RuPaul’s Drag Race Recap: When Athena Takes the Stand

Last season of RuPaul’s Drag Race didn’t include any group challenges, and it really didn’t work. It felt strange – even Suzie Toot agreed when I spoke with her – and fans felt the same way. People love seeing drag queens in groups! These challenges show what it’s really like for the queens to collaborate, and those who excel at teamwork can really shine both on stage and online. It’s the most realistic test of what it takes to be a successful drag queen today. The U.K. version has embraced this, likely inspired by their love for iconic girl groups like the Spice Girls, Little Mix, and Girls Aloud.




![A comparison of convergence rates demonstrates that the Standard Kolmogorov metric stagnates due to tail noise, achieving a rate of [latex]n^{-0.25}[/latex], while a Weighted Metric-with a parameter of [latex]q=1.2[/latex]-successfully filters outliers to restore the optimal Gaussian convergence rate of [latex]n^{-0.5}[/latex], thereby accelerating model validation for Student-t distributions ([latex]\nu=2.5[/latex]).](https://arxiv.org/html/2601.04490v1/figs/compare_student.png)