Drag Queen on Strictly

[HelenaWaiting]

I didn't see a thread on this, and it seems to have been slipped out quietly. I'm assuming this man in woman-face will be taking the place of a female?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2025/strictly-come-dancing-la-voix#:~:text=A%20powerhouse%20of%20charisma%2C%20comedy,no%20stranger%20to%20national%20television.

"It's disrespectful to pretend to be a different ethnicity or to pretend to be disabled.
Strictly wouldn't employ a person pretending to be pregnant or pretending to need a wheelchair."

Don't go giving them ideas!

Actors pretend to be different people all of the time. Im sure theyd have an actress on who has acted being pregnant, or acted needing to use a wheelchair.

What would be odd is if the actress insisted on being casted as being pregnant for every role. And when being interviewed as part of the PR , insisted on being referred to as 'expecting'.

Drag dont pretend to be women in the same way trans identifying men do, but they do take their female parody off the stage with them and get other people to interact with them.

If an actor had parodied someone in a wheelchair and toured that round the country under the guise of entertainment I'd bet money on them not making the SCD lineup.

Wasn't Matt Lucas a guest presenter?

Strictly has always had some focus on sex appeal. There's a reason for the so-called Strictly curse, after all, and that has been among straight couples.

I don't see what the issue would be if this person wanted a male partner. 🤷‍♀️ Hardly 'regressive', unless he was barred from female partners, which I doubt happened.

Otoh, I don't think the sex appeal elements is good for anybody in the sense that a lot of the time it seems to break up marriages.

I wonder if it’s a contractual thing. Drag Race is BBC3 and previous winners got their own series on BBC America. Danny Beard was on radio 2 for a bit. This time round it was a cash prize and, of course, Strictly is on the BBC.

I imagine that training and practice will not be performed in full make up and costume. I imagine the ‘artist’ will also not be ‘in role’ during training. It takes focus and concentration. It’ll be interesting to see what he is like as a person. My money is on him not being particularly extroverted.

I loath drag. I struggle to see why males need to parody ‘women’ if the interest is really just fashion and aesthetics. Why can’t they just be males performing as males?

More than 2 females are killed each week in the UK, by males, and violence against women and girls is at epidemic levels. When there is irrefutable evidence relating to the power males wield over females each and every day, one has to question why it is deemed acceptable for this particular powerful group to parody those they oppress in a way that isn’t the same for other protected characteristics.