Girls Know Nothing - S2 Ep30: Vanity Milan | Ru Pauls Drag Race, Drag In Schools & Uplifting Yourself

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

GKN is a female-focused podcast hosted by  @SharonNJGaffka GKN Social Channels:  Https://linktr.ee/girlsknownothing  Instagram: @girlsknownothingpod  Tiktok: @girlsknownothingpod TikTok: @girlsknownothing #girlsknownothingpodcast #buisnesspodcast #sharongaffka #bestpodcast #uktoppodcast

Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here, and it's a total game changer. Old-fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's Pocket Pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust-proof anti-burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus, your super light and ultra-durable pocket hose Copperhead is backed with a 10-year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what, an exciting exclusive offer just for you. For a limited time, you can get a free pocket pivot and their 10-patter pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size copperhead hose.

Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. W-A-T-E-R to 64,000. By texting 64,000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pockethose.com slash terms. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites.

With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. And there was a time where I said, I don't want to do drag anymore. This is not for me. This platform was supposed to be positive and spreading love and kindness and uplifting everybody around me. And the messages

and the comments that I would get weren't doing that. And there was a time where I said, not doing drag anymore. And I really don't want to live anymore. The comments were crazy. My inbox was nuts. And also being the least followed queen from my season and also being black just made it a little bit more harder for me to kind of get brand deals and put money in my pocket and my bank account and food on the table it became harder welcome back to another episode of girls know nothing you may recognize today's guest from season three of rupal's drag race uk and season one of canada's drag race canada versus the world vanity milan is also known as one of rupal lip sync assassins. So welcome to the studio Vanity. I want to know a little bit about how you got started in your like drag journey because you

don't just wake up one day and decide you want to do it. You definitely don't just wake up one day and say I want to put a corset on, padding and lots of makeup. I've always been a performer. I've been performing since I was a young boy and I went to a drag show in the royal voxel tavern in voxel yeah i know and i saw two black drag queens and the power that they exuded on stage when they were performing the performance the music the technicalities of everything the hair the body it kind of like enticed me into going hey this is something I could do I can dance I love music I love to put those things together and um I love hair I love makeup and I just really wanted to um kind of start something completely different from what I'm used to so I

just decided to ask them how they got into drag where did they start and they gave me the most amazing advice it was basically just like join competitions there are lots of drag competitions in the UK um and I joined my first competition and that's when I first started doing drag 2019 and I won that competition which then gave me the confidence to continue a career in drag yeah that's since I didn't know that drag competition obviously I know like Drupal like drag race is the only competition you would kind of see mainstream but you didn't know that there was like clubs that were actually giving drag queens an opportunity to perform in front

of people and win and it's not like a mainstream thing it's definitely let's say an underground thing where people kind of like it's like the ballroom scene yes where you know we're given opportunities to express ourselves in free spaces so what actually happens at these competitions so it's just like rupaul's drag race so you do like challenges you lip sync you lip sync for your life oh that word um every time he says it um but it's very much like rupal's drag race they give you challenges um and you have to come back week after week and prove yourself and there is an elimination process as well like if you're in the bottom and you get sent home with the lip sync you get sent home in the lip sync

i never did that though well yeah i've heard you're an absolute weapon when it comes to lip syncing so it was it was that was you winning giving you the confidence to go for drag race for sure like it it did give me the confidence to kind of apply but again I was very fresh out the gate when it came to drag like I started in 2019 and I think we filmed uh Drag Race in 2020 oh god yeah so you didn't have that much didn't have much and also it was very much at the end of 2019 I started so yeah you really made it easy for yourself I really did and then COVID happened as well didn't it so yeah I mean so like what was the process like for applying for Drag Race? So I had to get myself ready in the restrictions of COVID. Nothing was open. But before that, it was very much like, should I apply? Should I not apply? Yeah.

