A beloved contestant on season 15 of RuPaul’s Drag Race has shared an update on her gender identity.
Amethyst, who entered season 15 as one of the many queens with a sizeable TikTok following, shared a handwritten note to her followers on social media on Saturday, along with the caption, “1 month” and a trans flag emoji. In the note, she told fans that she had been “struggling severely” with gender dysphoria in recent months.
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“It’s something that I’ve always concealed in the back of my mind, and through the years has slowly crept its way to the front,” she wrote. “Last year was when things really started to hit me hard and this mental warfare has really just escalated since then. I let it get to a point where it was eating away at me and affecting everything in my life.”
Amethyst went on to say that she has been on hormone replacement therapy for a month and that she now feels much better.
“Even in this short amount of time, the comparison to how I felt just a few months ago is night and day,” she said. “It’s a different sense of happiness that is slowly but surely bringing back my self-assurance, and every day it gets easier to look in the mirror.”
Amethyst also announced that she would be using the name “Amy” out of drag and that the idea came from an interaction with her season 15 sister Malaysia Babydoll Foxx.
“I know it’s somewhat reminiscent of my drag name but true story – she was the first one to call me that,” Amethyst wrote. “The first time she did I had this little lightbulb moment.”
"I feel a lot of pressure to pick the perfect name but in the meantime, this is a comfy placeholder for me," she added in the note.
The tweet announcing her gender transition came one day after she shared that she would be releasing a new album, Amy, on July 19th.
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Amethyst also asked her followers and supporters to help her raise funds for her facial feminization surgery and shared a link to her GoFundMe page (which also contains the full text of her handwritten note). As of press time, the fundraiser has netted over $3,200.
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Several Drag Race alumni congratulated Amethyst on her announcement, including season 9 contestant Cynthia Lee Fontaine. “My sister congrats on living your truth,” she wrote. “I am so proud of you.”
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Season 4 queen Madame LaQueer, who came out as trans earlier this year, also responded to Amethyst’s post. “OMG Congrats!!!” she wrote, adding a trans flag.
While on her season, in which she placed 13th out of 16, she won over viewers with her quirky humor and early-aughts pop-girl aesthetic. After sending home her sisters Irene “The Alien” Dubois and Princess Poppy in head-to-head lip syncs, she was sent home in a lip sync to Janelle Monae’s “Q.U.E.E.N.” against 6th place queen Salina EsTitties.
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