Tensions escalate amongst RuPaul’s Drag Race season 16′s audience over a queen whose likability has not quite taken a full liftoff just yet: Plane Jane.

Jane explained in her “Meet The Queens” interview where contestants of a new season sit down for an individual interview, that her name comes from her fascination with airplanes and Jane, from Disney’s 1999 film Tarzan. The 26-year-old from Boston, Mass. has been making rounds on the internet every episode through her blunt, cunning remarks to the other competitors, especially Amanda Tori Meating, the third queen to be eliminated by RuPaul.

“You are a girl from the cast that I have not really connected with look-wise,” Jane told Meating, smirking. “I hope that you’re able to sort of sway my opinion on how you’ve been looking, which is not very great.” Although she clarified that “it’s no tea,” the rest of the cast was already in an uproar, both laughing and being in shock. The queens’ reactions only continued to fuel Jane’s fire, who until Meating’s elimination, was relentless in singling her out.

Although she has been doing well with two wins already under her belt, Jane’s performance on Drag Race has been both criticized for being reminiscent of several iconic queens from the franchise, while praised for bravely taking on the role of the season’s mean girl.

Jane’s behavior isn’t unique, and it’s important to remember that her treatment aligns with a concerning pattern in the way queens of color have been often treated in the fandom. Queens of color like Aja, Shea Couleé, and Ra’Jah O’Hara faced different and often harsher standards, demonstrating that there’s a crucial need for greater awareness and efforts to combat racism within the Drag Race fandom.

Queens of color often face a disproportionate amount of racist abuse online, including hateful messages and criticism focused on their race. Even Black judges are not immune to the backlash.

In a 2018 interview, season 9 queen Aja, who is Puerto Rican, Egyptian and Nigerian, told Billboard that the fandom’s support leans towards white or white passing contestants, while “queens of color receive more of a petty backlash when it comes to things like having an attitude problem.”

Just a year prior, her season’s counterpart Shea Couleé, a Black queen from Chicago nightlife also told Billboard in the same interview of an instance where she was locked out of her social media. She had been hacked, and the hacker posted pictures of slaves saying they were family members of Couleé’s, along with anti-Black slurs.

“It was a direct result of someone’s racist opinions of me,” she told Billboard in 2018. “Someone I had never even met.”

Moreover, the proof of racial bias against queens of color and favoritism of white queens is in the pudding; white queens tend to foster larger followings—and at a much quicker rate, at that.

In the thick of the Black Lives Matter movement during the height of the COVID-19 in 2020, several Black contestants of Drag Race—along with a few non-Black queens—put together a 5-minute video titled “The Reality of Race in Drag,” wherein they highlight the problem of racist hatred the fandom sent to the queens of color.

In 2022, the world chanted Ra’Jah O’Hara’s name as she was crowned the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race: Canada vs. The World. But three years prior, the Texan queen was faced with bouts of anti-Black hatred.

“I didn’t expect the death threats,” O’Hara told Chron in a 2019 interview. “I didn’t expect all of the racism I’ve received from “fans” of a show. A show that’s basically about loving not only others but loving ourselves, it’s hard to deal with a lot of the backlash.”

O’Hara originally dealt with racism on her original season, having been an outspoken and confident contestant on the show—a portrayal that ironically harkens to Jane on the current season.

As X user @susallex put it on Jan. 17, “Shade is only acceptable if it’s a white [queen].”

Jane’s track record on the show illuminates the difference in treatment when it comes to Black queens being forthright on the show, versus queens who are white.

Is production the drama? Above all, the real power of narrative falls on the production team of Drag Race, who has the control of what stories get exaggerated or cut down.

Editing is a key component. In their TikTok, Ken explains that in order to portray a shy queen, all editors of the show need to do is to compile footage where an extroverted person is listening, rather than talking. Suddenly, a narrative of an introvert gets displayed on the show.

Even casting choices say a lot. In 2018, RuPaul was scrutinized for not wanting to cast trans women on the show—though he eventually would, even as far as to cast a trans man, Gottmik. On season 14, production’s focus on diversity was criticized after causing a dilemma for casting the show’s first white, cisgender straight man to compete.

Additionally, the show’s producers have been criticized for not having a diverse team behind the scenes, which can lead to blind spots in how they portray queens of color. At the press room in 2019, after winning yet another Emmy award for Drag Race, RuPaul was pressed by Danielle Young, a Black woman writer, about the lack of diversity in his team—most of whom standing behind him were white gay men. Her question beckoned the Drag Race team to consider: what would happen to the show, and therefore the queens, and therefore the fandom, if diversity started behind the scenes?

Editing has the power to create compelling villains and heroes for the sake of entertainment. But how much of a contestant’s persona is genuine, and how much is a product of editing? The case of Plane Jane highlights this dilemma.

There’s only so much material the producers and editors of the Drag Race can do by creating characters, story arcs and drama for the sake of entertainment. But at what point would a contestant (in RuPaul’s words) “blame it on the edit”?

On a 2021 Reddit thread discussing RuPaul’s context of the “Blame It On The Edit” song, user RuPaulVisage said: “the blaming things on the edit debate really goes both ways which is why it’s so stupid. On one hand they can absolutely slice things together to make someone seem off […] On the other hand, there is no way they can make someone […] have the personality of [somebody else]; you have to really give that material.”

Ryan Ken, Black nonbinary actor and two-time Emmy-winning comedy writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver went viral on TikTok on Feb. 25 for their commentary on Jane and Drag Race at large—both being manufactured and highly edited.

“People do not behave in narratively satisfying ways, so you have to manufacture that,” said Ken, who, as someone in the industry, has firsthand experience in witnessing that level of production. In talking about Jane, Ken was clear to mention that they are referring to Jane as the “character” and not the person, again because of editing and production.

Despite the criticisms Jane has received throughout the season thus far, Ken believes that “she is just a mirror to the Drag Race fanbase; how she talks to those other queens is a synthesis of how a lot of Drag Race fans talk to the queens online.”

Ken explained that as awful as Jane has been coming across this season, they believe that the fan base can forgive her by, one: continuing to do well on the show; or two: take her shirt off, “because the Drag Race fan base will forgive a white torso for anything.”

Jane’s controversial persona raises a question that resonates beyond the editing room: How much responsibility do viewers have in accepting or rejecting the narratives presented to them?

A Twitch streamer and Drag Race commentator on TikTok who goes by the name PhilipSeymourHoffwoman has been breaking down standout moments of season 16, and Jane’s portrayal has not been immune to their commentary. In a video from January, after Jane made her debut on our TV screens, PhilipSeymourHoffwoman put it succinctly.

“I can put a name to the problem people are having with Plane Jane: she’s relentlessly disingenuous, and this is either fun for you or it’s not.”