This is it, folks. It’s been about a dozen weeks but the fifth season of Drag Race is reaching its finish line. I can’t believe it. It seems like just last week I was writing about how beautiful Ivy Winters is or how hopeless Serena ChaCha was, but alas that had to have been some time in February!
Asymmetrical shoulders can be hit or miss, but Ru’s rosebud is the perfect addition to this beautiful dress. I’m glad she ended with this look, I’ve always felt the last runway should be when you look your absolute best. It’s not the time to experiment or go for shock value, you’ve already made it to the elite so look the part! Now for the last time, let’s commence for shakedown.
Ugh, Roxxxy’s overdone eyes are back.
Green and purple are those two colors that somehow just go together despite every synapse telling you it can’t be done. I like how the wispiness of the dress design even extends into the wispy angles near the bust. And what a bust it is, wow! I guess there’s a mixed blessing in not being a stick-thin drag queen, because you can use your pectoral skin to create some seriously believable cleavage. Regarding the hair, it is effective in giving her the right proportions for the dress but that’s about it. She loves that hair-shelf flippy thing and to me it just kills any illusion of realism she has. But I guess if that’s one of her signatures it’s only right to showcase it on the final runway.
Awww she’s so pretty!! ^_^
Remember earlier in the competition when she’d go for the pretty look and it would just fail? She would look too toothy, or too wacko, but here she looks lovely!! Everything is perfect: nothing overdone or underdone, a put-together package of fishy realness. Jinkx was always the chameleon of the group who would go for the out-there look, for example the French jester or the muertos skeleton. Most often she’d be the glamour girl from yesteryear, and with this final fairytale princess look I feel like she completed the circle. There’s really nothing Jinkx Monsoon can’t do.
In true alternative fashion, Alaska decided to do glamour by looking like Twiggy’s ghost.
Though Alaska just described her look as ‘ghoulish couture’, I personally think she looks like a zombified version of 60s British model Twiggy, especially in that last picture. Normally something like this would be a train wreck, especially for the last runway, but it’s so fully realized that it’s hard to yell at her. This is not her best drag by any means, nor does it really convey what kind of queen Alaska truly is, but the colors all coordinate and the hair and makeup just work. All of this just adds to the mystery of how you’d accurately classify what kind of queen she is. She’s funny, beautiful, edgy, intelligent and absentminded, but not one more than the other.
Winner: No one
High-Ranking: Jinkx Monsoon, Alaska, Roxxxy Andrews
Low-Ranking: Jinkx Monsoon, Alaska, Roxxxy Andrews
Bottom Three: Jinkx Monsoon, Alaska, Roxxxy Andrews
Eliminated: No one
Aww, Penny!! Who here still remembers her? This picture practically confirms that full-on pictures do nothing for her and only showcase how awkward her eyebrows are drawn. (Though when pictured from the side it’d look much better.) Penny suffered from first-to-go syndrome, so she did not get the airtime needed to really show who she was. Therefore we really can’t cast accurate judgment on how ‘good’ she is. Her only runway look wasn’t horrible per se, and her lip-sync song was Miley Cyrus’ ‘Party in the USA’, which no one over the age of 21 should be singing anyway. This series of misfortunes had her sent home first. I’ve always thought that no one should be eliminated the first episode just to avoid having to shaft someone like this.
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This banner picture is the best Serena ChaCha ever looked (which honestly isn’t bad). The self-proclaimed youngest of the group, Serena was immature as hell, so sure that her fashion school background would give her an edge. She wasted no time reading the other contestants and putting herself before them. All this would be fine if her runway looks made up for it, but they didn’t. They really didn’t. Serena may go down in history for bringing the worst look conceivable to the runway in the first episode. She made no friends but many enemies, and despite how cute she was in guy form (as well as the banner pic), she made it very difficult to be liked. I’m sure everyone would have rather had Penny Tration return than Serena.
