By Bianca Guzzo
When the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race debuted on the Logo TV network on February 2, 2009, the judging panel looked a little different than it does in current seasons. Joining RuPaul for the first season of the iconic reality competition series were fashion designer Santino Rice and fashion journalist Merle Ginsberg, who both provided critiques throughout the nine-episode season (ultimately, BeBe Zahara Benet was crowned as the winner of the inaugural season on March 23, 2009).
Of course, when it comes to the judges on the show, RuPaul’s Drag Race is no stranger to shaking things up. Thanks to a high turnover of their panel of experts during the first five seasons, there is a good supply of personalities who have come and gone but who still inspire jokes that remain fresh even in the most current seasons of the series. Merle Ginsberg is one of them. As a judge, she provided queens with warm fashion critiques during the first two seasons of the show before being replaced in the third season by Drag Race legend Michelle Visage. Except for a brief appearance as a guest judge in a Season 7 episode of the show—and despite being revered by fans of the show—Ginsberg has stayed away from the Drag Race universe. So what has she been up to since then?
Here’s a look back at Merle Ginsberg, her Drag Race journey, and what she has been up to since leaving the judges’ panel.
Those first seasons of Drag Race
Merle Ginsberg was one of the original judges on RuPaul’s Drag Race, and her kind critiques on each contestant’s fashion choices made her a favourite among fans of the show—which is why it came as a shock to viewers when she didn’t return as a judge during the third season. Ginsberg was replaced by Michelle Visage, who has had a seat on the judging panel (as well as a number of international spin-offs of the series) ever since. There has been speculation on why Ginsberg left the show. Had she been fired to make space for Visage? Or did she simply leave of her own accord?
During a Season 7 episode that Ginsberg guest-judged (Season 7, episode 6, which originally aired on April 6, 2015), there was even an acting challenge that told the “Ru Hollywood Story” on why Ginsberg had left the franchise. The challenge made fun of all of the wild theories fans of the show had come up with over the years.
In reality, there are two reasons why we haven’t seen Ginsberg on the judging panel since 2010. It was eventually made clear that Visage had always been meant to be an original judge on the series, since she and Ru have had a working relationship since the ’90s. Unfortunately, due to contractual obligations, Visage was unable to be onboarded as a permanent judge until that contract expired—just in time for filming the third season of Drag Race, where she has sat on the panel ever since. Ginsberg has also said she left the show after receiving an offer to be a teacher at a fashion school in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The tea on Ginsberg isn’t as piping hot as other previous judges (see our story on Santino Rice!), and she’s maintained a good public image with fans of the franchise. Since her time on Drag Race, she’s competed on a reality competition show called Launch My Line, where she finished as a runner-up. Reddit isn’t filled with much info on her current whereabouts, but fans have continued to rally to get Ginsberg more followers on Instagram or to get her back as a guest judge on the show again. In 2016, she was the mediator for a panel at RuPaul’s DragCon.
Following her time as a television personality, Ginsberg has worked as a journalist, as a writer and as an editor for major publications like Rolling Stone, Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar (to name just a few). Several sources name her as the editor-in-chief for fashionrules.com, but there is no current trace of the website and the domain is currently up for sale. She’s also known for co-writing Paris Hilton’s New York Times bestseller Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose, which was published in May 2004.
An archived reddit post from 2017 states that Ginsberg was fired as a journalist for allegedly taking bribes, but the link to the news story is broken and nothing else about it can be found online.
In 2021, Ginsberg appeared in an interview with YouTuber Joseph Shepherd where she discussed how she had come to be a judge on the show in the first place. It turns out Ru and the producers sought her out specifically to host the show. Though she wasn’t famous for being part of the world of drag, she was familiar with the art of drag. “Look, I lived in New York in the ’80s. My life was a drag show,” she joked.
While talking about how she ended up as one of the original judges of the show, she explained that television wasn’t really where she had pictured her career going. She had already auditioned for several pilots and projects for two years without any of them coming to fruition, and had decided she was done with on-camera work. “I really wanted to get back to writing for magazines and write more books and whatever,” she said. Then she was asked—twice—by reps from World of Wonder (producers of Drag Race) to come in for an audition with Ru, where they had what she described as “a truly complex and deep conversation” about world history and politics. Their chat was filmed and, a few days later, she got an offer to be a judge. Comments from fans on the interview’s page are filled with praise for Ginsberg, with suggestions that she should be brought back as a permanent judge in place of some of the ones currently on the show.
Ginsberg is still serving absolute lewks whenever she steps out to an event. Even though Ginsberg’s time on the show was short, current queens still reference her in challenges. In Season 14, for example, during one of Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté’s runways, she featured Ginsberg in a missing persons’ ad on the side of a milk carton—and fans couldn’t get enough of it online.
Like Santino Rice, Ginsberg is an original piece of the Drag Race family who can never be replaced. There isn’t any evidence of bad blood between Ginsberg and Ru or any of the current judges, so there’s a possibility that we could see her guest-judge again on an upcoming season. Though she sat on the judging panel for only two seasons, Merle Ginsberg remains a beloved and celebrated piece of Drag Race herstory that queens and fans will continue to reference for years to come.
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