Aronoff Center, Cincinnati, October 18
By David Lyman
“I auditioned for pit crew,” Kameron Michaels said when she made her grand entrance at the top of Season 10 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” The pit crew, for the uninitiated, is made up of hunky guys in underwear who decorate the stage, but don’t compete. Then, glancing over at the half-dozen queens who were already onstage, she added: “But this is going to be waaaaay more fun.”
Was she throwing down a challenge? Already?
“Hardly,” says Kameron, speaking by phone from her tiny Nashville apartment. “I was petrified. Not being a full-time drag queen and walking into a room with all that talent. I mean, I was a hairdresser. That was very intimidating.”
Kameron Michaels / Provided
Kameron and a crew of other drag queens will perform in Cincinnati’s Aronoff Center Thursday night, October 18 as part of RuPaul’s “Werq the World Tour 2018.” The show is reminiscent of the TV show’s “Battle of the Seasons,” a spectacle that brings together queens from past seasons into a glamorous one-night throw-down.
The show is hosted by Bob the Drag Queen, winner of the Season 8 competition. Joining her are a small army of crowd favorites. There’s Season 10 winner Aquaria, along with runners-up Asia O’Hara and Eureka, along with some drag-world luminaries like Kim Chi, Valentina and Violet Chachki.
Kim Chi / Provided
From the outset, we knew that Kameron would be a different sort of performer. Her first entrance wasn’t a particularly outrageous one. Not like Monét X Change, who you just knew was going to own the stage. Or Aquaria, with her cheeky sass. For all her over-the-top performances, Kameron is often soft-spoken and reserved.
What we do remember, though, is that look. Those arms. Those shoulders. Tattooed and bulked up. There was nothing wispy about her. She quickly earned the nickname “The Bodybuilder Barbie.”
“What can I say,” says Kameron, speaking from her tiny apartment in Nashville during a 36-hour break from the tour. “I stepped away from drag for a relationship. Between doing hair and the gym and the relationship, drag wasn’t that important to me.”
After three years, though, she decided to return to drag. Maybe it was the humdrum of the daily routine that got to her. Cutting hair, no matter how satisfying or profitable, could hardly have matched the excitement of life on the stage.
But after three years in the gym, she cut a distinctly different sort of figure than she had before. The goal of so much Southern drag, you see, is to be as feminine as possible. Somehow, those severely cut triceps didn’t fit into the traditional image.
Kameron Michaels / Provided
“People made me very self-conscious about it,” she says. “For a very long time, I wouldn’t show my shoulders. I wouldn’t wear sleeveless dresses or show my shoulders. But when I started Season 10, I thought ‘what the hell. This is who I am.’ I wore sleeveless and I didn’t look back.”
With her new-found confidence, she roared through the season, doing everything from an evil queen festooned with feathers to a 1960s Cher. She was Season 10’s Lip Sync Assassin. And even though she didn’t win, she was on top of the world.
Even before the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” finale in late June, she had been touring with the “Werq the World Tour.” Between that and her own touring act, she’s been on the road almost constantly since May.
You could forgive the girl a little exhaustion. But Kameron isn’t complaining.
“The response has been amazing everywhere we go,” she says. “I like the camaraderie of being around the other girls. This has been a great move for me. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Tickets are on sale now at www.CincinnatiArts.org, 513-621-2787 or at the Aronoff Center Box Office, 650 Walnut St., downtown.