I've already won a competition. My head is in the clouds. I've got this very huge, gigantic head and the applications came straight after winning that competition. And I said, what's there to lose? I mean, if I don't get on this year, if I don't get on next year, that's not going to define me as a drag performer. Like I don't need that TV show. The TV show needs me. And this is what I tell a lot of the Queens that are applying. Um, so the process of me just applying was just, they need me for this show because I am the drag queen that they're looking for and I went in and they give you like some it's like a casting tape so you go in there and you talk about your experiences in drag and out of drag you talk about your life because obviously it's a tv show so they want to know a little bit more about your life outside of the drag world and um i just opened up because i feel like growing up there

wasn't many people i saw on television in the uk yeah who looked like me who was you know doing things positively and making sure that like there are things in the world or people in the world you can aspire to be I never had that I was always looking at the American queens and going I can do that but I can do that in the UK so that's why I wanted to go on drag race and that was a thought process when I was applying apply for the young queer black people who don't have anything in the UK to aspire to so like talking about being so open how do you see drag as a form of like self-expression just for yourself and for the LGBT community? Like it's a self-expression in itself like wearing makeup is a form of expression and being as creative as possible

with your makeup performing and you know just performing in front of an audience to music that they love and we love is a self-form of expression. And I feel like taking that and then turning it into something that younger people can aspire to and letting them know that they can aspire to be, or they can be anything they want to be,

whether it's a drag queen, whether it's a performer, whether they want to be in this industry, it's something that I can put out there as well I think that all of the drag events I've ever been to it always feels like such a safe space and zone and you can wear what you want well yeah maybe I've not I've not been to those kinds of ones but the ones I've been to feel very like safe to be who you are yeah and do you did you feel like that when you went on to drag race did you feel like it was completely safe to be who you are yeah and do you did you feel like that when you went on to drag race did you feel like it was completely safe to be who you are yes and no so there was a um issue with my season I was the only uh queen of color black queen on my season so I felt a weight

of pressure on me to perform to the best of my abilities but not get that stereotypical oh she is the stereotypical black girl that's coming on here and giving that rah-rah so I kind of kept myself to myself a little bit and was a little bit quiet a little bit closed off but when I did Canada versus the world I had other sisters where I was able to open up and be myself and be able just to express myself in in a natural way where it wasn't so forced or I didn't have to hold back so yeah were you really glad that you were given the opportunity to do Canada vs the world very glad like I was about to go on tour and do like Miss Milan hit the ground running tour and all of a sudden the opportunity came and I said oh god do I do the tour or do I do the tv show and I said well then Mama Ru calls answer the call

because this is another opportunity for them to bring you back and you can go and get an international audience to do your tour I mean I'm performing in Canada I've performed in Canada twice now which is amazing that is amazing I call myself the international over the seas uh diva that's what I like to call myself you know don't put yourself into a box right um but what what do you think that the lessons you got from drag race in Canada versus the world what do you think they taught you in terms of personally and professionally I think personally and professionally I think they mesh because I'm still a human being at the end of the day. I bleed just like everybody else bleeds. I cry everybody else cries and I have great days. And not every day is going to be a good day. And when it comes to just the lessons I've learned, it's patience is a virtue. Things are

never going to come to you or never be handed to you you can work hard and you can get the things that you want I believe in dreaming is believing in things that you want and I believe in manifestation and I manifested this life for myself I said I'm going to get on drag race I'm going to have a platform I'm going to give the younger generation someone that they can aspire to be whether it's a drag queen or anything else I have decided so that's the lesson that I've learned that I can use my platform to be a positive force for people who are not really feeling that positive yeah do you feel that do you feel more positive in or out of

drag like is there a difference between no your two personalities no I'm such a great person in or out of drag I'm such a great person I mean I've I was raised right yeah treat people how you want to be treated and my mum and dad has installed that into me from birth yeah and I feel like that's something that we or something that I take very seriously I treat people how I expect to be treated I love people hard I give them advice I'm like the drag grandmother that everybody wants in the UK because people are asking me should I apply for drag race and I'm like apply the show doesn't need you I mean you don't need the show the show needs you because it's called drag race for a reason yeah definitely what were your parents like were they supportive oh they absolutely

loved it I mean my parents already knew I was gay from a very young age when I came out they were like yeah we knew what's new but that's such a good thing that your parents like are so well connected to who you are but I also think that's a great thing to have a support system whether it's friends whether it's family whether it's the drag community I feel like if you have a great support system of people that are uplifting you and also you're uplifting them and there's a positive space and there's no no room for negativity I feel like that is something that helps as well especially with your confidence you've got your girlfriend going, yeah, you was a bad bitch. Like for real, you look good.

