RuPaul Charles is many things — if not everything: a two-time Emmy winner, a trailblazing talent, an icon of the LGBTQ community, a self-love guru, and the world’s most beloved drag queen.
And now, he’s officially a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the first drag queen to ever achieve that honor.
“As a kid we’d come up here — they’d drop me off right here on Hollywood Boulevard — so I could look at all the stars and dream that one day, I could be one of the stars,” he said during the ceremony celebrating his arrival.
“This is absolutely the most important moment in my professional career.”
“This is absolutely the most important moment in my professional career.” #AllStars3 mastermind @RuPaul achieves his dream of getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame https://t.co/oMS0Yi3gEG pic.twitter.com/gzlUc0WMzM
— Variety (@Variety) March 16, 2018
If the tears aren’t already flowing, that wasn’t the only momentous full-circle on display at this Hollywood queen’s coronation. Oscar-winning legend Jane Fonda presented Charles with the award, because she’s not only a close friend — but also inspired his initial leap into drag.
My career goals were decided 50yrs ago when “Barbarella” showed up in my consciousness. Tomorrow @Janefonda will present me with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. #allstars3 #dragrace @TOMofLA pic.twitter.com/gxUaRajGT8
— RuPaul (@RuPaul) March 16, 2018
On The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Charles explained that when he saw Jane Fonda’s Barbarella on the cover of Life Magazine in 1968, “my career path was decided in that moment. I was going to become Barbarella.”
Well, he did that — and so much more. At the ceremony, Fonda went as far as saying that his star should be “at least three sizes bigger.”
This incredible moment in Charles’ career and Hollywood history could not come at a more important time.
In a recent Vogue interview, he mused about what RuPaul’s Drag Race and his overall success represents in Donald Trump’s America:
“We live in such an egocentric world where identity is king, and we’ve elected the poster child for the ego in the USA… Drag is the perfect balance to that mentality. Ego is all about saying ‘I’m better than you are’ and drag says ‘you are not your clothes, you are not what it says you are on your birth certificate. You are a creation of your own imagination.'”
RuPaul’s Drag Race showed the world what this artform means, and how it can liberate everyone from the strict gender roles and binaries society tries to make us conform to. As his mantra goes, “We all came into this world naked. The rest is all drag.”
