A runner-up in RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7, a brief contestant on All Stars 2, a close contender for the crown in All Stars 6, and finally the winner of All Stars 10, Ginger Minj’s Drag Race journey has been a long one. While her All Stars 6 loss sparked controversy, her All Stars 10 win did too, but for very different reasons. This time around, some Drag Race fans claim Ginger’s All Stars 10 win is the result of favoritism and production rigging. They’ve taken to social media in droves, leaving nasty comments about Ginger and taking aim at everything from her ethnicity to her weight.
For longtime fans of the self-proclaimed Glamour Toad, it’s disheartening to see Ginger’s hard-fought win corrupted by internet trolls. Interestingly, the haters are overlooking the real problem: The All Stars 10 “Bracket format” and big Lip Sync Smackdown was never going to result in a satisfying win for… anybody.
The Lip Sync Smackdown Complicated the All Stars 10 Finale
Unlike the flagship Drag Race, All Stars switches its formatting from season to season. This has resulted in a varied reception from fans and controversies to follow. (Remember All Stars 1 putting the queens into pairs to disastrous results?) Still, one thing each season has in common (apart from All Stars 7) is eliminations. Just like regular old Drag Race, All Stars typically whittles down its competitors to three or four queens. However, come All Stars 10, that standard went out the door in favor of dividing the competitors into three Brackets. And while half of the cast got the boot before the semifinals, eight queens still walked into the grande finale with promises of a shot at the crown. The problem? Most of them didn’t stand a chance.
RuPaul framed the Lip Sync Smackdown as THE challenge, which implies whoever is the best lip syncer should win the entire thing. However, shouldn’t track record come into play? Clearly, it did. Ru just didn’t make it a point of saying it because… uh… it would destroy the stakes. Would it make sense for Kerri Colby, a queen with no challenge wins, to beat out Ginger, a queen with four wins, in the last episode of the season? Of course not. And that’s where the actual problem lies.
Going strictly by challenges, Ginger takes the clear lead with four challenge wins, including the coveted Snatch Game. Next in line, with three wins each, are Bosco and Irene, followed by Jorgeous, Lydia, and Daya Betty, who each have two wins. If we were looking at a “traditional” All Stars finale, the top three would likely come down to Ginger, Bosco, and Irene. Jorgeous would also be a strong contender, but not necessarily the shoe-in everyone claims she is, at least based on wins alone.
Regardless, had the lip sync finale consisted of just Ginger, Bosco, Irene, and Jorgeous, we’d probably be looking at a finale worthy of excitement and suspense. Instead, we got a Lip Sync Smackdown that ultimately felt like a formality leading to the big Ginger vs. Jorgeous showdown. Including eight queens—half of which usually wouldn’t have been in the finale—created disappointment. Unless Ginger absolutely bombed a lip sync, she couldn’t lose. Still, that’s not favoritism. It’s track record.
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You Can Cry Favoritism, But Ginger Just Stomped
It’s easy to be disappointed with All Stars 10. As a diehard Ginger fan, even I walked away feeling blah about the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong. Ginger undoubtedly deserved to win, but she deserved to win in a season with better structure. With four challenge wins, two lip sync wins (not including the Smackdown), and just an overall good attitude, I’m shocked anyone is arguing against it. Really, she probably would have won the Talent Show, too, if not for her Jiffy Pop-esque dress on the runway.
Citing favoritism and production rigging is tricky when each Bracket of queens competed in the same types of challenges (music, comedy/improv, and design/makeover). It’s not as if Ginger’s Bracket only got improv assignments and everyone else had to make dress after dress in patience-testing design challenges. As for her controversial lip sync win against Denali (and/or Jorgeous), Ginger knows how to hold stage presence. Flips, twirls, death drops, and dancing are all fine and dandy, but the purpose of lip syncing is to emote and, yes, LIP SYNC. Transmitting the song’s energy, whether through comedy or something a little more sultry, is important. I don’t care how impressive the dancing is; it means little if there is no soul behind it.
It’s also worth noting that Ginger didn’t bend to drama. She remained professional. She remained consistently good, and, more importantly, she remained focused. As a multi-season Drag Race competitor, she faced a different kind of pressure. While people like Irene were proving they had more to show, Ginger had to compete against the expectations she already set. It isn’t any easy thing to do, and as the backlash has proven, it doesn’t always matter how good you perform, either.
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Don’t Blame Ginger; Blame Production
One look at social media, and you’ll see the same things. Drag Race never crowns a Latina queen, or Drag Race never crowns a heavy queen. Despite Ginger belonging to both of those underrepresented groups, it doesn’t seem to be “good” enough. Sure, Ginger might be Puerto Rican, but apparently the Irish side of her diminishes her Puerto Rican ethnicity. Yes, Ginger might be a plus-sized queen, but her weight loss is allegedly the only reason she got the crown.
Rather than celebrating Ginger’s win, or at least moving on quietly, some people have decided they are the judge and jury about her identity. I wouldn’t think that in 2025, telling other people who they are would be considered cool, but here we are. Apparently, a Puerto Rican queen didn’t win the crown because she didn’t look or act Latina enough. Sigh.
It’s also bold to cry favoritism when both Jorgeous and Aja have appeared in the franchise three and two times, respectively. As Ginger herself said in an interview with EW, “RuPaul hasn’t had an issue putting me in the bottom, making me lip sync for my life, and not giving the crown. There’s never been an instance where I was favored throughout the past… They built the narrative for themselves.”
A troubling format, coupled with a nonsensical Lip Sync SmackDown featuring too many queens, has led fans to build a narrative of favoritism, when, in fact, it was simply poor production design. Ginger’s wins in All Stars 10 and prior speak for themselves. She is a fierce talent who knows how to play Drag Race. Ultimately, Ru will pick the queen that best represents his brand, and if we’re talking Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent, Ginger has them all.
(Also, if Jorgeous won. Some of you would have been crying that it should have been Ginger. That is all I’m going to say.)
