How Alaska Thunderfuck Is Creating Safe Spaces For Queens, Femmes, And Everyone

By Evan Ross Katz


"Everything must be leopard print," Alaska Thunderfuck declares on the next track of hew new album, Vagina. True to form, as she entered RuPaul’s DragCon on Saturday morning (May 25), everything was leopard print — the dress, the headband, the gloves, and her four minions, who flanked the queen in leopard print bodysuits that completely covered their faces. Subtle? Not quite.


Yet subtlety has never been piece of Thunderfuck's brand.


because the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars 2, Alaska was on hand not just to spread the word about the first-ever Drag Queen of the Year Pageant, which Thunderfuck organized on Sunday evening, yet to give fans their first listen of the album.


"It was really a surprise," she tells MTV News of  the album, which dropped on Friday without any promotion. "I think we just had a lot of stuff going on and I was just like… DragCon weekend, let’s just do it." And thus it was: a brand new album, the third solo LP from the singer, and her first in three years. The album follows 2015’s Anus, which included her hit single "This Is My Hair" and "Your Makeup Is Terrible," and 2016’s Poundcake, featuring  dis track "The T" and "Race Chaser,” the latter of which inspired her Drag Race podcast with fellow Drag Race alum, Willam.


Unlike past albums, which have featured Drag Race alum like Enjoy, Miss Fame, Laganja Estranja, Vagina contains no visitor stars. It’s also somewhat of a shift in tone for the artist thematically. Compare the lyrics from Anus ("This is my hair / This is my hair / This is my hair / This is my hair / I don't wear wigs / This is my hair / This is my hair / This is my hair / This is my hair / I don't wear wigs") to Vagina ("I take a look around the world and yes it blows my mind / Boys have fucked up this planet since the dawn of time / What, Noah's Ark-y, such malarkey / Brick by brick we disassemble the patriarchy") and yes it couldn’t be more clear.


"Some of the message is I like to get wasted at nightclubs and get thrown out," she says. "Some of the message is that, like a lot of people, I’m fuckin’ pissed off at how ladies are treated in this fuckin’ nation and in this world. So I just write what I’m feeling and that’s something I feel a lot."


And that passion to express what's on her mind can be heard on her popular Drag Race podcast, which is focused on the weekly discussion, dissection and dissemination of the show. "I care deeply about Drag Race and drag. It’s my life and yes it changed my life," she says. "I think of us like commentators, like on the Super Bowl you know how Terry Bradshaw sits there and is like 'this guy’s really good this season…' like we do that… just with Drag Race. I’m the Terry Bradshaw of drag. Not Carrie Bradshaw," she stresses, "Terry!"


Alaska Thunderfuck and Willam Belli perform at 2019 Tribeca Film Festival


Her efforts to prepare predominantly male-oriented spaces more accepting of females and femmes also extends to her drag pageant, which included non-binary and transgender contestants and also cisgender ladies, or what’s sometimes-but-not-always known as bio-queens. Moreover, the panel of judges featured five women: Drag Race stars Gia, Jiggly Caliente, and Peppermint, along with comedian Nicole Byer and drag king Landon Cider.


"I think Alaska is probably one of the most crucial drag queens to the drag community simply because she’s not afraid to do what’s uncomfortable sort in attempt to do what’s right," the night’s winner, Abhora, says as soon as asked what makes Alaska so special to so several in both the LGBT community and sub-community of drag performers.


"I’m blown away by the level of talent and fierceness that all eight contestants brought to the show," Thunderfuck says. "We did this competition as an experiment, to be able to see what would happen in a pageant that was open to each person, with diversity and inclusivity in mind. It’s a really fun art form where anus-thing is possible, truly," she concludes before being whisked back down to the main floor of the Con.


There, I watch as numerous fans — several of those teens and younger, dressed because the fearless Ms. Alaska Thunderfuck — wait for the chance to meet their queen, a leader who truly practices what she preaches: equality among all genders and leopard-print boldness.