Three French Drag Queens Are Carrying the Country’s Olympic Torch
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These three French drag queens are carrying, in more ways than one. Nicky Doll, Miss Martini, and Minima Gesté were all chosen to carry the Olympic flame as it makes its way to Paris for the Summer Games in July.
This past Saturday, French drag queen Miss Martini became the first drag queen to ever carry the Olympic flame, according to an Instagram post she made.
She was followed by Parisian drag queen Nicky Doll, who is the host of Drag Race France and who carried the flame the following day. In her own Instagram post, Doll wrote that it was an “absolute honor to have carried the Olympic torch.”
Doll also used her Instagram post to call for a ceasefire in Palestine. “Even though I usually prefer to act on things rather than hope for them: I would like to use this opportunity to hope for the immediate ceasefire in Rafah and for dignity to be brought back to Palestine and its people who tremendously suffered throughout these awful times and beyond,” Doll wrote. She also expressed her hopes for “the safe release of the Israeli hostages,” and her hope that people would not “allow racism, Islamophobia and anti-semitism to run wild again.”
Another drag queen, Minima Gesté, is also scheduled to carry the Olympic torch on July 14 in Paris. However, as Agence France-Presse reported earlier this month, Gesté has been the target of homophobic and transphobic harassment over her participation in the capital city’s leg of the relay, though Mayor Anne Hidalgo said, “I reaffirm my full support for her.”
“One of the messages that I want to carry is the pride in my community because 10 years ago having a drag queen carry the torch would have been unimaginable,” Gesté told the news outlet.
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