We’ve all done it, with the start of a new year we vowed to eat healthier, not necessarily diet but just eat better. Queens lik
e Roxxxy Andrews, Tempest DuJour and Mystique Summers Madison, to name a few, have made quite fabulous transformations with their weight loss and work out regimen. We’re all happy when a queen losses weight. But what about when there’s some weight gained?
Recently, Jinkx Monsoon was “outed” for putting on a few pounds and went to Twitter to defend herself. She said things like, “Yes! I put on some weight…Skinny drag queens who put on a little weight, ARE GORGEOUS…How can a community that celebrates plus sized queens, be so vicious when someone small gains weight?”
This all brought the community to talk about the dreaded, “body standards” of the community. When I spoke with Joslyn Fox during our interview last year, she said people were very hard on her about her weight gain from the show to its airing. She explained to me that she was still smoking when she filmed Drag Race and after filming decided to 
make the healthy choice to stop smoking, which in turn led to a few pounds of weight gained. Joslyn, being the light hearted and bubbly personality she is, took the criticism as a positive thing because she knew that the gain came from a healthy change for herself.
But why is it that fans are so hard on smaller queens gaining any weight? These are, after all, grown men partying with their fans, traveling and doing multiple shows a week, if not a day. Their schedules are anything but regular, they are up all night, wake up in the morning to jump on a plane and eat when they can. Not all of them have the luxury of working out and eating exactly the way they want to and quite frankly, sometimes they just want to splurge.
How many free drinks have you turned down in your life? How many gifts of candy, gift cards for restaurants or homemade baked goods for the holidays can you resist? The point is, they’re human, they eat, they drink, they sleep and yes, they happen to look better than most natural born women. But let’s not push the ridiculous standards imposed by ridiculous industry images onto yet another part of society. It’s bad enough women feel bad about themselves by the standards imposed on them. Let’s not add that to the already difficult world we share in the LGBTQ community, once again, I ask you to be kind to each other.
Does Jinkx still look good? Yes, girl, she’s still gorgeous, she’s still entertaining the children and she’s still going to let that water fall off that goddamn duck’s back! And Joslyn Fox, she’s still keeping it foxy, she’s hot and she’s a doll. Don’t say behind the keys of your computer what you wouldn’t say to their face and have some damn manners. Whatever causes the weight gain is their business. You don’t know what someone is carrying with them because we’re all going through something.
Bring light and love to all those around you and you too will have light and love. What do you think? Skinny queen to skinny queen plus 10 pounds… yay or nay?
