Drag Race billboard targeted with crude graffiti in sickening ‘attack on the LGBT+ community’
The Canada’s Drag Race cast. (BBC)
A Canada’s Drag Race billboard has been vandalised in the West Midlands, in what members of the LGBT+ community fear is a targeted attack.
The BBC has plastered the faces of 12 Canadian drag queens across the UK to promote the latest Drag Race spin-off, currently streaming on iPlayer.
However one billboard, in Shelton, Stoke-on-Trent, has had the queen’s faces scrubbed out by vandals.
Divina de Campo, runner-up of Drag Race UK and a former Stoke resident, said: “This does seem like an attack on the LGBTQ+ community.”
“It’s really disappointing that in 2020 we are still having the same conversations we were having in the 1980s,” Divina told StokeonTrentLive.
"It's just an advert. Nobody is going to tie you up in pink fluffy handcuffs and force you to watch it." https://t.co/nneMBHLIzZ
— StokeonTrentLive (@Sotlive) July 8, 2020
Divina said that she couldn’t understand “why people are so bothered” about the billboard.
“Nobody is in your space, they aren’t forcing you to do anything.
“It’s just an advert at the end of the day. Nobody is going to tie you up in pink fluffy handcuffs and force you to watch it.”
Staffordshire Police told PinkNews that they haven’t yet received any complaints about the act of vandalism.
BBC bets on Canada’s Drag Race as UK edition hit by coronavirus.
Canada’s Drag Race began its glittering run on the BBC last Friday (July 3) to stellar reviews.
Ahead of the series’ launch, judge Brooke Lynn Hytes told PinkNews how excited she was to introduce the UK to Canada’s drag scene.
“Canada is this giant untapped market that no one really knows about,” Brooke said.
“We don’t have a huge pageant scene, we’re not highly competitive people, that’s the biggest difference with the US. But we have ever kind of scene imaginable. We have bearded queens, we have club kids, we have circus freaks, we have clowns, we have feminine queens – it’s all there. People just don’t realise it yet.”
The series is expected to be another success for the BBC, following last year’s phenomenally popular Drag Race UK.
A second series of the British edition has been commissioned and had entered production before the coronavirus pandemic forced it to go on hiatus.
