RuPaul’s Drag Race Has Made Me a Better Doctor

I audibly gasped as Nymphia Wind kick-flipped during her final lip sync for RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR). Shortly thereafter, she was the first East Asian queen crowned “America’s Next Drag Superstar.” As I reflected on another season of RPDR, I realized how much I was changed by watching the show for the last four years.

I am a cis-gendered, heterosexual woman. I’m sure it can be difficult to imagine how I’ve connected so deeply with a show like RPDR which features largely gay men and trans women. I found RPDR in reruns during the pandemic. I was working as a busy academic hospitalist, and I was feeling isolated. I was seeing patients through hazy plastic eyewear while covered head to toe in identity-blurring PPE. My time at the bedside was shortened to limit my exposure to the virus. I was disconnected from humanity and the joy I found in my work was lost. Then in sashayed RuPaul.

RPDR is a competition reality show to find “America’s Next Drag Superstar” as judged by the attributes of creativity, uniqueness, nerve, and talent. Drag queens are selected to compete in a myriad of challenges, including a final lip sync for their life. The lip sync’s loser is eliminated each week, and is asked to “sashay away”. The host and head judge is RuPaul Charles, arguably the most renowned drag performer of our time.

RuPaul, or Mama Ru, as he’s lovingly called by the queens, acts as a cheerleader, a role model, a voice of reason, and a therapist, pushing the queens to be their best, most authentic selves and to “quiet their inner saboteur”. Perhaps, this is the first lesson I took away from RPDR. In 2020, only three years out of residency and facing a pandemic when I was barely grasping non-pandemic attending life, this rang true to me. In medicine, we know it as imposter syndrome, that voice that tells us we don’t belong; that we aren’t good enough.

At the time, I was tasked with creating systems for caring for our inpatients with COVID-19; systems that would provide them with the best care under strained resources while protecting our clinicians and staff. “You don’t know what you’re doing.” My inner saboteur was loud and proud, overwhelming any confidence I may have had. RuPaul became louder. His final line of every episode began to ring in my head, “If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love anybody else?” He’s right. How can I approach my work, either administratively or clinically with hesitancy and doubt? I believed in myself and, you know what, others believed in me because of it.

It wasn’t only in administrative work where this applied. The pandemic was a time of doubt for everyone, but our patients needed us to be confident. They looked into my goggled eyes, worried, anxious, and scared. I couldn’t look back at them with fear. I held their hands, offering surety that I was doing everything I could, even when it didn’t always work. Leaving behind my doubt may not have always cured my patients, but it left space for me to give them more of myself. “If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?”

Of course, RuPaul’s line about love applied to me, but it wasn’t said for me, necessarily. The contestants on the show are marginalized by society. They frequently share stories of being ostracized by their own families and of being mocked for their artistic expression. They are persecuted by the government and often banned from public spaces. This aspect of the show led to my most important lesson from RPDR. I got to know people from all walks of life, through the lives of the contestants. The humans on the show made the defining characteristics and “risk factors” that we rattle off in the opening line of a presentation real and I could bring that to the bedside. My patients who have been marginalized became familiar and centered. I began to understand some of the barriers my female patient who was assigned male at birth or my patient who was gay and experiencing homelessness had faced before presentation.

I wish I was a perfect person who could empathize with anyone, regardless of whether they were familiar, but I think that’s unrealistic for us as humans. We create communities of sameness without thinking and unconsciously reject differences. Even our training is insular, surrounded for hours by people with the same goals and lifestyles. It takes work to recognize and fight those biases. I had taken plenty of bias courses before I discovered RPDR, but nothing had immersed me in the world of those so different from myself. In fact, RPDR made me realize that those who seemed so unlike me were not that far off from my own reality.

RuPaul says “We are all born naked, and the rest is drag.” He’s right. Drag queens are not the only ones taking on a persona. We are all making ourselves the person we think we should be while trying to find our place in the world. As I’m at the bedside of a patient, I recognize my privilege and my own drag as well as the differences we may have between us. I see my patients as fully realized people with experiences that have molded their choices, or lack of choice, and contributed to their current health. I learn about them as humans, not those acronyms after their age that we parade through a presentation. I’ve noticed since doing this, I spend more time with my patients. I laugh more with my patients. I cry more with my patients. I love my work more. I shed a little of my own drag and love myself more.

Finally, RPDR brings me joy. It’s silly and absurd. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a reprieve after a hard day and a reminder that humanity is something to be proud of after another headline that has told me otherwise. I try to share that joy with others. I often incorporate drag queens into my presentations and lectures. I brought my daughter to her first drag show featuring two RPDR stars. The show was just days before she was born; I was hoping to inject some of that art and joy from the performances into her little soul to bring into the world.

While I hope this will inspire readers to give RPDR a try, I know it may not be for everyone. Instead, I hope you will sashay away from the idea that you can only become a better clinician by reading research manuscripts. Similar to the queens on RPDR, success can have many “lewks” and doesn’t follow one path. Connect with people who aren’t like you. Find your own way to better fill your cup so you may pour it into your vulnerable patients. Make it fun, make it silly, and make it yours because “if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?”

Dr. Shaw is an associate professor, an associate program director of the internal medicine residency, and the vice section chief of education for hospital medicine at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, N.M.