Your makeup is stunning. When I saw you this morning downstairs in the lobby, I said, wow, absolutely. You look incredible. And it was just a compliment sandwich. Like it was definitely just, we were loving off of each other. And I was like, let's get this interview started.

There was no, like I was under no illusion who you are when you got out of the car. I was like let's get this interview started there was no like I was under no illusion who you who you are when you got out of the car I was like yeah that's vanity right there definitely and like that was the first time I met you as well yeah but um do you still feel like a lot of pressure to represent black queer people in drag always because there's always something happening with the black community there's always something happening with the black community. There's always something happening with the queer community. And when you mesh those two things together, it's quite scary that I have that pressure because I have a platform and I have a voice. But at the same time, I take that scariness and I turn it into affirmations and things that you can't hold me back from and things that you won't keep me away from my dreams are bigger than anything else so one thing I always really want to know when you're talking about performing um and when Rue calls how do you approach lip sync battles so I I attack them head on um okay I let me give you an example so I did a scandalous um on season three yeah and it was mystique we got the sheet before with the songs and I said I don't care if I have

to end up in the bottom on purpose that is the song that I would love to perform every other song no and the reason why I wanted to perform that song is because I knew the message behind the song yeah I knew the power behind the song but what I didn't know is Alicia Dixon would be standing on stage as I was performing the song. So that gave me even more of an attack, this choreography attack, the lip sync. And also when I'm doing any other lip sync, it's, you want to give a show, you want to entice the audience into your world because, you know, you're in the shower sometimes and you're in your own world.

Invite them in a little bit because it's a fun world to be in. I don't like to hit the five, six, seven, eight, choreography, choreography, choreography. I like to mess up my lip sync so I can laugh at people in the audience who are laughing at me. And actually we're having a great time. It's not something that's so serious sometimes I'm having fun

because when I'm watching it it looks so effortless so I'm like is this planned or is it just like some are planned some are planned some are not I can get on stage and I've planned something and it just doesn't happen so I have to wing it yeah and then there's other times where you're just like you know what I know the song I know Beyonce very well I can watch something from YouTube or Instagram from Beyonce and go let me hit that five six seven eight and everyone knows it oh my god so like I wish I had that level of talent nobody needs to see me how I lip sync in the shower you better stop but how do you cultivate and maintain that confidence as vanity especially when you are performing on such big platforms again it's the support system around me my husband is my rock

he makes my outfits this one you see me wearing today he whipped it up last night i'm gonna need his number i'll give it to you after the show um but he has been the most supportive throughout this whole career since 2019 when he said i don't know why you're doing this to now where he's like if you don't get up and do this i'm gonna mollywop you and i feel like that is the confidence and that's the kind of thing that I need to get up every day and that's what gives me the confidence to get up every day but it also reminds me that the reason why I applied for drag race is to put other people on yeah and give them also a platform so that we can come together and continue to use our voices as one and when I see queens apply for drag race and don't get on I take them and I say it's not it's not all about drag race yeah it doesn't make or break you you are still working as hard as you were before like you look back at your career you think oh I was working really hard

now I do like a couple of performances here and there I can imagine as well because drag race is one of the very few mainstream drag um competitions out there that there are probably so many people going for it as well and I can imagine it's a really tough and competitive thing so even to be able to go to an audition but then you also have to think again when it comes back to the confidence thing I was picked out of thousands yeah that gives me a little bit more confidence to say that someone saw something in me yeah someone actually gave me the opportunity to use my voice my platform my lip sync assassin abilities you know they've given me that so it's always like if you've given me something thank you so much now I'm going to take that and run with it like they say Vanity Milan's gonna hit the ground

