The Vixen has easily been one of the most polarizing and controversial drag queens to ever enter the werk room on RuPaul's Drag Race… whether she wants to see it that way or not.
From the minute she walked in and uttered the words "I just came here to fight," many of us knew that we were in for something when it came to this Chicago-based queen. We didn't know what at that point, and to be quite honest, many of us still don't all this time later.
It's hard to really pinpoint one particular word to describe The Vixen after she became the most talked about queen from season 10 (outside of Vanessa "Vanjie" Matteo for much different reasons). It's pretty incredible, for both of them, how neither made it even close to the final four and yet they are the most memorable.
There are two fights that The Vixen was apart of that made the RPDR fan base discuss her overall persona in a very debatable kind of way. The first fight was with the whole Miz Cracker and. Aquaria situation that she got involved in. The second one was the battle between her and Eureka, which quite frankly made the ones between Sharon Needles and Phi Phi O'Hara look like a play fight between two best friends compared to how these two behaved with one another.
She got eliminated after the Cher challenge, and the season after her exit became a bit dull to watch with little to no drama between the remaining queens. Then, the season 10 reunion happened last Thursday, and we were all left completely gob smacked over what really went down.
In my opinion, this situation went far beyond "get your popcorn ready" or "ooh this is some good tea" as it was much more of a real life situation for The Vixen, Eureka, RuPaul and everyone else on that stage plus the millions of people who were watching at home.
So the question remains… is The Vixen a victim, misunderstood or something else after all of this went down?
I'll say some positives about The Vixen to begin. She's very well-spoken, intelligent, and brought a really great perspective to this show that we haven't seen before. She also knows how to beat a mug really well and her outfits throughout the season were really enjoyable to watch (my favorite being her runway look after the panel challenge). And yes, she even had some cute one liners during Snatch Game when she played Blue Ivy Carter (the way she said "fat" and looked at Eureka was pretty funny).
Do I think she's innocent in all of this? No. She instigated the whole Cracker/Aquaria thing whether she sees it that way or not. She didn't have to get involved, and she did, and because of this she got called out. No one came to her defense in that situation, and even Monet X Change literally got off her chair at the reunion to defend herself over claims that Cracker faked her way into getting on the show. So in this situation, she was in the wrong.
The whole thing with her and Eureka is really fascinating. I for one am not Eureka's biggest fan. I can understand how the other S10 queens were more than likely cold to her during the beginning of the season, as she knew how the show operated, she probably had some good touring money to afford some better drag outfits than the others (allegedly), and had a second chance which has really only happened to a couple of queens in the past.
Did The Vixen full on admit that she went into S10 with some pre-conceived notions about Eureka? Yes. Was Eureka completely innocent in that insane fight between the two of them on Untucked? Nope. Both of these queens are very opinionated in their own ways, and the situation was never going to get resolved as their voices got louder and louder.
To be honest, I was a bit on Eureka's side during the whole fight between the two of them, until the reunion happened when Vixen pretty much said that she was playing this whole thing for television. Not only that, but she also admitted to "testing" her. This is what i mean when it comes to Eureka being innocent… she wasn't. Did she want to maybe resolve the issue with Vixen so that they could have a genuine friendship? Sure. Could it also be that she wanted to look good for TV and be the bigger person here (no shade) and make The Vixen look bad? Absolutely.
The one sentence from the reunion that really got to me is when The Vixen said "everyone is telling me how to react but no one is telling her how to act." It sorts of fits the narrative that Eureka has gotten all season, in that (in my opinion once again) they gave her a remarkable edit of the queen who got tragically sent home in S9 and persevered a year later. If anything, The Vixen was the one to be the interesting deterrent in that storyline that perhaps the show didn't want but it happened regardless.
The reunion was hard to watch for many reasons, as the only queen that stood up for The Vixen was Asia O'Hara,which kind of mimicked what happened during the season as well. I got very emotional watching Asia tear up, in that not one single queen went to go check on The Vixen after she left. Not even RuPaul, and these are supposed to be her "girls." Instead, Ru harped over and over again about how this was a "leading a horse to water" type of situation where you can only do so much for someone who doesn't want to listen.
But did no one want to listen to her? Was her narrative so negative at that point that anything she said was completely moot? If that's the case, then she had every right to leave as not one person stood up for her minus Asia. Then she left, Asia and Ru got into it, and then they did their best to seamlessly go to the next topic. The problem is… the whole ordeal was left completely unfinished and Eureka remained on the stage somewhat unscathed.
So now with the season close to being over (the finale is in three nights), you have to wonder what her legacy will be for years to come. I don't think The VIxen should ever do an All Stars season for redemption as she has really nothing to redeem. She was blunt, honest, open, and true to herself where a lot of these queens play to the camera in order to get hundreds of thousands of social media followers who see them as the nice, sweet hero and not an authentically real person.
Was The Vixen flawed in her attempts during the show? Perhaps. Does she deserve to be judged to the point of getting a major social media backlash and having to leave a reunion for a show that she worked really hard to be part of? F**k no. So in conclusion, what is The Vixen?
If anything… she's herself. And that is a truly awesome thing to be in this day and age.
This was created by one of our Contributing Writers and does not reflect the opinion of Instinct Magazine or the other Contributing Writers when it comes to this subject.