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OMFG I’m so freakin tired of these Nicki Minaj wannabes!! These combinations of blonde banged wigs, pink lipstick and mocha skin need to be banned from fashion permanently. Ok… now that that’s out of my system, let’s talk, Monica. First of all, your name sucks. It always has. Second, I’m sorry my dear but you did not belong on this season, let me explain. It’s not because you were transgender (so calm down, trans supporters) it’s because you were not in the right mindset for it. You were in transition physically and mentally, and your confidence didn’t build up yet for this kind of competition. Ideally you should have been in a later season (or even an earlier one) so you would have been more comfortable in your own skin, but then you might have been ineligible for the show for not being biologically male. So you chose to shoehorn the show into your life when you did, before it was too late, and it didn’t help anyone. Again I wish you the best in life, but this was not your season. And please change your name!
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Oh Honey. This West Coast Milan could have brought some real fun to this season, but shot herself in the foot by wearing the same style of dress every single runway with minimal change to hair or makeup. She also sealed her fate by admitting that she doesn’t believe a drag queen’s look is important (which dumbfounded Alyssa Edwards) and that she should hire herself a stylist. As for the banner pic, it’s very blaxploitative. Yep, that about sums it up.
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Vivienne’s story is also a sad one. You might not be able to tell from the banner pic (that wig is awful) but Vivienne is easily one of the fishiest queens to grace RuPaul’s Drag Race, along with the likes of Carmen Carrera and Tatianna. Unfortunately she thought this innate beauty alone would be able to carry her to the finish line. She didn’t speak much and when she did it was usually not something very nice. I wanted to like her for more than her fishy realness but never gave me anything else to feed on. Vivienne Pinay was eliminated alongside Honey Mahogany (a Drag Race first): Honey for never changing her damn outfits and Vivienne for having the personality of a brick.
Ah, the obligatory Puerto Rican contestant, who know less and less English as the seasons go by. Lineysha was a beautiful queen and a very cute boy, but his poor grasp of the language and his bizarre thought processes doomed him to failure. His first name is also rather stupid. On a positive note, his banner pic is the first one so far to accurately reflect how he generally looks in drag, with the structured up-do and solid makeup. He even won a challenge, being the only ‘bad’ contestant to do so. All in all though, there’s nothing that Lineysha brought that Season 5 was better off for.
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Jade Jolie, the queen everyone loved to hate, and I loved to love. Jade was the pure embodiment of stereotypical happy things, like hearts, flowers, rainbows and glitter. Literally. Almost every sentence was punctuated with a chuckle, and his banner pic perfectly sums up who he is: colorful, unedited and slightly messy. He’s hard-wired to rub people the wrong way with his saccharin nature, and he did, but I always liked it. He made his realness so fake and his fakeness so real, and never once didn’t remain true to himself.
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And now we begin the second half of the contestants, i.e. the ‘good ones’, i.e. the ones that won all the challenges (Lineysha was a fluke). Ivy was another one of my favorites, and actually one I wanted to win. She had almost everything: good looks, creativity… but of all the ‘good’ ones she probably had the weakest personality. You never really heard much of her, and what you did wasn’t anything you’d remember. She was one of those queens who bragged that she’d make outfits out of everyday objects and yet we barely saw any of them (Alaska was also guilty of this). Her banner pic is so 80s-licious it kills me, I absolutely love it. It’s also odd that she looks best as a blonde but is naturally dark-haired. Speaking of his boy alter-ego, I’m sorry but when he’s out of drag, he looks more like a lesbian woman than an actual guy, it may have something to do with the single dangling earring thing. Seriously, google it.
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Always and forever, Alyssa Edwards… at least that was her self-defined catchphrase. Alyssa was a former Miss Gay America who had her title revoked since she didn’t exactly fit in the cookie-cutter mold she was supposed to during her reign. Can’t blame her, but she took the hit very personally and she came to Drag Race to redeem herself. I’m not sure if finishing in 6th place is much of a redemption, but for her it was enough. She took the runway portion of this competition extremely seriously, letting everything else for the most part wind up wherever it will. I personally wasn’t in love with her runway choices and I hated that jaw-dropped expression she constantly made, as if it made her look couture (if anything it accentuated her massive overbite). Her pic is a good representative of her: the makeup is on point but the head-on intensity comes off uncomfortable, and the hair is big and draggy, but just a little too much so. I tried to like her but couldn’t bring myself to.