running like what would you say to people that don't have the same level of confidence of you like what piece of advice would you give them it takes time to get this type of confidence it really does um again the support system around you is very key um if you've got people in your circle that are wishing bad against you or who are not uplifting you in the way that you feel like you need to be uplifted cut them out your life or keep a distance yeah because at the same time these could be the type of people that are not giving you the confidence boost that you need you can you need people around you that are going to be like very honest with you but also tell you you look good i think it's what they're saying is like you are a mixture of the five people you spend the most

time with and if those people aren't giving you room to grow like you want friends that are honest you don't want ones that are always like if it's not giving what it needs to be gave like why are you in my circle like and I've I've literally cut people out of my circle because I'm like you're pulling me down you're not giving me what I need to be you know what I need so it's just you know I mean I can imagine that's still really really tough to like do that anyway and come to that decision well no no not really oh okay like sometimes I think for me it was yeah but for you it was just completely it was if you're not giving me what I'm giving back to you yeah it's time to go and I'm sorry love you I'll love you from a distance and you can love me from a

distance and I feel like it was very mutual like okay yeah you're on a different path of life I'm still on the same one i think it's about respect as well as yeah you don't have to be like in each other's pockets but not all the time and we still message here and there oh really yeah you're a better person here and there and it's just you know because again i am a great person yeah so it definitely is like oh i saw this picture of you look great today. Oh, that's really nice. Well, I know that the drag community often emphasises like sisterhood and support.

So how, I guess going on from that, what's the experience like with your fellow performance in terms of building that sisterhood? You know, at first it's always really like nerve wracking because it's like you're coming into a new space and people already know each other and people have heard heard about you but they don't know you so that pre conceived notion of like oh who is this person coming into our space is always in the back of your mind like okay i'm brand new but when you are embraced into any type of community it's it's an out-of-body experience especially with the

drag community let's say like my sisters took me in gave me advice because again 2019 I just started drag so it was just like do this with your makeup differently or do this with your makeup differently or do your hair like this or padding corsets where to get them from where to buy them I never knew any of that so all of this stuff now is being told to me and I'm like oh I'm one of you I feel like a drag queen now because we have that sisterhood and we can give each other advice on daily things regular things it doesn't have to be drag things we can go out for dinner and just talk it doesn't have to be so being indicted into the drag family is is so amazing because there's different people who do different things outside of drag or inside of drag and you learn from those

people and you're like I didn't know this before it's because i didn't know that person i always like relate drag to beauty pageants in a way because people when i used to meet beauty pageants everyone used to tell me i must be so catty you must all hate each other and cut each other's dresses up backstage and i was like oh i'll cut a wig don't try don't i will cut a wig however the queens that i know and love yeah they know and love me and they know my heart and i know theirs and it's got nothing to do and again it's it's that circle that you keep of queens and kings and everything in between it's it's such a really amazing like the london drag scene is really amazing i love everybody i need to go out more girl we need to go out straight after this

it's in the day don't tap me because i'm easily led astray love a little martini in the daytime but um do you feel like you the your sisters contributed to that level of growth and confidence you have or is it just of course um i have sisters in the us um a recent winner from canada versus the world r Raja Ohara, and another sister called Silky Nutmeg Ganesh, and they're black queens. And I learned so much by them not even saying anything. I just had to look. They were speaking with each other. I learned so much from them. And it gave me the confidence to be like, I've actually seen you do two, three seasons four seasons and come back each year and grow develop be able to have that confidence and I said well if you guys can do it so can I so even without having to talk with

anybody within the drag community I see someone's growth and it's just like well if you can grow so can I I actually love that that you feel like you can, like even just by speaking to each other or seeing each other be in those spaces that you feel like comfortable. And it's the same space. It's a space where you're meant to feel comfortable. It's a space where you are meant to feel welcome.

