The 2024 Emmy Awards are in full swing and for those watching at home, it certainly feels like it’s zooming past at x1.5 speed. While that’s a great way to make the night go smoothly and not feel like it’s dragging on forever for the celebrities patiently waiting for their categories, it does mean that the winners have to expertly use their time on stage if they want to get a point across. And this year no one has done it better than RuPaul Charles, who used his time to encourage people to speak on the negative media drag queens have received over the last few years.
Winning the Outstanding Reality category for the fifth year in a row, RuPaul headed on stage along with his co-hosts Michelle Visage, Ross Matthews and Carson Kressley.
“Thank you so much, you lovely lovely people. We are so honoured to have this award,” RuPaul said, as what seemed like an endless brigade of drop-dead-gorgeous drag queens from Season 15 and writers joined him on stage.
“You guys are just pure lovely to honour our show and recognise all these queens. We have released into the wild hundreds of drag queens and they’re beautiful. On behalf of all of them, we thank you.
“And listen, if a drag queen wants to read you a story at a library, listen to her because knowledge is power and if someone tries to restrict your access to power, they are trying to scare you so listen to a drag queen,” he said, holding the Emmy up to the air.
RuPaul’s Drag Race has had the Outstanding Reality category in a chokehold for the last five damn years.
The show itself has had a total of 63 Emmy nominations. What’s even more impressive, is this year is the eighth consecutive win for RuPaul as a host of a reality show, making him the most awarded host in Emmy’s history and he holds the record for the most wins by a person of colour.
HUGE!!!
Over the last few years, drag queens have been receiving a pretty negative wrap from conversation politicians — especially in the United States. Although the child-friendly events literally just feature a drag queen singing songs, reading books and being a general delight, right-wing conservatives and extremists felt that it was another overzealous display of the woke LGBTQ agenda.
Drag storytimes which had been going swimmingly for years suddenly began to receive threats of violence or protest which resulted in many of these events being cancelled.
Some states — including Tennessee, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina and Texas — even proposed bills to outlaw drag in public or places where there could people people under 18. Tennessee was the first state to officially ban drag shows in April 2023.
Despite the laws being put in place, many believe that the new rules are discriminatory and unconstitutional. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the creation of anti-drag laws is “a malicious attempt to remove LGBTQ people from public life”.
In Australia, we’ve seen the same thing happen to a lesser extent with drag queen story times being cancelled or postponed due to threats of protest and/or violence.
I love that RuPaul and his army of stunning drag queens used their moment in the Emmy spotlight to encourage people to open their hearts to experiences they don’t understand — even if it’s just as simple as a dude wearing a wig and reading stories to kids.
