Crowning a New Queen

This project is interested in the types of drag that win RuPaul's Drag Race. So far, seven winners have been crowned and this season an eigth will join their ranks. Various styles of drag have been represented across these winners and this project will visualize the number of winners across different drag styles before looking at the current crop of queens and seeing how they might impact the way the pie is divided.

The Numbers

The Scoop

From left to right, the runway queen's that have won RuPaul's Drag Race are season 2's Tyra Sanchez, season 3's Raja and season 7's Violet Chachki. During their time on the show, these queens wowed again and again on the runway. They weren't the best dancers, actresses or the funniest, but they continually put together bold and daring looks that would have been at home on runways around the world. This category represents the most consistently honored style of drag on the show, but interestingly the show took a long break from runway queens; three seasons and the special All-Stars season transpired between runway queens. Will this season give us another one-two punch, with two runway queens taking the crown once again?

Jinkx Monsoon and Bianca del Rio are the show's comedy winners. While both queens exhibited a range of strengths during their time on the show, they always incited giggles from the audience. Their approaches to comedy are distinct frome each other. Bianca is a standup comedian who specializes in roasting people and being playfully mean. Jinkx, on the other hand, is a bit more goofy, airy and light. She may do an impersonation of an over-the-top figure or portray an emotion in a manner that moves beyond extreme. These two queens won back-to-back seasons, Jinkx in season 5 and Bianca in season 6, before the show corwned another runway queen. Was the show having a fling with comedy queens, or will it be coming back for more? This season could be the time. We'll have to wait and see.

The lone practitioner of alternative drag who has been crowned the winner of RuPaul's drag race is Sharon Needles, who won season 4. Her drag is spooky, edgy and often shocking. A few other alternative drag queens have come close to the crown, most notably Sharon's ex Alaska. However, nobody else has actually made it all the way. That's not exactly surprising considering how alienating this form of drag can be. It requires absolutely flawless execution to win as an alternative drag queen. Sharon served perfection and snagged the crown. Time will tell if it will happen again, but it doesn't look like it will be this season.

Chad Michaels is a bit of an anomaly among the show's winners because his work on the show was not primarily impersonation, but I have categorized him as an impersonation queen because off the show she is known as a Cher impersonator. Chad is also not the winner of a normal season. She was runner-up to Sharon Needles in season 4 but came back and won the All Stars season. The current season has an impersonation queen in Derrick Barry, who is a Britney Spears impesonator. As you'll see below, however, it doesn't look like this year will see her take the crown.

The Winning Queens

Runway Queens

Comedy Queens

Alternative Queens

Impersonation Queens

The Queens of Season 8!

To see what kind of impact might be in store for the breakdown of the winning drag genre's on RuPaul's Drag Race at the end of the current season, I tried to get a sense of which contestant's have got the most buzz. I did an anlysis of two thousand tweets from that were sent between 3/24 and 3/31 using the #dragrace hashtag. I created a word cloud to see which three queens were the most mentioned contestants and may stand the best chance of winning. These three questions are pictued below. From left to right, we have Robbie Turner, Naomi Smalls and Chi Chi DeVayne!