Overcoming obstacles is very much a universal experience. Everybody like overcomes challenges. What challenges have you faced on your your journey up to drag racing Canada versus the world um so coming off of season three of drag race um and being the only black queen on my season I got a lot and I see a lot of negative comments a lot of racist comments a lot of comments that said Rue carried you through the season because you were the only black queen and it was got nothing to do with my talent and there was a time where I said it I don't want to do drag anymore this is not for me this platform was supposed to be positive and

spreading love and kindness and uplifting everybody around me and the messages and the comments that I would get weren't doing that and there was a time where I said not doing drag anymore and I really don't want to live anymore the comments were crazy my inbox inbox was nuts. And also being the least followed queen from my season and also being black just made it a little bit more harder for me to kind of get brand deals and put money in my pocket and my bank account and food on the table. It became harder but when I realized these comments are from keyboard warriors people who don't know me well enough have only seen little clips of me on tv that are heavily edited and you know stories that haven't been told on the show and you perceive those as like me being a rude bitchy person you don't know me at all. And I feel like I had to take myself out of that.

And again, my husband pulled me out of a very deep depression and was like, what do you go on stage and do? And I said, I go on stage and I perform the house down boots. And who can outperform you? Nobody. So get up out of your bed and go and do what you're supposed to do and I was just like I have a purpose what did I go on drag race to do it's to have people who look like me aspire to be somebody in life and I definitely went through it but I definitely came out stronger and I feel like you have to go through those

low moments to kind of realize what your purpose in life is is that how you basically got the inner strength to kind of that's how I got the inner strength to pull myself up again the people around me and also remembering what I started drag for to empower people whether you're black whether you're white whether you're pink whether you're gay whether you're bi whether you're straight it doesn't matter to me as long as I'm empowering you to get up and do something is what's most important I mean there's there's a lot of hate directed towards the queer community in general, but especially drag, you know, how did that impact the mental health of you and,

and your, and your sisters while you were doing that? Oh, it impacted us a lot. I mean, mental health in itself is just something that needs to be spoken about a lot more because anyone whether it's anyone in the lgbtqia plus community whether it's a straight community whether it's whatever community it's here and it's not something that you can joke about

so when we get hate within our community first of all we make sure that we check on each other yeah because this is our circle of people that you're attacking are you okay did this affect you um how do we speak about it how do we um overcome this and there's been a lot of queens that have come out and gone on television and spoken about issues of like drag queens being attacked for, you know, touching kids or we can't perform in front of kids. And it's, I'm like, well, if they're in a space where their parents have brought them,

don't you feel like it's up to the parents to choose if they want to bring those kids into these spaces we're not doing anything apart from our job yeah i think do you also feel like that when you're in drag it's like an additional confidence that you've made it's like a fake it till you make it type situation because of the hatred towards the drag community yeah i mean i don't want to get on a train in drag I don't want to go out in public in drag I don't want to walk around I get in a taxi I get to the venue I do my job I get back in the taxi after the job and I go back home and take it all off

or I wear a hat and I run as quickly as possible to the next venue because I don't know what's going to happen to me I mean recently there's been two stabbings in South London one in Clapham one in Brixton and what has the media said about it the only thing the media has said about it or the only comments that I have seen about the first one is it was a black person that did the stabbing yeah and you're just like oh is that what we're talking about we're not talking about the community and how it's affected the community no you're talking about it was a black person that stabbed the couple outside yeah it's not that that was evidently not a race related it wasn't a race related incident especially during pride when all these events

are going on like those and we're being proud of who we are and celebrating and just being ourselves outside of a safe space i feel like we use our platform to continue to raise awareness about these situations um there's a media outlet gay times that does it really well and they continue to talk about these propagandas that are happening and it's just it's really important that we continue to raise our voices in this community and speak but it's also take some time to look out for your mental health because that's very important yeah do you ever see or feel like there will be a time where you feel comfortable being outside in drag and safe? No, never. Because society has made it unsafe for us to be outside. Society has made it

