'RuPaul's Drag Race' season 18 premiere event. Deonté Lee/BFA.com Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text RuPaul's Drag Race has kicked off its eighteenth installment, crawling closer and closer to a milestone 20th season. Premiering almost 17 years ago, the series has gone through plenty of changes as the franchise worked out its now polished structure: a batch of drag artists compete in weekly challenges; one queen earns a win for their performance; two queens land in the "bottom" of the competition and perform against one another in a lip sync for their life; and the winner of said lip sync stays in the running for the title of America's Next Drag Superstar. Related Stories TV 'RuPaul's Drag Race': Bianca Del Rio Returning to Host 'The Pit Stop' YouTube Recap Series (Exclusive) Movies Adam Shankman's RuPaul-Led Action Comedy Gets Title, Release Date (Exclusive) It's a tried and true format that has remained steadfast over all 18 seasons, its three varying network homes and a plethora of international spinoffs. But in the early days of RuPaul's Drag Race, before they snatched up 29 Emmy Awards, there was no preexisting framework for queens to reference going into the competition. They simply went into things blind, as all first-season reality TV contestants do. "When we started, we had no blueprint," season one winner BeBe Zahara Benet tells The Hollywood Reporter. "We were going in with our full potential of who we are. There wasn't anybody before us to see how to deal with [being] part of a platform or a show like that. Everything you saw, it was just authentic. It was real and it was pure." Nowadays, competitors know they're filming a TV show and that their careers will receive a boost from extra screentime. That's not necessarily a negative - plenty of beloved reality TV moments are somewhat fabricated. But that doesn't mean viewers aren't catching onto the inauthenticity that overproduced moments create, especially in the context of the show being a competitive series. "I think a lot of times now, people go in [to Drag Race] with a bit more planning than they need, because they think, 'I need to be this character. I need to play this role. I need to create this persona,'" BeBe adds. "It's not necessarily authentic to who they are." Season 11 champion Yvie Oddly argues that fundamentally, "the competition itself really hasn't drastically changed that much." Of course, Drag Race has implemented minor format shifts over the years, "but the heart of the competition is really the same thing." The production of RuPaul's Drag Race on a TV level has undoubtedly heightened. Take season one for example, which notably implements a glossy look that viewers have dubbed the "Vaseline filter." Nowadays, the quality is noticeably pristine, further pointing toward a growth in resources that comes after years on air. "A lot of [it is] money (laughs)," BeBe points out. "Let's not even talk about just the artistry, but just even production. To see the amount that is going into producing the show, and how much people are actually spending to be on the show, it's like, wow, to me." BeBe's not wrong - the opportunity to appear on the world's largest Emmy-winning drag competition show, combined with the production level increasing each year, has created an expectation for how queens should present themselves on the series. Season 13 competitor Gottmik revealed she spent $20,000 on her runway package for the show, while Plastique Tiara allegedly spent somewhere around $250,000 preparing her looks for RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars season nine. The demands of competing on RuPaul's Drag Race have become a conversation in the show's orbit, one that, unfortunately, doesn't have a clear solution. The standards expected of drag performers have intensified over the past 17 years, and that raised standard comes with a few pros and cons. "Through the years, drag queens have been incrementally causing each other to step up their game," Jinkx Monsoon, winner of season five and All Stars season seven, explains to THR. "I think of the way I do drag today versus the way I did drag 15 years ago when I started - it's a whole different world." Season nine aired in 2017, and Sasha Velour says she's certainly noticed a contrast when it comes to the show's fashion standards, a shift she noticed beginning around the time of her installment. "So many queens brought the most incredible fashion on the show, and that was not something that happened so much in the nine years that came before me," the winner says. "I look back on some of those costumes and was like, oh, we could never get away with that now." Aquaria, season 10 winner, echoes Velour's thoughts, pinpointing a change in runway standards around 2017-2018. "Whether it was season nine, but parti