Vivienne Pinay is the stage name of Michael Donehoo, an American retired drag performer known for competing on the fifth season of the American television series ''

RuPaul's Drag Race ''RuPaul's Drag Race'' is an American reality competition television series, the first in the Drag Race (franchise), ''Drag Race'' franchise, produced by World of Wonder (company), World of Wonder for Logo TV (season 1–8), WOW Presents Plus, ...

''. She has also appeared on the ninth season of '' Face Off'' and ''

Skin Wars ''Skin Wars'' is a body painting reality competition hosted by Rebecca Romijn that premiered on the American pay-television channel Game Show Network on August 6, 2014. Contestants on the series perform challenges containing body painting each e ...

''.

Early life

Donehoo was born and raised in Atlanta and is of Filipino descent. He became interested in drag at a young age after seeing

RuPaul RuPaul Andre Charles (born November 17, 1960) is an American drag queen, television host, singer, producer, writer, and actor. He produces, hosts, and judges the reality competition series ''RuPaul's Drag Race'' and has received List of awards ...

VH1 VH1 (originally an initialism for Video Hits One) is an American basic cable television network that launched on January 1, 1985, and is currently owned by the MTV Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global's networks division based in New Y ...

Career

Donehoo sells wigs. As of 2020, he was also a

personal assistant A personal assistant, also referred to as personal aide (PA) or personal secretary (PS), is a job title describing a person who assists a specific person with their daily business or personal task. It is a subspecialty of secretarial duties ...

to ''Drag Race'' contestant

Alyssa Edwards Justin Dwayne Lee Johnson (born January 16, 1980), best known by the stage name Alyssa Edwards, is an American drag queen, drag performer, choreographer, and businessperson. Edwards was known for competing in drag pageantry (notably Miss Gay Amer ...

. Donehoo also appeared in the ninth season of the television series '' Face Off'' in 2015.

Drag

Donehoo has been a drag performer; he has said of his female persona Vivienne Pinay: "Vivienne is named after my Southern Grandmother. And Pinay means Filipino girl." Vivienne Pinay has been a member of the Haus of Edwards, which has also included ''Drag Race'' contestants Alyssa Edwards,

Cheryl Hole Cheryl, formerly known as Cheryl Hole (born 18 October 1993), is the stage name of Luke Underwood-Bleach, an English drag queen known for being one of the first contestants on the first series of ''RuPaul's Drag Race UK'' (2019), as well as the ...

Gia Gunn Gia Gunn is the stage name of American drag performer Gia Keitaro Ichikawa (born May 10, 1990). She is known for competing on the sixth season of ''RuPaul's Drag Race'', the second season of '' The Switch Drag Race'', and '' RuPaul's Drag Rac ...

Laganja Estranja Jay Evan Jackson, known professionally as Laganja Estranja (born December 28, 1988), is an American choreographer and drag queen based in Los Angeles. Laganja competed on the sixth season of ''RuPaul's Drag Race'', finishing in eighth place. Sh ...

, Plastique Tiara, and

Shangela Chantaize Darius Jeremy Pierce, better known by the stage name Shangela Laquifa Wadley or simply as Shangela (born November 22, 1981), is an American drag queen, reality television personality, TV producer, and actor best known for competing on ' ...

. Vivienne Pinay competed on the fifth season of ''

'', which aired in 2013. She entered the Werk Room wearing a

polka dot Red polka dots on a yellow background Alison Jackson wears a cycling_jersey.html" ;"title="Queen of the Mountains polkadot cycling jersey">Queen of the Mountains polkadot cycling jersey The polka dot, also written polkadot, and also called s ...

dress and red heels; ''

Hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash , em dash and others), which are wider, or with t ...