really hard for us to be ourselves and be accepted. But when we go into spaces solely for us, definitely when we're at Pride, we can be loud and and as proud as but i was just in manchester and i have never seen it's my first manchester pride actually i was like whoa this is crazy the amount of people that are here just loving and just being and the parents that i see like t-shirts that like my kid is transgender I was just like this is what should be happening every day us being proud of who we are instead of ashamed of who we are but it's it it's just it is what it is and I don't mean to say it like it is what it is and we'll keep pushing I mean we've come so far in the LGBTQIA plus community and I always say that we've still got so far to go yeah no I can um and one thing I love

about pride as well is that I know so many cis heterosexual people that go in support of their friends and their family members that are part of the community and the allies are the most important part of our community because if you're an ally of the community this means you're speaking and using your voice in your community with our community i mean i've never felt unsafe never in that space and i don't understand anyone that's ever like that's ever felt like they have been or say we're so welcoming as well like i don't get it we're so welcoming we're so nice and we're so like we enjoy a party like there's no oh you're straight you can't come and join the party come and be an ally come and join us raise your voice for the cause it's about what i mean sometimes i think it's a lot of it's down

to ignorance yeah and by inviting them in you're trying to educate ignorance and misunderstanding of like what we are trying to say we're human beings we bleed we cry we laugh we fart you know like come on like we're we're exactly the same yeah the only difference is that i love someone of the same sex and or i get into drag and and do a job everyone has a job exactly this is my chosen job i love to perform it's a little it's a lot more glamorous than a lot of people's jobs i mean it is however a job is a job and I'm still here and I treat this as a nine-to-five drag often involves like transforming yourself into your persona um and how has this transformative part of drag influenced your understanding of your identity I feel like vanity Milan is an extension of who

I am outside of drag I feel like this is my way of just expressing who I am when it comes to like my feminine side and I feel like transforming into this is just it just expresses my creativity I love makeup I get into drag because I love makeup again like I said to you before I do sit and I do talk to myself before I get into drag but it's not like you need to do this podcast today can you do it can't you do it it's you have to do this podcast today and people are going to watch this podcast so you better beat your face you better look good because people are still looking at you as Vanity Milan from RuPaul's Drag Race UK season 3ada versus the world yeah i guess it's one of those things as well that you have to remember that the younger version of you would have dreamt about you being able to sit in drag

full-time full-time do it for a living because in 2019 i was still working in a coffee shop doing drag i was still working in a company doing i won't say the company because i was i'm sick today i'm going to go and do the competition every Monday. But I was doing that on a regular basis. And then I was like, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I'll be working in drag and go back to work on Monday. And I'd be like, I can't do this anymore. So, yeah, it's definitely given me that I can do this as a full-time job. So what parts of vanity do you draw upon for inspiration and to uplift yourself outside of drag?

How fierce I am. I can, I will say, Christopher takes Vanity Milan's fierceness and walks through Brixton. Yeah. And says, you can't, you call me a bad man? Yeah, I am a bad man. And what?

Yes, I love it tell me again tell me something I don't know yeah that's something that Vanity Milan would do so that's what I've brought into my everyday life that you can't knock my hustle I'm already here I'm already queer and I'm not going anywhere so you can either love it or hate it but it's not going to affect me um so behind behind the glitz and glamour of drag it has a really important way of delivering messages and kind of sparking this conversation so how do you use your performance to address important issues and empower your audience so recently Recently, I have been taking performing in front of kids, news outlets and things that people are saying on the news about drag queens performing in front of kids. And I've actually put it into a whole performance where it says drag queens are not the problem.

Yeah. It's these media outlets that are the problem, giving us the negative connotations about us performing in front of kids so I created a performance it's part of a Beyonce show that I do and I say drag queens drag queens are not the problem and it goes into like a whole sick performance but I use news outlets I use sound bites and people who watch this performance knows what i'm talking about yeah they know what this performance is about and the strength and the energy that i put into this whole entire performance after it goes quiet and then it says drag queens are not the problem people get it i think there's probably like a weird misunderstanding that drag queens are

