"I’ve been in transition”– RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Valentina owns her true self and reveals her gender identity journey
RuPaul’s Drag Race season 9 star Valentina Xunaxi recently celebrated her 34th birthday on May 14. To mark the special occasion, she shared a post on Instagram featuring three images of herself, along with a heartfelt caption in which she came out as a transgender woman.
In the caption of her post, Valentina revealed that she had been transitioning for some time, choosing to do so privately. However, on her birthday, she embraced her identity:
"Hello everyone, it’s me Valentina Xunaxi. Today is my bday. I turn 34. For some time now I’ve been in transition, I’ve been doing it privately but today I wanted to open and share with you all," she wrote in the caption.
The RuPaul’s Drag Race alum added that throughout her journey, she had felt pressure to come forward.
When RuPaul’s Drag Race star Valentina came out as non-binary and talked about her confidence
Valentina Xunaxi made her debut with RuPaul's Drag Race season 9 in 2017. While she wasn't able to win the season, she was called back a year later for the All Stars season 4 in December 2018, where she finished in sixth place.
Coming out of her second run in the franchise, Valentina was cast as the HIV-positive drag queen, Angel Dumott Schunard, in Fox's 2019 TV show Rent: Live.
During the press tour for the show, Valentina came out as nonbinary in a January 2019 interview with Out magazine. She shared that she didn’t fully identify as either a man or a woman, explaining that she felt like she was her own unique gender.
"I identify as nonbinary. I don't completely feel like a man, I don't completely feel like a woman. I feel like a goddess. I feel like I'm my own gender," she said in the interview.
Further in the interview, the RuPaul’s Drag Race alum shared that she tried to bring this identity of hers to her character of Angel. With this approach, she noted, she was able to truly understand her character's motivations and why she is "so happy and so confident" during her drags.
At the time, Valentina added that she had understood the weight of the situation she was in. She said she had also realized the importance of the responsibility she had as a gay nonbinary drag queen taking on an iconic role like Angel.
In a September 2023 interview with Wonder Mind, Valentina was asked about the source of her confidence that helped her to be proud of who she was as a person.
In response, the RuPaul’s Drag Race alum shared that "not being perfect" was the key to her confidence. She explained that her strength came from the belief that she was the solution to her problems.
She added that by staying true to her most authentic self and prioritizing her mental health, she could continue to build and maintain that inner confidence.
"That really does require confidence in knowing that maybe I'm not gonna be OK all the time. So I'm really confident in not being perfect and being OK with the reality of life being made of highs and lows," she concluded.
RuPaul’s Drag Race season 17 episodes are available on MTV.
