Kressley, Ross Matthews, and the celebrity judges — they cheer for RuPaul, and address her perfected beauty, accentuated and mediated by Zaldy's designs and attention to Ru's form. This relational sensibility performatively reoccurs on every episode between the designer and the muse, always through RuPaul's persona. And RuPaul's drag silhouette, as it emerges into the curated lights of the runway, makes these intimacies and fantasies real. The pair's repertoire of repetitive transmissions, since their time asClub Kids, creates these queer and interracial affinities that continue today. RuPaul and Zaldy show that these Afro-Filipinx queer affinities, and the creation of RuPaul as a character, are not isolated incidents, but rather, a co-constitutive queer relation that has evolved across the show's platform. 

"I Love You Dearly, Bitch": Team Latrila

While RuPaul and Zaldy's relations emerged thirty years ago, Manila Luzon and Latrice Royale's friendship develops on screen through queer Afro-Filipinx affinities on a different timeline. Manila Luzon (Karl Philip Michael Westerberg) is Filipino and from Ramsey, Minnesota, and Latrice Royale (Timothy Wilcots) is a Black drag queen from South Beach, Florida. Manila and Latrice, two well-loved queens, became teammates on the first season of Drag Race All Stars (2012). Over the course of three episodes — three weeks of taping — the two develop an immediate friendship through the competition's fast-paced partner challenges, photo shoots, and runway shows. While RuPaul and Zaldy's long-standing relationship is mediated through the press and Instagram, we see Manila and Latrice's intimacies develop in the "real time" of the show and over a shorter period. The immediate nature of their relationship was formed during the work room, when they prepare for challenges. While they sew together, style their looks, and apply their makeup, they ask each other questions about their pasts. For instance, during one challenge, Manila and Latrice realize that they know nothing about each other,

On her previous season, Manila often deflected from showing vulnerability with her upbeat confidence and shady remarks about other queens. Latrice's sincerity seems to offer Manila enough of a sense of safety to open up. Here, like many heartfelt moments on the show where contestants bring up vulnerable issues from their pasts like their struggles with mental health, eating disorders,  addiction, and family disapproving of their drag careers and sexualities. The reality competition highlights these moments, bringing viewers closer to the contestants. As the pair begins to forge a closeness with one another, viewers are meant to simultaneously experience this intimacy, a mediation that further emphasizes their affinities.

When RuPaul meets with Team Latrila to check in, he notes the pair's differences when he declares, "The combination of personalities is just interesting to watch." RuPaul puts further pressure on their connection when he asks Manila what she can learn from Latrice, and she says "I'm so envious of her lovable personality . . . That I don't have. I don't think a single person dislikes her and that's what draws me to her." Latrice responds, "Manila seems to be a bit more fashion forward, and I can learn from her and get some of what she got." 

Latrice and Manila were initially presented as foils for one another because of their differing styles and personalities. On her season, Manila was part of the "Heathers," a "mean girls" clique composed of season three winner Raja Gemini, Carmen Carrera, and Delta Work. The quartet often looked down on the other girls, especially Shangela, Yara Sofia, and Alexis Mateo, whom they referred to as "boogers." Manila was infamous for her "maarte" (over-dramatic) antics, campy facial expressions, and caricatured Asian American impressions and accents, from caricatured Chinese accents to a parody of former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos. Her style ranges from Filipino pageant queen to avant-garde, and the "tropics" — one of her signature looks is the pineapple dress, for example — and even children's popular culture, from Cruella de Vil to Sesame Street.

In Season 4, by contrast, Latrice Royale stole hearts with her catchy mantras, her booming laugh, her comic chops, and her personal stories of redemption. When Latrice introduced herself, she was unapologetic of her body, affirming herself as "curves and swerves, chunky and funky, bold and beautiful." She also moved RuPaul and viewers with her backstory, where in South Florida, Latrice was imprisoned for 18 months. During that time, her mother passed away, and she was unable to properly mourn her. Unlike Manila, Latrice did not join a clique on her season, but instead focused on her looks, lip syncs, and comedic performances.

In All Stars Season 1, the show's emphasis on their different back stories, styles, and personalities tried to join their differences, to play out an underdog narrative. While other partnerships on the show, like JuJu Bee and Raven and Chad Michael and Shannel, had long-standing connections before this season, Latrice and Manila hastened to connect and, in doing so, offered different kinds of queer and interracial affinities through play, make-up, fashion, and bodily contact.

