Drag Race royalty Nina West is snatching wigs as the star of a hilarious new Pantene shampoo ad
Nina West won Miss Congeniality in RuPaul’s Drag Race season 11. (Nina West/ Twitter)
RuPaul’s Drag Race royalty Nina West is the star of a hilarious new shampoo commercial for Pantene, making her a “Pantene queen”.
West is best known for starring on RuPaul’s Drag Race season 11, in which she placed sixth but won Miss Congeniality.
The commercial begins with West posing as wind blows through her blonde hair, but as the camera pans out she is shown sitting on a tractor with a fan and a selfie stick.
Someone off camera shouts: “Get back to work!”
West says: “Being Miss Congeniality is stressful as f- [cow moos]. But my hair is giving me life right now!”
She posted the ad on Twitter and wrote: “I can finally share! I am a PANTENE QUEEN!
“I can’t even begin to tell you the fun we had making these for you. And yes, I do know what having a good hair day can feel like! Thank you, Pantene! Now, who is driving this thing?”
https://twitter.com/NinaWest/status/1242120531551367168
Pantene has been praised before for its inclusive LGBT+ advertising campaigns.
In December 2019, the haircare brand partnered with GLAAD for a Christmas advert that highlighted how hard it can be for LGBT+ people to return home for the holidays.
The powerful ad began with the words: “While 137 million Americans will travel home this holiday season, 44 percent of LGBT+ people feel they can’t come home as their true selves.”
The campaign featured the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles, showed video vignettes of choir members mustering the courage to travel back to their families for the festive period.
In 2018, Pantene Phillipines won praise for an advert showing support of transgender people to mark Trans Awareness Week, featuring beauty queen Kevin Balot, who calls herself “the girl named Kevin”.
The two-minute video, titled “Strength knows no gender”, was structured as Balot’s message to those who, like her, have been struggling with self-acceptance due to the gender they were assigned at birth.
