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Jerick Hoffer graduated summa cum laude with a degree in theatrical performance from Cornish College in Seattle. His talented peers are singing his praises, but his overbearing and impudent persona, known as Jinkx Monsoon on season five of RuPaul’s Drag Race, didn’t go for the academic hype. Jinkx wanted to be famous, not smarter than everyone, and she succeeded.
Influenced by a grandmother with charm school polish, Hoffer learned to combine the sophistication of a southern belle with the crass behavior of a working girl. Jinkx is all about contrasts and what RuPaul describes as “a stage left, off center kind of quality.”
The creation of Jinkx was complicated. “From the movie Death Becomes Her, I was inspired by the crazy extent vain women will go for eternal youth, beauty, and power,” Hoffer explains. “Through Lucille Ball I saw how a woman can bring you to tears with laughter with nothing more than a look. Through the Disney villains I was raised with, I saw how powerful a woman can be, and yet so deliciously evil. And through my mom, I saw not only the trials and tribulations a single mother faces every day, but also the strength and determination a woman can possess when she is trying to provide a bright future for her children.”
The Jinkx Monsoon personality is a manifestation of years of practice, a career endeavor that began when Hoffer was fifteen. “She is definitely a zany, off the wall, irreverent, gorgeous anachronism,” Hoffer adds. “She simply refuses to let her audience sit idle; she is a powerhouse of song and comedy, igniting her audiences in a frenzy of laughter and sexual tension.”