Hey Kitty Girls
One of my absolute favorite shows to watch is RuPaul’s Drag Race. I’ve been a fan for years and it’s been really interesting to watch the show grow and evolve. While some things have stayed the same, like the Snatch Game or the need to know how to sew, things like the in-show advertising and sponsorships have changed a lot.
When the show first started, not a lot of brands were angling to be included. There were some big names though, like MAC who provided a prize pack for the winner. One brand that was a huge supporter from the start was Absolut Vodka, whose spokesman Jeffrey Moran appeared as a judge while their cocktails were supplied as the queens debriefed for Untucked (the accompanying show that shows the queens backstage during judging and deliberations).
Over time, brand integrations within Drag Race have grown immensely as AdWeek discussed in 2014. As drag and the show have become even more mainstream, even more celebrities and brands have clamored to be a part of it, appearing on Drag Race or featuring queens in advertisements. This season, Season 12 (can you believe it’s been on air that long?!) has had some of the biggest names as judges, including the legendary Chaka Khan and Democratic darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But what really caught MY attention was the sponsor of this past week’s mini challenge: PrettyLitter.
First of all, if you’re not familiar with the show, each episode consists of a mini challenge and a main challenge before the runway and judging. In the mini challenges, each contestant is asked to perform a random task that meets varying requirements with different time limitations. This week’s episode was focused on elections and for the mini challenge, the contestants “auditioned” to be Kitty Girl 2020, which again, was sponsored by PrettyLitter. The contestants danced and posed and played around a giant litter box while dressed like cats.
When I saw this, I nearly choked on my soda. Ru often refers to the contestants or other queens as kitty girls, even going so far as to write a song and do a remix with the top 4 queens on All Stars 3. I thought it was pretty funny and clever for PrettyLitter to sponsor this silly mini challenge since, ya know, kitties use litter. But it also made me think about brands using phrases (and other things) that originate in minority communities for corporate gain. So I started researching, starting with the origins of “kitty girl.”
After doing a little digging, it seems the origin of phrase comes from Aretha Franklin’s 1983 song “Every Girl (Wants My Guy)”, wherein Franklin makes a phone call to a friend whom she refers to as “kitty girl.” RuPaul became obsessed with the greeting, as discussed on his What’s the Tea? Podcast, and he later adopted it for use on his show and in several different songs.
While looking for information, I didn’t really come across any other references to the history of this phrase. I did however come across a fascinating article from Wired that discussed a really similar topic. Titled “How RuPaul's Drag Race Fueled Pop Culture’s Dominant Slang Engine,” the author examined how drag slang has crossed over into mainstream, at the expense of the history and meaning of the phrases. It doesn’t explicitly mention brands using drag slang but it makes the point regardless: “Is it problematic? Well … yas. Drag isn't just about queerness or femininity, but about race and marginalization….[This] vocabulary of resistance has been co-opted because it’s sparkly.”
So, that’s the tea. Was it wrong for PrettyLitter to have sponsored this challenge? I’m not sure. There is undeniably a large LGBTQ+ audience that watches the show and probably a fairly decent portion that owns actual cats. But there is also a large portion that is unattached to the community and may not have the full understanding of drag slang, which is a downside of mainstreaming underrepresented groups.
What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments!