While RuPaul’s star continues to rise now in 2024, here’s a look at what she was doing long before anyone thought that a reality drag competition show could ever achieve such mainstream success.
In the early 1990s, Ru was working in the Georgia club scene and getting some minor roles in low-budget films or as an extra in B-52s music videos.
In 1993, her album Supermodel of the World came out, and with it the track “Supermodel (You Better Work).” The song peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart and number 45 on the Billboard Hot 100, launching her to national fame.
And here she is in the West Hollywood Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade in 1994. At the time, HIV/AIDS was still ravaging the community (the combination of drugs known as highly active antiretroviral therapy wouldn’t be approved until 1996), Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (which banned out gay and bisexual people from serving in the military) had just been signed into law in 1993, and many states still banned homosexuality.
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But the community was going to celebrate Pride, and elegant and beautiful drag queens are an inextricable part of what makes LGBTQ+ people proud.
Ru scored her first major deal as the first face of the MAC Viva Glam cosmetics line that year. She would appear on Oprah Winfrey’s immensely popular show the next year. But she was still two years away from getting her VH1 talk show The RuPaul Show with Michelle Visage, and it was well over a decade before the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race would air.
This picture is, in short, a snapshot from the period when the country finally started falling in love with RuPaul.
Pride in Pictures is LGBTQ Nation’s annual series celebrating Pride across the country. We asked our readers to send in their pictures and stories of Pride and we got so many rainbows. Keep an eye out for more heartwarming stories to get you ready for Pride Month 2024.
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