just um are men drag but what did drag start off being men dressing up and playing women's roles did it not which was always what theater was thank you very much so why has it changed and why can't a gay man do it yeah and not get the same as a straight man doing it it's i think it's one of those things where they're trying to shout like sugarcoat the homophobia or something of course and you know homophobia will always be there but at the same time it's just like well it started off straight men doing it and we didn't say anything about it how do you think heels were made exactly shoes i'm wearing but also like there's a lot of designers out there that are working and and creating clothes for people and making things and it's it's a queer person that's doing these types of things so i mean the shirt on this someone's a straight man's back who's being homophobic could have been designed by the most gayest man in the

world there probably was some trickle-down effect like down from the color to the cut yeah that came from a queer person or a little decision yeah down to the buttons that come and you're wearing these nice pants or these nice trousers designed by a gay person but you want to sit here and attack a drag queen i think they've just it is it's just them sugarcoating their own homophobia and you know there's plenty of heterosexual places that children are not safe so let's not go there because i'll get in trouble let's not go there because there are certain things this is like i have i have discussions with my brothers and my sisters when i'm not in dragon as a family we talk we have discussions all the time and it's like my brother is the most i'm gonna say this he wears his pants down low

okay he walks around you can call him like a very stereotypical black guy but my brother calls me and tells me he loves me every day right and we have conversations about like kids being in spaces with drag queens and my brother's like but i don't see the issue i trust my kid more with a drag queen than i would with a straight person straight male person and I'd be like right I've never seen a drag queen and wanted to cross the street no genuinely I've never wanted to cross the street when I've seen a drag person so you know it's it's one of those it's one of those things but I want to know what we can look forward to from Vanity Milan like what is the next thing for you i'm cooking so um i love music and when i

started drag race i was like this is the perfect platform for me to express myself through music i love music i love writing um so music is on its way i have an ep coming up quite soon but the single is coming out sooner than expected okay i didn't want to give the date away just in case because I know this goes live quite soon oh yeah I'm gonna give I don't want to give the date away because I have people asking me all the time so I have new music I've got the EP coming up yes I will be doing a music video for the first single the first single I can tell you is called four ways okay yeah and it's quite nasty I mean I signed me up I'll be downloading it on release day so you'll be able to stream that quite soon and I'm just excited to continue to make music this EP has been like two years in

the making because I really take my time and I write everything I have one guy who makes the tracks and it's just me and him yeah and you can tell by your makeup you're a perfectionist really like if I don't like one word in I'm like can we take it out then I have to rewrite the whole sentence and if it doesn't match I have to rewrite the whole verse this is why I leave all the creative stuff down to people like you because I just wouldn't have the patience I get frustrated new music is coming um I'm just doing a lot of things a lot of things that like you wouldn't see an ordinary black person doing because again this industry is not on our side and I'm going to continue to speak up about it I'm going to continue talking about it

until something is done about it sometimes you might you have to be the person who i have to um run to someone else well walk so someone else can run listen i'm opening the doors so people can walk through it i mean yeah i'm this whole time i've been staring at your eye makeup and it is it really creepy for me it's giving i was like this person's gonna think i'm so creepy because i'm just staring really intently um but i'm not gonna go home and like when i watched drag race the first time i was like wow my makeup is so boring stop your makeup is absolutely your highlight and contour is but i need to get i i think actually inspired me to be a creative to myself right like and mess around with different

colors and things like that that's the thing we just love to play around in makeup with music and everything and it's it's it's nothing serious like this morning I messed up my eyebrow and I said well there we go it's an eyebrow they're not meant to be sisters yeah I mean they're meant to be they're not meant to be twins they're meant to be, they're not meant to be twins. They're meant to be cousins. They're not meant to be symmetrical. And I use a stencil on mine. And they're still not right. So at the end of the day. I mean, I couldn't tell. And that's the thing, I'm a perfectionist.

So I would see it and it's like the lower part here and the higher part here. And if I raise my eyebrow, you'd be able to see it clearly. It's on like a 20 time zoom mirror. That's what it is. Don't zoom in. Yeah. I mean, sorry, one more thing.