It’s in this left picture here. That’s my freaking mother!!
Remember when I said Alyssa Edwards lost her title of Miss Gay America? Guess who was first runner-up to replace her. Yes, Miss Coco Montrese. Talk about awkward. So crazy pageant drama aside, I found Ms Montrese to be one of the more glamorous queens of the season, who could pull off an evening gown better than any woman I know. She liked looking pretty, and even her edgy looks had a hint of glamour to them. Challenge-wise, Coco either did great or would completely flatline. These mood swings are not becoming of America’s Next Drag Superstar, and I expected so much more from a seasoned girl such as Coco during those times. I do like the banner pic though, it’s screams ‘Hollywood’ to me. And on a random note, Coco was one of those people who had contact lenses in every color and would switch them constantly. And yet none of them would help correct her lazy eye…
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Easily my favorite banner pic of them all. It’s just the way the hat and the hair play off each other, combined with the well-done face. Anyway, Detox did a wonderful job during the show. All of her runway looks, challenge performances and lip-syncs were unique and crafted with care. She probably has the most stern look of all the queens, and she combines this with raw sexiness to create such a forbidden pleasure to look at. She also had the admirable ability to force me to like every look she created, even if I personally didn’t like it. Her level of confidence could have made her the ‘villain’ of the season but it was her humility that made her likable, relatable and just such a pleasure to watch. She deserved to be in the Top 3, but 4th place is the next best thing, I guess.
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Roxxxy Andrews rubbed me the wrong way right from the start. Similarly to Detox she has a lot of confidence, but doesn’t have the humility to keep it in check. Roxxxy would always think about how beautiful and pageant she was, and that her form of drag is the only form of drag. I for one was not buying it. (As Alyssa Edwards would say, ‘She’s selling, you ain’t buying?’) All I saw was overdone makeup, hair that was too big (like in the banner pic) and this self-proclaimed fabulosity with little to support it. Detox should be here in 3rd place, not Roxxxy. And for goodness sake, cut some Xs out of your freakin name! It’s been a bitch to keep writing her name out and keep forgetting Xs (or adding additional ones!)
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Alaska… love of my life… I am so F*CKING proud of you. You auditioned for Drag Race every year since Season 1, only to have your boyfriend audition one time for Season 4 and take home the crown, and then finally you made it to Season 5 albeit with so much hype and pressure on your shoulders. Despite all this, you took this season by storm and gagged RuPaul with guilt as to why you weren’t on this show earlier. You have everything a good drag queen needs, physically, mentally and socially, and you kept me on the edge of my seat with every moment. I dreaded every episode out of the fear that you’d be sent home early, but with every episode you continued to impress and floor me with your raw talent. I love you and everything you embody, so much so that I’m willing to overlook that you wear the same 3 wigs over and over, especially that off-center poofy blonde one… that you happen to be wearing in your banner pic… =P
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And then there’s Jinkx Monsoon, the very definition of an underdog, a dark horse, or any kind of animal metaphor to describe a fierce competitor that no one took seriously. Jinkx is the latest in a long line of camp queens that have been until now, unsuccessful on Drag Race. Tammie Brown, Mimi Imfurst, Pandora Boxx… all of them were misunderstood for their humor and uniqueness and therefore had their times on the main stage cut short. But Jinkx had just the right amount of lucidity to remain relevant at all times, all while ironically suffering from narcolepsy lol. Jinkx rarely looks like she’s in the same time period as everyone else, but never used it as an excuse. She just has ‘winner’ written all over her, combining stage presence with grace and an infectiously wholesome, caring demeanor. In my opinion she’s the embodiment of the new face of drag, and an accessible one at that. That’s just what the industry needs now more than ever. She dreams of performing on Broadway, and mark my words, she will. Though my heart is with Alaska, Jinkx Monsoon is the true and best deserved winner of Season 5.
All hail the queen.
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