It’s hard to do a death drop when you’re hungry. That’s why
RuPaul’s Drag Race icon Shangela Laquifa Wadley is stepping up to help fuel her royal colleagues with a fundraiser dubbed Feed The Queens. Drag performers have been hard hit by the COVID-19 lockdown, often finding themselves doubly out of work — while they moonlight as kings and queens, their day jobs are often in industries like food service and retail which have also come to a near-full stop thanks to the pandemic.“Drag queens are truly some of the most resourceful people in the world,” Shangela told
People magazine. “But we have to remember that our community is a marginalized community indeed… We are accustomed to not always being able to have access to resources. Not only because we're drag queens, but think about the different layers in our drag community. We have a lot of queens of color, myself included, from various racial backgrounds. We have people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. We have trans performers. And you know that statistically, resources aren't always allocated to those groups in ways that they are to some others,” she said, explaining why the fund was putting an emphasis on encouraging performers of colour to apply.[video_embed id='1977627']RELATED: Megan Thee Stallion, more celebs attend All Black Lives Matter protest[/video_embed]Shangela, known offstage as Darius Pierce, has been living the lockdown life in Paris, Texas with her grandmother while looking for a way to assist out of work queens who may be struggling financially while bars and other venues remain closed. “Next month I'm going to have to choose between paying my rent or buying groceries,” a friend told her.“I thought if we could help out 1,000 queens across America, to give each a $100 gift card for groceries, we could really make a big step towards fighting hunger in the drag community,” she said. So she took her cue from
Drag Race’s $100,000 (say it like RuPaul) grand prize and made that her goal, partnering with The Actor’s Fund to get it done. “One person’s commitment, one person’s involvement can manifest such beautiful change,” said Shangela, echoing the efforts of the drag performers who came before her to play instrumental activist roles in the LGBTQ+ movement.
Feed The Queens sees Shangela joined by Bob The Drag Queen, Eureka O’Hara, and Frankie Grande (yes, that
is Ariana’s brother) to help out with the fundraising heavy lifting. “No artist should go hungry because the world took away their stage,” says Grande. The performers are in the process of planning an enter-taint-ment extravaganza that will act as an online benefit for the project. “I went to
RuPaul's Drag Race 19,000 times and I never won $100,000,” jokes Shangela. “But now I want everyone to join me in getting that feeling, but for queens in need.”[video_embed id='-1']BEFORE YOU GO: Watch this husky totally ruin a yoga workout[/video_embed]
