Start your engines, this queen wrote her dissertation on RuPaul’s Drag Race

It's a well known fact – dissertations are boring, but to get a degree you usually have to do one.

Everyone will attempt to do something they find interesting but after a few weeks, you've started pulling your hair out and realising dropping out might not actually be that bad.

Final year Communications student at Bournemouth University, Cat Bates, may have found just the right topic to keep her sanity and maybe even, dare I say, enjoy writing her paper. She chose to write about Ru Paul's Drag Race.

Her official title is still a work in progress, but the study is about how RuPaul's Drag Race is more than just a Netflix show – it's about how gender is performed and the social and political issues around it, and how the show raises awareness alongside the impact of popular culture.

"I had about four different ideas and I was planning them all out whilst catching up on Netflix," Cat told The Bournemouth Tab. "I thought, why not just do it on this? I watch it all the time and tutors always say to write about what you love. It went on from there."

She says the show is much more than just a superficial TV show, and by bringing drag into the mainstream it acts as a platform to discuss more political and social issues.

"It also shows that ideas of gender are performed, and how popular culture impacts that, taking reference from other shows, films or even memes," she said.

She's had a mixture of responses when she tells people what her topic is.

"It's either people who love the show and think managing to get it into my dissertation is genius or others just ask – what's Drag Race?"

Cat says her tutor has been very supportive, and she's been lucky to get a tutor that specialises in feminism and LGBT+ studies, so her tutor loved the idea and helped her turn it into 10,000 words.

Cat is 7,000 words down and the full study is due next month. She told The Bournemouth Tab: "I'm happy with how it's going so far and I think it's less of a chore writing about something I actually enjoy!"

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