I'm going to start doing cooking videos because I love cooking. Okay, yeah. And I don't know if anyone knows this, but my dad's a chef. And when I started Drag Race, I had this saying called dirty rice. And I'm going to make like a little mini shorts on YouTube or TikTok, however I choose to do, and create cooking videos because I cook money i cook sorry i cook money i cook on a budget okay i don't spend more than 10 pounds on food and i create the most amazing food possible i mean more money on foods less money on outfits right

when you have a husband he creates all the outfits so all you have to do is pay for fabric really oh yeah i won't say that because in case someone tries to commission him and be like well vanity gets her outfits for free so i'm just sending you the fabric money just charge him like he can just charge an extortion amount to everyone else um but i always ask my ask my guests a similar final question so what piece of advice would you offer to your younger self based on your life and career journey so far you're doing everything correct don't let anyone tell you that you're doing something wrong don't let anyone dim your light never let a teacher tell you that you're you're not going

to be anything in life because you'll turn around to that same teacher who is sitting in a meet and greet at drag con and say oh my god i realize who you are and i remember who you are and you said i wasn't going to be anything and now you're paying 20 pounds to see me stop your teacher was that oh my god i think that i would like remember that day for the rest of my life i do and it will never it will never leave me i will take this to the grave i swear to god the teacher told me I wouldn't amount to anything. I was a little juvenile delinquent in school

as we all were, causing trouble. And that person turned around and said to me, you will never amount to anything in life. And I said, watch me. I always think it's the troublemakers that make the best people. I mean, some of them. Well, that's true.

I'm only saying it because I was one myself. Yeah, high five to the troublemakers that best make the best people some of them well that's true i'm only saying it because i was one myself so yeah high five to the troublemakers who have actually made something of themselves and they can turn around and tell people look where i am now in life it's because it takes a certain person to say like i don't like being told no i hate being told no i love saying no but i hate being told no actually i like saying yes all the time i'm a yes man oh wow my mom calls me could you come and help me with this but with mommy it's different my dad calls me yes dad husband calls me all right damn oh it's for me it's just my mom if it's my dad what do you want i'm a family man okay well yeah i love my family i'm a mommy's girl my mom phones me mom gets what she wants is your mom is does your mom call you her favorite she calls me princess favorite yeah my older brother and sister my

older brother and younger sister hate it because they know i'm the favorite oh my brother doesn't know so let's not tell him he won't watch i am the favorite i'll just tell my younger self do you boo? Because you're doing it right. Never steer off your path. Always chase your dreams and manifest what you want in life because it definitely is worth it. Amazing.

Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having us. You're insane outfit. I do know why you would want to get on a train like that because getting on a train in those heels would be an absolute nightmare. I would get on a train in these heels however it would just be a nightmare if I missed the gap and because sometimes you have to walk straight and look

in front of you with these heels if I look down oh it's over especially on a commute in time oh those commuters rush hour no absolutely not i just come from south london yeah no it's better to just get a taxi but fair enough even though if i did come from south london i was able to take one train the overground straight here that would have been a long nice long journey oh my god isn't that no breathing in your breathing that's all sorry i'm about to get into taxiing with this corset yeah literally as soon as the cameras turn off straight to the bathroom take it off it's like taking your bra off at the end of a long day my god my favorite thing and now i know why women do it and go oh yeah i don't have the heavyset breasts but however i understand the wire

underneath is a killer mine's poking in me right now with the two guys behind the camera they're just like you're never gonna relate to this can't relate it's honestly the worst part about wearing anything underneath your clothes especially a corset padding and seven pairs of tights i once wore a waist trainer at a pageant and i thought i was gonna die it's nuts especially when it's tight yeah i thought i was i thought i was game over i was not gonna make it when you do it and you're like can you squeeze it a little bit tighter because i want to be like snatched in the waist yeah sometimes you regret your decisions and asking that person to snatch you in i've seen some girls from columbia wear cling film then their far has underneath their dresses cling film then the far has underneath their dresses cling film the only thing that i will wrap around here is tape just to get rid of that oh yeah they've like cling filled themselves and

they wrap themselves up and i was like not a saran wrap girl she's i'm gonna make i would not want to be taking that off afterwards no the sweat straight in the shower no we live thank you so much. Thank you.