Talk:RuPaul

Now infobox Pic

Not a necessary edit but I was wondering if it would be possible to change the infobox picture, seeing as Ru's image is very different now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.195.133.125 (talk) 18:56, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I see what you mean, and I understand and support it. But sadly it is not possible to change the picture because there is no other picture of RuPaul on Wikimedia Commons.Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 00:25, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Gay Icon Project

In my effort to merge the now-deleted list from the article Gay icon to the Gay icons category, I have added this page to the category. I engaged in this effort as a "human script", adding everyone from the list to the category, bypassing the fact-checking stage. That is what I am relying on you to do. Please check the article Gay icon and make a judgment as to whether this person or group fits the category. By distributing this task from the regular editors of one article to the regular editors of several articles, I believe that the task of fact-checking this information can be expedited. Thank you very much. Philwelch 20:18, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Jonathan Ross birthday

I reverted this bit:

"As the British writer Tony Barrell has pointed out (London Sunday Times, November 17, 2005), RuPaul was born on exactly the same day as the British broadcaster Jonathan Ross."

This isn't a "this day in history" article, so there's no need for this kind of information. --Amcaja 17:31, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

they were also both born on the same day as me but why mention any of it? Vortinax (talk) 20:36, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

The transitive use of the intransitive verb "revert" above ("I reverted this bit") is patently a solecism - ie, poor English. Is English not Mr Smithson's first language?

• To the author of the above comment: Welcome to Wikipedia. Please sign your name using four tildes ~~~~ when making your posts on talk pages. I would also suggest that you get an account for yourself. Also, please refrain from comments that could be interpreted as personal attacks on other users. Although revert as a transitive verb is not normal English, it is a widely used term of art on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Revert. --Cjmnyc 04:54, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Always wondered...

Does anyone know if RuPaul had breast implants? Or is that all smoke and mirrors done with pecs, some pushing around, and a little drawn in contours with make-up? Any time I've seen RuPaul as a man, it didn't seem like there was anything there... but maybe he tapes it down if he's going out as a man? I don't know... (Corby 00:22, 16 March 2006 (UTC))

He's a fully functioning, "normal" male. (physically) The "breasts" you see (when they're exposed) are most likely form-fitting "molds" in the shape of... breasts. When his "breasts" are under fabric, it's most likely a much simpler case of boob simulation. Color and creases can be matched with makeup competely, too! It's amazing what some people can do.

Article gender viewpoint

The free and easy mixing of using both "he" and "she" to refer to RuPaul, even within the same sentence, is most disconcerting. Example:

"In 1996, she landed a talk show on VH1, appropriately called The RuPaul Show, where he interviewed celebrity guests and musical acts."

I think we should choose one and use it consistently. At least within the same sentence. The previous advice about using "she" when referring to performances in drag and "he" when referring to personal life is too obscure, we can't expect people to know the difference when reading the article. My vote is to use "he" consistently since RuPaul is not continuously in drag.

Elronxenu 10:57, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it does become very difficult to read. My advice would be to use 'he' exclusively throughout the article. For the sake of making the article readable, it's not being offensive to the LGBT crowd. - Richardcavell 23:57, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry kids, it's very offensive. Most transgendered persons prefer the gendered pronoun that suits the way they currently gender themselves. In many situations this is a little more cut and dry - people who habitually assume the gender opposite to their biology will also assume an appopriate pronoun. RuPaul, on the other hand, is a drag personality. She is sometimes male and sometimes female. But in the interest that this article is about the personality that made her famous, the appropriate pronoun to use is the feminine. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 205.211.168.15 (talk) 21:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC).

I don't find it offensive at all to use 'he' or interchangeably use he or she. If you're confused, look at the title of the article every time and remind yourself you're reading about RuPaul. Then you'll get it. Confused? See title. Huh? Look at title. MAke sense? And RuPaul is not transgendered, but a drag personality. NYDCSP 11:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

