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Pandora Boxx
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Pandora Boxx from "RuPaul's Drag Race," whose real name is Michael Steck, is one of the drag queens who competed in Season 2 of the Logo reality series.

The oldest queen in the competition, Pandora Boxx's humor and charm makes her this season's funny girl and a real contender for the top prize. But it's gonna take a lot more than comic chops for Miss Pandora Boxx from "Drag Race" to knockout her more glamorous rivals.

"I have a love-hate relationship with drag," Steck says. "Because I've been doing it for so long, I felt I needed to take it to the next level or do something different. I'm very much a believer that life is about change and growing, and I felt I was getting stagnant here, lip synching to other peoples' songs."

Getting cast in "RuPaul's Drag Race" is a huge deal for a drag performer - it's a vehicle to cross over into the mainstream, like the show's creator, host, and head judge RuPaul Charles did in the 1990's. Charles became a pop-culture icon through notable appearances in music videos and movies (both in and out of drag), recording hit songs, and even hosting his own TV talk show. With "Drag Race," Charles is giving that opportunity to a new generation of female impersonators.

The Pandora character "has always been inside of me, waiting to claw her way out," Steck says. She evolved organically, he says, as he figured out what kind of drag was the style for him. He decided to focus on his natural sense of humor, and found inspiration from icons as wide-ranging as Catwoman and Madonna. In fact, he picked the name Pandora because of its similarity to the long-lasting pop star. Early his career he went only by Pandora, but people continually referred to him as "Pandora's Box," due to the Greek myth. After a couple of shows, Steck decided to embrace it - in part. He dropped the "s."

As Steck has grown as a person, Pandora has changed as well. He recalls that at a certain point in his life he became more comfortable with sexuality - "Not sexuality as in gay, but sexuality as in sex is OK. I had horrible Catholic guilt over that, and I'm not even Catholic," he says. After a break-up, he decided to make out with someone on stage. "That changed Pandora," he says. "She became a slut, and never went back. It helped me find a character I wanted to get out."

In addition to being, well, a slut, Steck says that Pandora's other defining characteristic is her wit. "I'm really good at saying things and having people say, ‘Did she just say that?' and pause, then laugh," he says. "There are a lot of funny drag queens, but it seems now that most of the drag queens I see just want to look like a girl; that's it. That's fine, but it doesn't really make you stand out."