'' magazine said she resembled

Bettie Page Bettie Mae Page (April 22, 1923 – December 11, 2008) was an American model who gained notoriety in the 1950s for her pin-up model, pin-up photos.Black Swan: Why It Gotta Be Black?"), she and

Honey Mahogany Honey Mahogany (born December 30, 1983) is an American activist, politician, drag performer, and singer. She first came to national attention on the fifth season of ''RuPaul's Drag Race'', followed by releasing her debut EP ''Honey Love''. She wa ...

placed in the bottom two of a challenge that tasked contestants with performing in a

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

based on the life of RuPaul. Neither contestant impressed RuPaul enough during a

lip-sync Lip sync or lip synch (pronounced , like the word ''sink'', despite the spelling of the participial forms ''synced'' and ''syncing''), short for lip synchronization, is a technical term for matching a speaking or singing person's lip movements ...

contest to " Oops!... I Did It Again" (2000) by

Britney Spears Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer. Often referred to as the "Princess of Pop", she has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. Cultural impact of Brit ...

, and both were eliminated from the competition in the show's first-ever double elimination.

Thrillist ''Thrillist'' is an online media website covering travel. ''Thrillist'' was founded in 2004 by Ben Lerer and Adam Rich. In October 2016, Thrillist merged with internet brands ''The Dodo'', NowThis News, and Seeker to form the digital media ...

's Brian Moylan ranked Vivienne Pinay number 75 out of the show's 113 contestants in 2017. Stephen Daw of ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

'' included the double elimination in a 2018 list of the show's "most shocking" moments. In 2019, Bernardo Sim of ''

Screen Rant ''Screen Rant'' is an entertainment website that offers news in the fields of television, films, video games, and comic books. It is owned by Valnet, parent of publications including Comic Book Resources, Collider, MovieWeb and XDA Developers. ...

'' called the lip-sync between Honey Mahogany and Vivienne Pinay "so bad, so boring, and so low-energy", and wrote: "It is fair to say that Ru made the right call to send them both contestants home that week, and fans have certainly enjoyed forgetting about that lip sync." Sim also included the double elimination in the website's 2020 list of the show's ten "most shocking" eliminations. Similarly, Mariana Fernandes included the double elimination in the website's 2020 overview of the ten "most shocking" eliminations on the show and ''RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars''. She also included the performance in a 2020 list of the ten worst lip-syncs on ''Drag Race''. Since ''Drag Race'', Vivienne Pinay "decided to keep a low profile and abandoned this drag persona", according to ''Out'' magazine. In 2015, she was among ''Drag Race'' contestants to appear on stage at the

MTV Video Music Awards The MTV Video Music Awards (commonly abbreviated as the VMAs) is an award show presented by the cable channel MTV to honor the best in the music video medium. Originally conceived as an alternative to the Grammy Awards (in the video category ...

during

Miley Cyrus Miley Ray Cyrus ( , born Destiny Hope Cyrus, November 23, 1992) is an American singer, songwriter, actress and director. Regarded as a contemporary pop icon, Cyrus has been recognized for her evolving artistry and image reinventions. She is ...

and

Wayne Coyne Wayne Michael Coyne (born January 13, 1961) is an American musician. He is the founder, lead vocalist, main songwriter, and only constant member of the psychedelic rock band the Flaming Lips. Early life Coyne was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ...

's performance of "

Dooo It! "Dooo It!" is a song by American singer Miley Cyrus from her fifth studio album ''Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz'' (2015). It was premiered on August 30, 2015, with a live performance during the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, which Cyrus hosted, and w ...

" (2015). She also appeared on the series ''

''.

Personal life

In 2013, Donehoo had a boyfriend and two dogs. He was based in New York City, as of 2015.

Filmography

* ''

'' (

season 5 A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

, 2013) * ''RuPaul's Drag Race: Untucked'' * ''Vivienne Pinay's Holiday Takeover'' (2013) * ''Haus of Edwards Holiday Special'' (2015) * ''RuPaul Drives'' * ''Alyssa's Secret'' * '' Face Off'' ( season 9, 2015) * ''

'' (2015) * ''Skin Wars: Naked Truth'' (2015)

References

External links

Vivienne Pinay
at

IMDb IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vivienne Pinay Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American LGBTQ people 21st-century American LGBTQ people American drag queens American LGBTQ people of Asian descent American people of Filipino descent Drag performers from Atlanta Drag performers from New York City LGBTQ people from Georgia (U.S. state) RuPaul's Drag Race contestants