One obvious solution here is to split this into two articles. One for RuPaul (character) and one for RuPaul Charles (performer). "RuPaul" the character is female and has a very specific persona. She is not synonymous with her creator, actor RuPaul Charles, who is male, and is a real person with a real biography and a real life, and has other creative projects outside of performing the drag character "RuPaul". Please see a similar situation with the articles on Stephen Colbert. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.238.185.113 (talk) 00:23, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I can see no good reason to split the article, or to be concerned about pronouns. RuPaul is male, and identifies as male. RuPaul is his real name. There's no evidence that he's transgendered, or identifies as female, even when in drag. Indeed, as we quote in the article, "RuPaul is noted . . . for his indifference towards the gender-specific pronouns used to address him - both 'he' and 'she' have been deemed acceptable. 'You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don't care!'" We can safely refer to him as "he." Exploding Boy (talk) 00:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a bad idea to interchange gender. If for example, we did an article about someone transgender, we might use he before and she after their change in identity ( historically speaking, when referring to events.) But in RuPaul's case he has made it clear he doesn't care in the past it seems. So he seems appropriate. 165.225.34.64 (talk) 20:11, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

How tall?

How tall is RuPaul? I've thought about becoming a drag performer as I'd enjoy dressing up in glamourous clothes, but I'm tall even for a man. I think I heard on a chat show interview he did once that he's really tall, which makes me feel a lot better!

According to some internet research that I've done, RuPaul is about 6'2". Hope this helps :) Coredumperror 10:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

However with a wig (up to 1 ft.), heels (~6in.) and other draq acessories it can make someone appear taller than they really are. BrenDJ 03:29, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

He was on the show Top Chef, the lady there said he looked like he was 11', so he must be quite tall. 83.109.103.44 16:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

RuPaul is 6'2" tall, though he often signs his autograph "6'7" of my love, RuPaul," in reference to his height when wearing high heeled shoes. TheGoonSquad (talk) 23:59, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Queer Duck

Wondering if it would be appropriate to insert a line in the biography part of singing the theme lyrics to the animated series Queer Duck. (in 1999) Johngagon 21:50, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Serious Vandalism

It's been a while since I've played cleanup on a moronic misspelling tagger, but the following is out of my league. In the section "Supermodel (You Better Work)", the last unattributed paragraph is extremely problematic. "On Novemeber 7, 2006 he was found performing felacio on multiple men in a back alley of a southern Indonesian club outside of Merced, California. He was found perfoming on 12 black males and a Palestinian. Later on that night, Rupaul and Martha Stewart were found scissoring in a behind a Little Ceasars in Merced, California. He denies these accusations, but during the commentation his breath smelled of vaginal secretion. "Everyone knows damn well he's disgusting", stated Richard Simmons at a public gay resort in San Fransisco, California".

I can't delete it in the edit section because it doesn't show up. I hate to ask others to do what I should be able to, but could someone PLEASE pull this nonsense out? If RuPaul is guilty of this, then please have the common courtesy to properly attribute the source. I can't remove it because it doesn't appear on my screen when I enter the edit page. Someone knows more about the program than I do. Too bad they can't direct their energies to something more useful to society. Autoeroticasphyxiation strikes me as a hobby that might be appropriate for this vandal.

Family Guy Reference(s)

Seemingly there's no escaping gratuitous "Family Guy" references on this site. I say, all "Family Guy" comments should automatically be scrutinized and deleted if deemed irrelevant (I'm sorry; is "Family Guy reference/ irrelevant" a redundancy?) Relgif 01:17, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

THANK YOU! Wikipedia is (still, after seven years) plagued by references to The Simpsons and Family Guy, regardless of how irrelevant they are to the articles in which they appear. I'm glad I'm not the only one who notices (and is annoyed by) this. Lots of Love, Anonymous. 75.27.42.188 (talk) 17:34, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Running for President?

The article states that he ran for president in 2007 for a brief period of time and gathered a strong Internet following. I couldn't find anything on google or any news websites. Can someone provide a source? Is this just vandalism?--Kwake20 (talk) 01:25, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Where is the source stating that he/she is dead?

I was just doing some browsing through this site, and I saw that RuPaul passed away today! I've been searching the net, and I have come up empty-handed. Where is the source?Wfspma (talk) 04:23, 23 June 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wfspma (talk • contribs) 04:20, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I see it's been removed. Never mind...Wfspma (talk) 13:30, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Poorly designed chart

Somebody added some chart info, but it was absolutely UNINTELLIGIBLE. Umm, were you even SOBER? I'll clean it up. : P

Disputed claim about #1 hit in the UK

Okay, this is serious... WHAT THE HELL!? "Supermodel" hit #1 in the UK, according to some contributor. I searched google and couldn't find any proof - I'm absolutely shocked if it really did. WE'll leave it for now, because it looks rather pretty. : P UPDATE: And according to the list of UK number ones on wikipedia, it never did.

.... so it must have been some kind of club chart. If it is, we need that specified.

Does anybody know why the image link isn't working?

\== Pronouns: Masculine or Feminine? == Does anyone know whether RuPaul prefers to use masculine or feminine pronouns? If RuPaul prefers to be called "she" (as some drag queens and nearly all MtF transgendered people do), it would be very rude to use "he". Anyone have any info? - user:Montrealais

Looks like "he" is fine.

Someone once asked him on a TV show I saw which pronoun he preferred, and he answered, "You can call me he, you can call me she, you can call me Regis and Kathie Lee!" so I think he doesn't mind one way or the other. Angr/talk 14:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Does the term transgendered exclusively mean transexual? I thought transgendered was an umbrella term, which includes drag queens.

It's confusing. RuPaul is a gay man who sometimes dresses like a woman, ie: a drag queen. "Transgendered" is just confusing in this article. Exploding Boy 07:05, Mar 12, 2004 (UTC)

Transvestite and transgender are entirely separate things. A drag queen is the former, while only a person with a sex-change operation is the latter. –radiojon 03:47, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

That is not correct. Transgenderism has nothing to do with a sex change operation. The term is intended to include ALL individuals who live outside of traditionally accepted gender roles. For instance, famous murder victim Brandon Teena, who was a man who had been assigned female at birth (but who had no type of sex change operation,) was a transgendered person. So are drag queens, drag kings, cross dressers, etc... Ergo, to use an analogy: all transvestites are transgendered, but not all transgenders are transvestites. Pacian 02:09, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I would suggest reading the wikipedia articles, and reading elsewhere, on transvestite and transgender. Hyacinth 04:27, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would switch him to "gay actors". A transgendered person identifies as a member of the sex they were not born. (This does not necessarilly mean they've had a sex change, though. Dil in The Crying Game was transgendered.) However, I believe RuPaul identifies as a man and mearly dresses as a woman.

Is RuPaul actually gay, though? I haven't seen actual direct evidence in which he said that he is gay. --Nlu 23:10, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

• While refering to Rupaul you should say "she" when refering to anytime he is in drag. When refering to childhood or personal life you can use he. --BrenDJ 20:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I actually find this topic interesting. I came to RuPaul to see which pronoun would be used after noticing another entry for Coco Peru used "he" uniformly. I understand that RuPaul doesn't care personally, but just curious-- is there a wikipedia standard for this? Is it the "character" that uses a "she" with references to the individual subject using "he"? I'm sure this topic like every other on wikipedia has been discussed to death. Can someone point me to where? ---Replysixty (talk) 20:35, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Very much not NPOV

This article as it now stands has all kinds of non-neutral language. A comedy club in Atlanta is "infamous". Says who? RuPaul was "famously" the only drag queen allowed to dine somewhere. Famously? I don't think so. He might have been allowed to dine there, but that fact is not famous. Berle "inappropriately" touched RuPaul's breast. Again, not NPOV. Interlingua 14:42, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I will agree with all of these statements except the last. You would be hard pressed to argue that a man touching a woman's (or drag queen's, or even a man's) breast without invitation is somehow NOT inappropriate. CouplandForever (talk) 02:31, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Cleaned up some of the article, taking out references to "CDs available on his website". Article still needs work, imho, editing out too many references to chart placement of Ru Paul's music. rich (talk) 09:36, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

RuPaul versus Milton Berle

I remember the exchange between Berle and RuPaul a bit differently; although it was clearly tense and they did go off-script. Berle said something like "Listen, I was wearing dresses when you were in a diaper." RuPaul instantly replied, "Wow, now I'm wearing dresses and YOU wear a diaper!" Berle was clearly furious and didn't find it at all funny. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.16.199.253 (talk) 01:24, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Is RuPaul single/married?

