‘Drag Race’ Legend Adore Delano Comes Out as Trans & Details What Comes Next

A huge congrats to Adore Delano who just came out as trans. The Mexican-American drag superstar revealed the news in a healing and unapologetically honest video posted to Instagram.

Adore Delano became a star when she competed on RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2013. She finished as a runner-up to winner Bianca Del Rio and has been a fan favorite since then, especially due to her music, style, and connection with fans. Lately, Delano revealed on social media that she’s been receiving a lot of comments about her appearance and gender, which led her to open up about what’s been going on in her life.

“I wanted to let everybody know that I am transitioning,” she proudly shared. “I kept it really kind of hush-hush the first three months because I wanted to go through kind of like the beginning stages of puberty privately. But I’ve found that it’s been very enlightening and has made me probably the happiest I’ve ever been in my adult life.”

Adore Delano also talked about her journey to embracing her trans identity. She mentioned her decision to become sober as being a great step towards facing the body dysphoria that she dealt with for most of her life. This is something that she’s previously shared on Twitter as well.

“I feel beautiful,” she said. “I feel like the chemical imbalance or whatever it was in my head is now leveled. This is a feeling from dysphoria to euphoria, I’m not completely there. We’ll get into that in a bit. But I’m on the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ right now.”

While in high school, Adore Delano actually began living life as a girl with her mother’s full support. It was her appearance on American Idol in 2008 that she says forced her to de-transition away from her trans identity. That mindset carried over into her appearances on Drag Race and Drag Race All-Stars.

“I suppressed everything,” she added. “I threw it away. I burned it. I tried to reinvent myself. It’s something that I’m really good at doing at the Scorpio rising, but I reinvented myself into something that was so uncomfortable. It was almost like a sacrifice in order to get what I wanted career-wise.”

Fortunately, Adore Delano is now in a place where she feels comfortable enough to share her journey, that she is transgender, and that she’ll be using she/her pronouns. In November, she will undergo gender-affirming surgery. 

Support from the community was swift with her fellow Drag Race stars congratulating her in the comments of the post, especially the drag queens who also identify as trans. “I’m so proud of you. Welcome home sis,” wrote Peppermint. Gigi Goode, Monica Beverly Hillz, Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté, and Vanessa Van Cartier also expressed their support for Adore Delano.