Fridae

Need some more Drag Race in your life? This time, the franchise lands in the Philippines.

Are you up to speed? Let’s get into it.

The mini-challenge

This week’s mini-challenge was a good one for setting up some storyline options. Each queen had to rank everyone else in terms of strongest to weakest.

Ending up on top was Precious, while at the bottom was Brigiding. We haven’t seen much from Precious so far, so this seemed a surprising result.

Also, Brigiding seems to be a really accomplished queen and the reasons that everyone was giving for putting her at the bottom was primarily that they didn’t like her.

Lots of potential for lots of drama.

The challenge

This week’s challenge was a girl group challenge.

Precious (as winner of the mini-challenge vote) and Brigiding (as loser of the vote) were the team captains.

The teams were:

• Pink Pussy Energy: Precious, Xilhouette, Minty, Gigi, and Viñas.
• FlexBombs: Brigiding, Eva, Marina, Turing, and Morgana.

They were both working with the same track, and they had to record lyrics and create choreography. The final performance was delivered on the main stage before the runway.

Overall, this was really entertaining. While Viñas really popped on the PPE team, the FlexBombs seemed more cohesive and gave a stronger performance overall.

The Runway

The category this week was Spooky Folklore.

• Precious: Precious gave us a vampire bride giving birth on-stage, with one of the mechanical babies walking across the stage. Camp, spooky, drag.
• Xilhouette: Xilhouette gave us a similar concept to what we’d seen with Precious, but Xilhouette gave us the glamorous version. It was all very pretty but the judges felt that given that “sexy black magic” is Xilhouette’s aesthetic that this was a missed opportunity for her.
• Minty: Minty gave us a witch doctor adorned with bones. This was solid but didn’t push any boundaries.
• Gigi: Gigi gave us full-on spooky baby. She was the baby. This was pure Halloween horror, without much connection to drag. Committed.
• Viñas: Viñas created a clever optical illusion that she had been cut in half. Camp, spooky, drag.
• Turing: Turing gave us a spooky bird. Iit was a strong look and she committed to the performance of the character on the runway. Solid.
• Eva: Eva was a swamp princess. It was a relatively simple look, but the moving wings were a nice touch.
• Marina: Marina was the queen of the mermaids. It was a put-together look. Solid.
• Brigiding: Brigiding was a clairvoyant. It was a relatively simple look, but it hit the assignment.
• Morgana: Morgana was a bird. It was a bit underwhelming and not very spooky.

The Judging

Team FlexBomb were the winning team, and Turing was declared the overall winner.

That left the Pink Pussy Energy team all at risk of elimination.

Ending up in the Bottom 2 were Gigi and Xilhouette, which seemed like a lucky escape by Minty.

The Lip-sync

The track was Glamazon by RuPaul.

This is Drag 1.01.

Gigi was clearly disadvantaged by her costume – she was dressed as a sexy baby whereas Xilhouette was head-to-toe Glamazon.

It never really worked for Gigi in this performance and it was no surprise when Xilhouette was safe and Gigi was eliminated.

Episode 3, done!

What's life like for LGBTQ people in the Philippines?

What’s life like for LGBTQ people in the Philippines? Let’s take a look at some of the key equality indicators.

Is homosexuality legal in the Philippines?

Yes. Same-sex sexual activity is legal.

Are there anti-discrimination protections in place for LGBTQ people in the Philippines?

There are some anti-discrimination protections place, but further work needs to be done to implement comprehensive protections against discrimination on the grounds of sexuality.

Is there Marriage Equality in the Philippines?

No. There is no legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Marriage is specifically limited to opposite-sex couples.

What’s life like for LGBTQ people in the Philippines?

In general, the Philippines is a fairly welcoming and accepting place in relation to LGBTQ people.

However, there is quite a lot of variation in the experience of LGBTQ people. Some parts of the country are very religious, and homophobia is frequently encountered.