Manila Luzon was a fan-favorite from RuPaul’s Drag Race but in All Stars season 4, RuPaul banned one of her dresses.
RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars season 4 contestant Manila Luzon revealed she was forced to change a runaway outfit after RuPaul called her original look in “bad taste.”
In 2019, Manila was competing on the fourth All Stars edition of the popular reality show when an outfit was deemed too offensive to be aired on television. The drag queen changed her look on the show but posted a photo to her Instagram along with a backstory about its banning.
The look consisted of a corset made to look like a giant sanitary pad stained with fake blood and a large red skirt. Luzon wanted to normalize menstruation and use her platform to make a point about women’s health.
In the following, we take a look at Manila Luzon’s most shocking moments on RuPaul’s Drag Race, including getting a controversial dress banned from the reality show. We also discuss Manila Luzon’s drag show hosting job.
Manila Luzon’s Banned RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Look Made A Statement About Women’s Health
During a runway challenge on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 4, entitled ‘Curves & Swerves,’ Manila Luzon wanted to wear something a bit different from the padded looks her contestants brought to the main stage.
RuPaul declared the look, in which she dresses as a bloody sanitary pad, in “bad taste.” The design, made by The Lady Hyde, was never shown on the show but posted on Manila’s Instagram.
Instead, the popular drag queen wore her backup outfit, which was a riff on an 18th-century Versailles quilt.
“Because it is not my show, it’s Ru’s. But because of Ru, I have my very own platform to speak for myself and show you all my interpretation!”
Manila expressed frustration that her look was censored as her goal was to de-stigmatize menstruation. “I was really looking forward to wearing this gown that I think celebrates a perfectly normal human experience!” she wrote on Instagram.
“Many of my fans are young women who may feel pressured by society to be embarrassed by periods. It’s empowering to teach young women about their bodies, encourage them to celebrate them AND to question people who tell them not to!”
Luzon’s post has since stirred up criticism for the RuPaul-fronted show with many fans sharing their disappointment on social media. “Look at this, a show that should be about inclusivity yet again proves patriarchal. I would SO LOVE to see this on the runway,” one person wrote.
RuPaul and the Drag Race production team did not respond to Manila Luzon’s claim.
How Manila Luzon Was Involved In The Most Shocking RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Moment
Naomi Smalls opened up about eliminating Manila Luzon on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 4. During the show’s eighth episode, Naomi Smalls won the lipsync and decided to send home Manila, who was a frontrunner in the competition.
“When I signed up for All Stars, I signed up to play the game, and when I mean play the game, I really just mean have my best interest at heart,” Naomi Smalls in her YouTube video, Naomi Smalls: A Look Back At All Stars 4.
Naomi Smalls and Manila Luzon were paired together for the episode’s Jersey Justice comedy/acting maxi-challenge. They were both confident in their performance, especially when watching some of the other messier performances. Naomi started to resent Manila, who had competed three times on Drag Race, when Michelle Visage and guest judge Erica Ash claimed that Manila outshone her.
“Stepping off the stage and Manila being like, ‘Yeah girl, I ate you up’, and that’s when it clicked for me, ‘I don’t like this b****, I don’t trust this b****.’ And that just kind of wrote the script for the rest of the season.”
“I think they said, ‘You were not giving as much as Manila was giving,’” she continued. “When I signed up for All Stars, I signed up to play the game, and when I mean play the game, I really just mean have my best interest at heart,” Smalls added. So, shockingly, Naomi Smalls opted to send home Manila instead of Latrice Royale.
“I don’t think sending home a strong competitor is necessarily the reason I sent Manila home. I just sent Manila home because I didn’t trust her.”
When Naomi was asked if she would do it again, especially after the backlash from the Drag Race fanbase. “Oh absolutely! I’d absolutely do what I think is best for myself in the competition, and I think that was what was best for myself at the time.”
How Manila Luzon Ended Up Hosting Her Own Drag Competition
Despite her Drag Race controversies, Manila Luzon ended up as the host of her own television drag competition. Her show Drag Den, has a very different format from Drag Race.
“They have their formula and they’ve been plugging it into all these different countries. So we’re trying to do something very new and something that’s very Filipino.”
Soon after Drag Den was announced, RuPaul announced the casting for the much-anticipated Drag Race Philippines. This came as a surprise to many, including Manila, as the producers had been trying to get a Filipino spin-off made for many years.
Luzon admits she did put herself up for host of the drag race competition show, but the timing didn’t quite work out for the star. “But when the opportunity [Drag Den] came to me, I was like: ‘Well, I’m not waiting around.’ Any new opportunity, I’m gonna jump at, so I took it.”
Despite her not being offered the host role in Drag Race Philippines, she had no hard feelings for the show or the franchise.
“I’m excited that we have multiple shows. I’m going to be able to show and tell the stories of different queens and Drag Race Philippines will be able to tell their stories and showcase different queens. I think that it’s great because there’s more opportunity, especially for a country that doesn’t have a lot of opportunity for drag queens.”