Michelle Visage born Michelle Lynn Shupack , September 20, is an American singer, television personality, broadcaster, producer, and actress. She gained recognition as a member of the dance-pop group Seduction , who charted five singles on the Billboard Hot between and In , Visage joined the American reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race , and has served as a permanent judge since season three.
Visage was a contestant on the British reality shows Celebrity Big Brother and Strictly Come Dancing , and was a judge on the talent competition show Ireland's Got Talent β Visage grew up in New Jersey. She was adopted and was aware of this from an early age. When Visage was 16, she won a Madonna lookalike competition. After finishing her studies she stayed in New York City to pursue a career as an actress.
In New York she was active in the club scene. Her mother Arlene gave her a fake ID so she could make connections to help further her career. Visage became prominent in the New York drag ball scene and learned voguing from various people including Willi Ninja. Michelle adopted her surname, Visage, after gaining the nickname " cara " "face" in Spanish from walking the face category while in the New York ball scene.
However, because people pronounced it incorrectly she decided to change it to " visage " "face" in French. It is said that The Love Ball is where Madonna first witnessed voguing, the inspiration for her song " Vogue ". In February , it was confirmed that Visage had teamed up with Steps on a reworked version of " Heartbreak in This City ".
Visage started co-hosting the weekly podcast RuPaul: What's the Tee? Visage has worked with RuPaul on a variety of television shows throughout her career. At the time she was on a five-year contract with a CBS radio station in West Palm Beach; after asking her boss if she could join the show he said no, which Visage put down to the show's links with the LGBT community.
