RuPaul

▪ 1996

      After immortalizing the phrase "You better work" in the 1993 hit song "Supermodel (You Better Work)," cross-dresser RuPaul took his own advice and did just that. By 1995 his flamboyant, blond-bewigged alter ego (a transformation that took him about three hours each time to attain) had done the television talk-show circuit, commercial product endorsements, and movie and television roles and had had success on the dance and video charts with a multiplatinum-selling debut album, Supermodel of the World. Then in mid-1995 his autobiography, Lettin It All Hang Out, was published.

      RuPaul Andre Charles was born in San Diego, Calif., on Nov. 17, 1960, to parents who divorced by the time he was seven. In what was probably one of his earliest gender-bending ventures, RuPaul reportedly sawed the breasts off of a Barbie doll at the age of five. At age 15 he moved in with one of his older sisters in Atlanta, Ga., and attended a performing arts high school. Among his personal heroes he cited the popular singers Diana Ross and Cher, who RuPaul had said were "oddballs" who made it big, and that if they could do it, so could he. "When I was a little boy I wanted to become a drag racer. Instead I became a drag queen," he said. So in 1987, armed with a flair for playing dress-up, he headed for New York City to seek stardom.

      His show business career began in go-go bars and on television on "The Gong Show" and MTV. Despite his overwhelming appearance—elaborate makeup and gowns and a height of more than 2.13 m (7 ft) in high heels and massive hair—RuPaul was determined to convey that he was a person just like everyone else, saying, "I may look different, but I put my panty hose on one leg at a time," and "You can't get satisfaction by living your life according to someone else's rules." He had noticed that people were often unable to see beyond images and responded to him differently depending on whether he was in or out of drag. "I feel very powerful when I'm in drag . . . but as an African-American male, I can walk into an elevator and have people clutch their handbags."

      With barely time to bat a false eyelash, RuPaul appeared in several films in 1995: Blue in the Face, The Brady Bunch Movie, and two drag-themed films, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar and Wigstock: The Movie; he flipped his wig to play a male character in a made-for-cable-television movie, A Mother's Prayer. Toward the end of the year, his fans were anxiously awaiting his second album. (ANTHONY L. GREEN)

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