In the first challenge on All Stars Season 1, the teams are stripped down to diamond-studded bras, with no wigs or dresses. The first shots of Latrice and Manila are of the two making playful faces and hugging each other, like lovers or best friends. At that point theirs looks like any youthful friendship that involves playing with fashion and experimenting with practices for beauty-making. Similar to Zaldy and RuPaul's desires to create a youthful and energetic persona, Manila and Latrice also exhibit light-hearted, young, and girlhood-inspired relationality. Apryl Berney writes about teenage interracial Afro-Filipina girlhood and friendship in 1960s between Sugarpie DeSanto and Ella James in San Francisco, noting that "fashion was an important way for girls to articulate membership in a group."6 Throughout their friendship on-screen, practices of adorning their skin, like foundation, brow glue, gloss, eyeshadow, pads, tucking panties, tights, blush, bronzer, contour, lip liner, and glitter, bring Manila and Latrice into relation. But these practices do not contain their intimacies. In one instance when they are applying each other's makeup, Manila takes on Latrice's signature blue glittery eyeshadow, whereas Latrice's contours, lip colors, and brow bone highlights are more earth-toned. During the process of "exchanging looks," they get carried away with the intimacy that overflows the make-up, as they smile, laugh, and embrace. The photographer, with an eye on the clock, reins in their attention and says "Stay focused," as their photoshoot nonetheless takes off in improvisational directions and movements. For their last shot, Manila asks if they can take a prom photo together, and they pose in the quintessential teenage rite of passage.

Perhaps in a version of RuPaul and Zaldy's homages to the Club Kids, Team Latrila play on 90's popular culture in their first challenge. The energy of their playful and girlhood-like friendship returns in their first runway looks together. Kitsch meets PBS kids programming in their hip hugging Teletubbies Fantasy (another nod to Manila's cartoon and youth culture inspirations). The pair's choice to dress as Teletubbies is a campy nod to queer iconography in youth culture and the pre-2000s conservative backlash of the show, particularly megachurch pastor and televangelist Jerry Falwell's condemnation of Tinky Winky's sexuality as a "moral menace to American youth."7 Latrice walks in a red sequined dress, with sparkly red eyeshadow and a red, glittery lip. Latrice is the loveable and shy red Teletubby, Po, while Manila is Tinky Winky in a purple bodysuit with a music video of herself performing attached to her stomach like the holographic screens on the bellies of the Teletubbies. Due to their coordination, the pair win the first challenge, which makes them the team to beat from the start. 

However, their success is short-lived and in the third episode, they leave in an upsetting elimination. Latrice Royale and Manila Luzon turn to each other in their exit interview and say,

Latrice's statement "I love you dearly, bitch" in the exit interview, embodies and visualizes queer Afro-Filipinx affinities more explicitly. Bitch (which, as Latrice cheekily states in Season 4, means "Being In Total Control of Herself)" is Latrice's form of endearment for Manila as she refers to her not only as a friend, but also as a sister. The interview shows affinities that turn into kinship and sense of a timeless bond formed through address. Latrice's words prompts a call and response to which Manila says back to her, "I love you, too baby." Through these forged queer affinities through loss, the pair's additions of "bitch" and "baby" at the end of their statements brings levity to this kind of love. As viewers, we cannot help but shed a tear and let out a laugh, even in the midst of their departure. Latrice and Manila's friendship, like RuPaul and Zaldy, extends beyond the show. They released two collaborative songs and music videos together of their songs "Chopped" and "Robbed," and they have had an ongoing podcast series called "The Chop" that they have recorded together since 2020. They perform together in live shows and in Orbitz Travel commercials. In 2018, they competed once again on All Stars Season 4.

In 2012, after the release of All Stars Season 1, Manila recorded a behind-the-scenes glimpse of her and Latrice on her phone as Latrice prepared for a performance at West Gay. Manila was there to support her and help her get ready. In the recording, Latrice says to Manila,"this is my first New York experience." The video is low quality,the camera is shaky, and everything captured is improvised. They make the almost obligatory joke about being in the "meat-packing" district. Manila comments, "That is very appropriate for what Miss Thang is about to do here." This is a brief and mundane moment, away from Drag Race glitz. It shows a tender celebration of one another that is not mediated by the reality tv platform. Here, in this hotel room, they live out  "I love you, dearly" by being sisters and friends as they continue to perform in New York City bars and clubs.

By looking at RuPaul and Zaldy and Team Latrila's intimacies through RuPaul's Drag Race, we learn that these queer and interracial affinities cannot fully be contained across time, social media, and reality television. Like the shaky behind-the-scenes video, the affinities Latrice and Manila offer each other and viewers are not pristine, commensurable, or without tension. Yet, like RuPaul and Zaldy's relationship, attuned to Ru's body and sense of a shared style mind, these intimacies play, they celebrate, they feel, they love, and they live on.

---

Jewel Pereyra is a doctoral candidate in the American Studies program at Harvard University where she holds a secondary in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. A Fulbright research grantee, she is currently a visiting researcher at the University of the Philippines College of Music and lives in Metro Manila, Philippines.

---

References