In Dr Carol Dweck’s 2017 book, Mindset, she refers to college as a place “when all the students who were the brains in high school are thrown together”. Drag Race can be regarded as a similar location; being a space where people compete to receive the highest accolade; America’s Next Drag Superstar.
Since the show first aired, the phenomenon of RuPaul’s Drag Race spawned a grand total of thirteen original seasons with winners: Bebe Zahara Benet, Tyra Sanchez, Raja, Sharon Needles, Jinx Monsoon, Bianca Del Rio, Violet Chachki, Bob The Drag Queen, Sasha Velour, Aquaria, Yvie Oddly, Jaida Essence Hall and Symone. The show also had six All Star seasons with successful, winning queens being Chad Michaels, Alaska, Trixie Mattel, Monet X’Change, Trinity Taylor, Shea Coulee and Kylie Sonique Love.
Overseas, there have also been several seasons, including offshoots in the UK, Australia, Thailand, Holland and more.
There are several queens that are immediately associated with the Drag Race brand, aside from RuPaul herself. These include Bianca Del Rio, Trixie Mattel and Courney Act (winner of Celebrity Big Brother 2018); renowned for their roles on the show, and off, branching into theatre, TV and more. However, fans of the show may have more niche favourites, including the queen we are discussing today: The Reverend Doctor Silky Nutmeg Ganache.
Silky Nutmeg Ganache is thirty years old and entered the world of Drag Race as a viewer, inspired by plus sized queen, Jaidyn Dior Fierce from Season Seven. She auditioned for Season Eleven, and managed to successfully make her way onto the show with her first attempt. She competed in the eleventh season of RuPaul’s Drag Race against queens such as Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, Brooklyn Heights and Yvie Oddly.
She was a runner up in her original season, and was very vocal about her abilities to entertain an audience with her lip-sync performance. However, when she finally had to prove herself, she fell short, delivering what her fellow competitors regarded as a lacklustre performance against Nina West in the Drag Family Values challenge.
Seeking to prove herself in the finale lip-sync for the crown, she once again fell short.
Silky was renowned during her season for being loud, obnoxious, and – arguably – a spotlight stealer. Some fans will remember Silky establishing herself as a character in the Werkroom in Episode One of Season Eleven, where she met Miley Cyrus, picked her up and pranced around the room, elated to be in the celebrity’s company.
She, like many queens on the show, was regarded to be controversial, one fans hated to love, but didn’t necessarily love to hate. Teased by her fellow queens for her ego; being caught up too much in the stories in her head. The most prevalent experience that she had in this manner, was when she participated in the “face-kini” challenge, where the only makeup she wore, was a red lip. The judges perceived her look on the runway was a cockroach costume, not a fly, like she had hoped. She was critiqued for her minimal makeup.
In 2021, she returned to the competition; competing in Season Six of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, where, in a startling twist as a perceived front-runner, Silky was eliminated in Week Three, placing eleventh.
During her season of All Stars, Silky played what RuPaul called the game within a game, where the previously eliminated queens were lip-syncing in order to return to the competition. Silky, having placed eleventh, would have had to defeat seven queens in order to make her way back to the competition: Jiggly Caliente, Yara Sofia, Scarlett Envy, A’Keria C Davenport, Jan, Pandora Boxx, and Eureka O’Hara.
With A’Keria foregoing her chance to compete in the weekly lip-syncs, Silky won by default, and still asked RuPaul to lip-sync for her, and subsequently delivered an iconic performance to Barbie Girl by Aqua, by wearing a split face of makeup, with both hyper-masculine makeup and hyper-feminine makeup. In a nod to a previous Season Seven challenge, with the same makeup criteria, which sent Trixie Mattel home, Silky performed, turning from side to side, acting as both parts: Barbie and Ken.
However, what Silky showed, week in, week out, for a six-week streak, was a sense of fight and resilience that she carried with her, until the end of her journey, losing to Eureka O’Hara after her leg got stuck in her reveal. Despite the challenges that manifested themselves, in the form of numerous queens renowned for their skills on the stage, she managed to win every time, establishing a new record performance in the show’s history books, outdoing even BenDeLaCreme, who won five main challenges, back on All Stars Three, who only had three lip-sync wins.
Dweck described “people with a growth mindset might also like a Nobel Prize, or a lot of money. But they are not seeking it as a validation of their worth or as something that will make them better than others.” This is why I likened this mindset to her, over the other competing queens in this season. Because of Silky’s departing statement, after having lost her six lip-sync streak and her chance to renter the competition in a bid for $100,000 and a coveted spot in the Drag Race Hall of Fame.
“My run on all stars six is over I feel great because bitch I thought it was over six episodes ago. Tonight doesn’t define me as a failure, tonight celebrates me as a success. I won six, six lip-syncs. No-one has ever done that.”
In managing to acquire such an amazing streak, Silky will have put herself in the record books for time to come. She will be remembered, no longer necessarily for her loudness and her questionable outfits on Season 11, no, now she will be praised. She has redeemed herself and certainly will have gained a significant number of bookings in the wake of the lip-sync battle royale episode.
Based in London, U.K., and founded in 2016 by Arvind Mishra The Agile Works (www.TheAgileWorks.com), is an up-and-coming recruitment and Agile consulting company. Arvind is a Certified SAFe SPC and regularly delivers both private and public SAFe certification workshops.
He is a design thinking expert, Sr. enterprise, portfolio Agile Coach with over a decade of experience working as an Agile coach in diverse industries such as banking, pharma, retail, auto, oil, gas, consulting and government.
The Agile Works; a small team of three strive to help shape the leadership's mind-set and values in readiness for their business transformation journey challenges. With Arvind at the helm, we strive to provide you with the agility tools to make your company that can thrive, and not just survive.
To book a consultation, or for any enquiries, you can contact Arvind via the following email address: arvind@theagileworks.com