LONDON CALLING: 'STIGMAS ARE SO SILLY'

RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE JUDGE MICH ON HER CHEEKY FANS, NAVIGATING THE MENOPAUSE AND MOVING TO THE UK

- KENZI DEVINE

She’s known for inspiring the LGBTQ+ community and bringing her fiery personality to the RuPaul’s Drag Race judging panel and her Friday night show on BBC Radio 2. Now Michelle Visage is embracing her signature nononsense style when it comes to battling ageing and the menopause – aiming to break the stigma surrounding these elements of women’s health.

The New Jersey native, 54, has recently lost three-and-a-half stone and is looking amazing for it, but the loss is not without its tribulations. She tells us about her hopes to normalise menopause transparency and details her gruelling workout routine.

Michelle is in London, the city she dubs her “home away from home”, during our chat. But while she may be on our side of the pond, the TV personality hasn’t let her workout routine slip, keeping up with Pilates and weight-lifting.

“I work out six days a week and I take one day off – it is a lot but time is ticking,” she says. Never one to shy away from the truth, Michelle has always been open about going under the knife – even documenting her difficult experience with breast implants in the past. But searching for a way to change her figure without surgery, she has turned to weight-lifting.

“I lost three-and-a half-stone recently and, as a woman of a certain age, I had this loose skin and I didn’t want to have surgery,” she says. “I thought, ‘How am I going to make this appear tighter and change the shape of my body without having it surgically altered?’ So I started heavy lifting. I think a lot of women in particular are scared of lifting weights because you hear, ‘Oh, I don’t want to get too big,’ but that’s just not going to happen. It’s not how it works.”