Who Is RuPaul's Drag Race's Tamisha Iman?
Loving RuPaul's Drag Race season 13 already? If watching the contestants on the show for an hour a week isn't quite enough glam to liven up your quarantine, we're here to help you get to know who the queens were before they graced the VH1 screen. Thankfully, when it comes to contestant Tamisha Iman, there's plenty to learn from her decades-long career.
Tamisha Iman, stage name of Will Crawford (via Fandom), comes out of Atlanta's cut-throat drag scene, where she had to prove herself night after night (via VH1). Originally born in Birmingham, Alabama, this drag legend has won somewhere around 90 pageants. Her name was inspired by her biological daughter, also named Tamisha, and by the Somali fashion model Iman.
Tamisha Iman prides herself on her self-made look: she creates her own jewelry and outfits and designs her own hairstyles. "It takes an army to actually put someone together, but it takes an Iman to put Tamisha together," she explains.
A more seasoned queen
When it comes to doing Drag Race, she's a little nervous about how her age will affect her chances, given that she has "at least thirty years on the girls." She tells VH1, "In my prime, I could have taken on anyone. Thirty years later, I can't do the things that I used to do. I'm smart enough to know how to still play the game and win, but nevertheless I just wish the 25-year-old Tamisha would have signed up and got on the show." (If you're interested, you can watch Tamisha Iman's 1996 Miss National Talent Competition performance, when she was about 25, here.)
Now, 50 years old, Tamisha Iman has over 60 living drag children and has more than thirty who are no longer with us. When she found out that her drag daughter LaLa Ri was on the show, she said, "That was really amazing... I was so proud."