For Mandy Mango, drag is about being “your most unapologetically queer form of yourself.”
The Lansdale native who had her first drag performance nearly a decade ago as a student at West Chester University will be the second Philly queen to take the stage as a contestant on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” finding inspiration from Season 16 runner-up Sapphira Cristál.
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After graduating from college, Mango began moving through the drag circuit while living in Williamsport before she moved into the Philly scene about four years ago. Now, she’s gearing up to take the national stage and compete against 14 other queens for a prize of $200,000 and a collaboration with Anastasia Beverly Hills Cosmetics.
On the reality show, she looks to draw from both her Philly and Filipino roots. She came up with her stage name while eating a bag of dried mangos, a popular snack in the Philippines, where her mother was a pageant queen in the 1980s.
For Mango, drag is a place of freedom and self-expression. Growing up, she said she always felt insecure about her feminine-looking body, but she was able to reframe it in drag as something beautiful. It’s also helped her understand her femme side and explore gender fluidity in everyday life.
“Coming from a place where I was bullied for being feminine or enjoying things like musical theater and performing and having this Catholic upbringing, it was a chance for me to stop thinking so much about all that stuff and just lean into being myself and just having fun with music,” Mango said. “It just became a form of therapy where it’s allowed me to learn more about myself.”
By day, she works as a registered nurse specializing in HIV care and sexual health at Penn Medicine. Outside her work, she’s known for performing in Snatcherella 3000, a competition for night life in Philly inspired by “Drag Race,” and organizing the No Arena Drag Show in protest of the Sixers’ proposed move to Chinatown, which was later abandoned by the team.
Mango said she tried to keep her work and her drag life separate, thinking that being a nurse required a professional image and a drag queen needed a party girl one. But she’s since learned that both can feed into and inform each other. Especially for her patients who are LGBTQ+ or living with HIV, she realized she can be a comfort as a nurse and a source of joy as a drag queen.
She might diagnose someone during the day and see them out at a bar that same night, even if they don’t recognize her, she said.
About a year ago, Mango was in a slump and considering quitting drag, as she felt like she needed to find a way to level up or get out of the business. Then, she saw fellow Philly queen Sapphira Cristál compete on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Mango had met and worked with Cristál, a fan-favorite on Season 16, a few times, and getting on the show suddenly felt more attainable. She spent the next year working on her audition tape, although she almost lost the courage to send it and only submitted it two minutes before the deadline at the behest of her friends.
Mango, who called the Philly drag scene “full of heart and soul,” said she will honor the city in her “Drag Race” appearance. Just like Cristál, she plans to include Philly designers and artists in her performances, and she said her drag family will also be seen on the show. She said Cristál has been a “nurturing mother” to her while getting ready to go on the show, and she hopes to make her proud throughout the season.
“I’m really happy to follow in her footsteps, even though they’re, I don’t want to say big footsteps, but they’re very petite, luxurious footsteps to follow in,” Mango said.
Season 18 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” premieres Friday at 8 p.m. on MTV.
