Here are some RuPaul’s Drag Race queens throwing shade to help you through this heatwave

Jul 25 2019
Written by Ella Braidwood

Latrice Royale. (GIPHY/VH1)

Europe is in the midst of a heatwave. With temperature records set to be broken all over the shop, from the UK to France, we all need to just, well, to find some shade.

In the drag community, the term “throwing shade” dates back to the 1980s black ballroom scene in New York City.

The concept was immortalised by the groundbreaking 1994 documentary Paris Is Burning, where dancer Willi Ninja described it as a “nonverbal response to verbal or nonverbal abuse.”

At the time, Ninja elaborated: “If you said something nasty to me, I would just turn on you, and give you a look like: ‘Bitch please, you’re not even worth my time, go on.'”

The expression broke into mainstream culture with the premier of RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2009, with some definitions of the term expanding to include verbal insults.

To help you keep cool, here are some GIFs of the finest queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race throwing all the shade over the years…