RuPaul’s Drag Race UK: Week 3 Rucap by Kirsty Bright
We enter week three of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK and the drama has settled amongst the queens after last week’s attention seeking palava. We said goodbye to Scaredy Kat, gained a new meme/ catchphrase/ new merch with Baga Chipz ‘Much better.’, which means the season is in full swing@ Returning to the Werk room after Scaredy’s elimination the mirror message was a cheeky reminder how young she is and already appeared on the biggest TV show, imagine where she’ll be at 35?
Fresh from the lip sync battle, Blu Hydrangea has been set up for her confidence rebrand and ready to fight with her new story… sarcasm aside, it’s great to see her back and fighting. The rest of the queens seem to all be confident reflecting on their time so far.
Just when you think the mini challenge couldn’t get weirder * I feel like I say this every week*, we get to see a traditional maypole dance appear…. I personally haven’t seen one of these since childhood village fetes! Baga’s confusion over the assignment (english rose) provided instead us with Theresa May realness, cut to music maypole dancing style with selected queens delivering their best mini performance.
This week’s maxi challenge requires the queens to create outfits out of a good old fashioned car boot sale. Even though eBay is around, Brits still love to sell everything on a Sunday morning car boot sale. We see Season 2 and All Stars 2 queen Raven appear and she looked STUNNING, arriving in a classic mini! Cheryl Hole won with her show stopping, death dropping performance, allowing first pick from the sale. She chose……a box of yellow washing up gloves….which, in my eyes, ended up selling the hell out of that outfit. It also led to hundreds of innuendos with the outfit “Fancy a finger? How about 700….”
I love sewing challenges! I fell in love with Drag Race through the season two Gone with the Window challenge. I was amazed at how they could take anything and make magic, flawless outfits. It’s also a touchy subject amongst the fandom and queens, with many believing competitors should at least be able to sew something. This episode highlighted the creative glue gunners, sewers and the triers.
We get to see Ru talk to each individual queen. The walkthroughs in season 11 were mocked for being fake/set up, however this season you can sense the enjoyment and the freshness. Each queen is unique and they all seem to make Ru chuckle in some way. I mean, would you ever see a US queen fist bump RuPaul and say ‘safe’? The subtle shade from Blu to Rupaul about gowns being done to death was hilarious even though she says it was unintentional. Poor Vinegar‘s drag is read to filth by Ru leading us to the line of the week; “Bring it to the hodgepodge.” Something I’m sure Vinegar will capitalize on in the future with merch and music.
This week’s makeup mirror chat saw Divina De Campo discuss with Blu on the differences in today’s drag compared to when she started. I prefer these sort of talks as they don’t seem as forced, Blu said how she was in primary school when Divina began drag, leading Divina to share how older queens just learnt along the way compared to today. The younger queens generally grew up watching Drag Race leading to instagram queens and strong influences in social media. Interesting to hear both perspectives as US Drag Race is centred 100% on polished looks than the UK, who tend to focus on cabaret/ hosting so it’s great for Drag Race to highlight how we are across the pond.
Guest judge this week is the iconic Twiggy. For those who might not be familiar with her work, Twiggy was the pin up model during the 60’s sporting iconic beehives, famous bottom lash and liner looks still seen in makeup trends today. Only right she judges the runway consisting of fashion forward outfits made from a classic car boot.
Little appreciation to RuPaul and Michelle Visage For looking absolutely stunning, magical and amazing! They truly are embraced as the UK’s surrogate parents.
It’s so cool to see Divina serving completely different looks that were incredibly couture and Bowie! Not to mention she created a whole outfit out of laundry bags which is a horrible fabric in general. A very well deserved Ru-Peter badge win for Ms De Campo! Crystal was a close second for that badge as her outfit was absolutely stunning with a high end concept, also sticking to her showcasing chest/armpit hair most queens do tend to shy away from so bravo to her!
Considering Sumting had never made anything before it’s bloody impressive what she made and the underestimation placed on her. I personally don’t think Sumting Wong should’ve been bottom three, as much as I love Baga the back of that outfit was falling apart yet she got safe.
Oh Vinegar. That look was more than hodgepodge.
The bottom two fell to Vinegar Strokes and Sumting, I was so surprised that Vinegar was shocked to lip sync against Sumting. During the challenge they set themselves up for an emotional storyline after Sumting declared “Out of everyone in here, I need you here with me,” an emotional Sum Ting Wong said to Vinegar. “Because I feel like if you’re not here I’m gonna go crazy.” Vinegar added, “Over the past couple of weeks me and Sum have really bonded. I think we’re going to be really great friends after this.” Declaring she could never lip sync against her dear friend. The perfect TV emotional ending to this was to be a lip sync battle and it was week where the Lip sync wasn’t terrible..hurray! However, unfortunately, Vinegar was told to sashay away, a right if not sad decision.
When queens go home on Drag Race UK, they don’t come across super sad, they’re disappointed yet so grateful and happy to be on a huge show. Another side note is how supportive the queens are of each other, after the show the queens took to twitter to say who helped each other with makeup and outfits. Showing how they aren’t competitive, they genuinely are a sisterhood.
Photo by BBC Three/ World of Wonder
Next week’s sneak peek episode looks set to be interesting… it’s snatch game time! Something I do find a bit cringe! But the stage is set for drama, double characters, fantastic guests and the iconic Geri Halliwell… is it next Thursday yet?