Victoria "Porkchop" Parker is the stage name of Victor Ray Bowling (born 16 January 1970),[1][2][3] an American drag performer and actor who came to international attention on the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race. He is notable in part for being the first contestant ever eliminated in the history of the franchise. Parker has also appeared elsewhere on television in and out of drag, and he has also served as a backup dancer for Miley Cyrus.[4]
Parker has been deemed one of the show's most successful and recognizable drag queens.[5][6] Although finishing last on his season of Drag Race, Parker has won over 100 pageants in his career as a drag queen and has toured internationally. He has frequently appeared as a guest on later seasons of Drag Race as Parker, with RuPaul often explicitly paying him homage due to his position as the first eliminated queen in the show's history.
Parker began performing in drag for the first time on January 16, 1987, her seventeenth birthday. She accompanied her friend to a predominantly African American local gay bar, both of them dressed in an attempt at drag, and watched a drag pageant that was occurring at the bar that night. The next month, she performed in a talent show at the bar while dressed in clothes that she had secretly borrowed from her mother and wore no wig, only showing her natural hair, which was styled "like Jessica Fletcher" (from Murder, She Wrote). Despite receiving boos, she was informed that she had potential as an entertainer. In June 1988, she became the first Caucasian person to win the club's pageant title.[3] She started seriously competing in drag pageants in 1990, with her first being the Miss Gay USofA at Large 1990.[citation needed] Her original drag name, Victoria Renee Parker, emerged as a combination of "Victoria", a feminized version of her birth name, Victor, "Renee", a name that she simply found "very pretty" (and shared the same first initial of his birth middle name, Ray), and "Parker", a homage to 1985 Miss North Carolina Joni Bennett Parker, who was a Fayetteville native.[3] She almost selected her name to be "Victoria Renee Bennett", still as an homage to Joni, but didn't want a situation to arise where, after a show, her co-performers would say "Oh, she’s Bennett".[a][3] She was known by the aforementioned name until around 1995–96, where her nickname was given to her by her drag mother, Carmella Marcella Garcia, after Parker's ability to cook the entrée of the same name.[7] Garcia "adopted" Parker as her drag daughter after watching her compete for the title of Miss Gay North Carolina America.[3] Parker initially reacted with disdain the first time that Garcia introduced her as "Porkchop Parker", although it eventually grew on her, and she has described it as "more memorable" than her previous drag name, and "a great gimmick".[3] He has won over 100 pageants,[9] including Miss Continental Plus 2003 and Miss'd America 2013.[10][11][3] At the time of her Miss Continental Plus win, she had been working at The Connection, a gay bar in Louisville, Kentucky, and had previously placed as first runner-up at the 1996 edition of Miss Continental Plus.[3]
Film and television
Parker was in the documentary Trantasia, which documented the undergoing of The World's Most Beautiful Transsexual Contest, and was filmed in Las Vegas. Parker was scouted for the competition and competed, despite the fact that she did not identify as transsexual.[3] The documentary debuted in 2006. In 2008, he appeared in the documentary film Pageant with Alyssa Edwards and other queens detailing their experience on Miss Gay America.[12]
Parker was on the E! show Botched (Season 3, episode 4) to fix the silicone problems with his nose, including a point where the skin was starting to decay.[14]
RuPaul's Drag Race
Performing in 2017
Parker was announced as one of the nine contestants for the inaugural season of RuPaul's Drag Race on February 2, 2009. Prior to his casting, he had been hosting shows at Legends Nightclub in Raleigh, had just won Miss Gay DC, and had competed in the 2008 edition of Miss Gay America.[3] He has been described as the season's only older and plus-sized queen.[15] Parker was eliminated during the first episode, becoming the very first contestant ever eliminated in the history of the show. He was sent home by Akashia.[16] Because of this, RuPaul always addresses him with "Hey Porkchop" during all of the Drag Race live reunions, starting with season 4.[17]
Parker has been brought back on the show by RuPaul several times, in homage to being the first contestant ever eliminated.[18] He appeared during the recap episode of RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars 2 and was featured in winning queen Alaska's rap.[19][20] Parker was also brought back for the first episode of season 10 of RuPaul's Drag Race to help judge the mini-challenge.[21] In 2019 she appeared as a guest for the first challenge in the premiere of season eleven of Drag Race posing with Soju.[22]
In March 2018, Variety said that Parker was one of the 10 most successful queens in their careers after the show.[6] He has toured internationally.[6]
As of 2018, Parker was still publicly vying for a spot on RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars.[25] Daniel Welsh of Huffington Post wrote "we're surprised contestants like Jessica Wild, Ongina and even Victoria "Porkchop" Parker are still sitting on the shelf, waiting to be plucked up for All Stars."[26] Since then, both Ongina and Jessica Wild have been featured on the fifth and eighth seasons of All Stars, respectively, although Parker is yet to appear back on the show.
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