Natalie WintersRuPaul’s Drag Race Star and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez favorite “Nina West” released a “Drag Alphabet” music video aimed at teaching young children how to recite the alphabet using Drag community lingo.
The song is part of West’s “Drag is Magic” album and initiative to “refocus everyone to remind them that [West] wanted to also be in the children’s space,” as she told Decider.
The video relates each letter in the alphabet to terms ostensibly familiar to drag queens and their fans. For example, West sings “J is for jush,” “K is for ki ki,” and “V is for va va voom.”
Jush, coined by drag queen “Jasmine Masters” is a “fill-in word”; however, Masters provides some examples of proper usage: “Use your f*ckin jush! Share your jush. Spread your jush. Clean your jush. Douche your jush. F*ck that jush. Just get your god damn jush!”
According to the official RuPaul Drag Race Fandom dictionary kiki is defined as “gossip, small talk, chatting, or a heart to heart.” The dictionary also warns to not confuse the word with “kai-kai,” defined as “when two drag queens have sex in drag/without removing their drag.”
Despite the explicit nature of the video, it features several young children including one dressed as a drag queen and a nine year old prominent transgender activist “Ivy Alona.”
Much to Ocasio-Cortez’s dismay, West was eliminated from season 11 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, prompting the congresswoman to mourn her departure on an Instagram livestream.
She praised West: “to the queen that went home this week, just know how important you are to the bigger picture, and I’m so proud of you and your fundamental kindness and goodness. I’m really looking forward to watching you grow. You’re amazing, and I’m sad, but I’m excited for you.”
This video is just the latest attempt at assimilating drag culture into the mainstream, following the proliferation of drag queen story hour into public schools and libraries.