Someone told me RuPaul has been dating some tall, blond Australian man for decades?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.159.111.98 (talk) 06:11, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Filmography table

I suggest either adding another column for "billed as" or splitting the existing table into two RuPaul and RuPaul Charles. Anyone else on this? --Brendanmccabe (talk) 19:31, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Why? I don't see any reason for this. EnDaLeCoMpLeX (contributions) • (let's chat) 21:11, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

He/She etiquette

I know in the article it says he or she is acceptable to him/her, but I see in the opening it states both he and she in different spots. Shouldn't it be uniform in the article (Or just he really since it is a he?) I don't know what the style guide states for drag queens, crossdressers, transgenders, etc. So I'll leave it to the regular editors to advise/change. Dancindazed (talk) 23:44, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

The style guide says - and regardless of what the style guide says, the only appropriate or acceptable thing to do is - to use the pronoun appropriate to the person's gender. So a trans man (ie, a man who was declared female at birth) is refered to as "he", a trans woman (ie, a woman who was declared male at birth) is refered to as "she", and a male crossdresser (ie, someone who dresses in what's considered women's clothing because of that association, in most cases only occasionally, but regardless of assigned-at-birth sex identifies as a man in everyday life), which as I had understood it includes RuPaul, is referred to as "he". But I've read a couple of things today including the quote in the intro to this article that imply RuPaul might be genderqueer (ie, doesn't identify as a man or a woman), agender (the meaning should be clear?) and/or gender fluid (ie, gender shifts on at least a semi-regular basis, either on a sliding scale or between 1 or more fixed points), any of which would make it more complicated. Different genderqueer people for example have a wide variety of peferred pronouns, including "they", "it" (but which can be quite offensive if used to refer to someone, including a genderqueer person, who hasn't chosen it) and a range of neologisms derived from traditional female & male ponouns. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.218.183.184 (talk) 01:20, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

In any event, somebody should go through and rationalize the gender pronouns in the article, so we don't have things like "she released his third album" .... Wormyguy (talk) 07:46, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. I get that RuPaul is neutral about gender pronouns, but it makes for confusing reading, as wording in the above sentence would normally be referring to two people, ie. someone else released RuPaul's third album, or RuPaul produced someone else's album. It's probably better for the sake of this article just to pick a pronoun and use it consistently, but I'll leave that to someone who understands the issues better than I. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.253.44.102 (talk) 09:19, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we can use something from here?--Canadafreakazoid (talk) 22:40, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

RuPaul being gender/pronoun-indifferent to me does strongly imply that he/she has effectively a nonbinary identity (at least with the whole picture in view – if it weren't RuPaul, I'd just assume this is a cis person who doesn't realise how much pronouns matter to many/most trans people). However, he/she doesn't explicitly identify as such as far as I know. Even this list, which accepts more indirect statements as well (like "I'm not only a man but also a woman", not literally using terms like nonbinary or genderqueer), doesn't list RuPaul, apparently because he/she never made a comparable statement. You can technically have a nonbinary identity and still identify as binary (if only for practical reasons maybe, or simply because it doesn't feel right to you to identify with labels like nonbinary or genderqueer or some more specific label like neutrois). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:29, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Infobox photo?

I've noticed that the photo in this page infobox is from the era of Ru's second Starrbooty movie. I'm not sure what the exact image policies are for infoboxes, but it seems that we should try to find a picture of RuPaul in his more well-known "Glamazon" drag. That's the style he utilized for "Supermodel (of the World)" and RuPaul's Drag Race, which are what he is best known for. The Starrbooty-style drag just doesn't seem to provide the best representation of RuPaul's public image; the second Starrbooty movie marked a low point of his career. Chevsapher (talk) 05:00, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 April 2015

Just in case there's vandalism and move for this article.

Not done: requests for increases to the page protection level should be made at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. That said, page protection is almost never done "just in case". Wikipedia articles are only protected in response to ongoing vandalism that's already occurring in an article. See WP:PP for more information. --ElHef (Meep?) 19:54, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Infobox photo?

It's a literal cardboard cutout of RuPaul. Why is it in the infobox? --Aleccat 19:19, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

No reference to RuPaul's DragCon?

Per this, this, this, and this? --Aleccat 19:24, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

No mention of him on Broad City (Comedy Central)?

he plays Ilana's boss at the sushi restaurant. He is not in drag.

RuPaul supports Fascism, Dictatorship and Human Rights abusers By Doing Business in Thailand

RuPaul's page should show that she supports the Thai dictatorship by her willingness to do business there. Add her name to the list of entertainers willing to work under dictators who abuse human rights.

NaturalEquality (talk) 02:53, 19 January 2018 (UTC)