- Contour down my nose and I always do the tip of my nose.
- Bake your under-eye area.
You are making that bitch bullet-proof.
- She is ready, she is beat.
- I think if I was someone without any kind
of knowledge of makeup and I saw Instagram makeup,
I would probably be like, whoa, that's a lot.
(high intensity chase music)
- Drag and the beauty industry
have always influenced each other.
Beauty industry says natural makeup is in trend,
drag says, no, slather on the pancake makeup.
♪ Miss me ♪
♪ Don't you try to dismiss me ♪
♪ You thought I was history ♪
♪ But now you gotta deal with me ♪
- They call it, like, selfie makeup.
It's like you're basically doing drag
whether you know it or not.
♪ I'm back with a vengeance ♪
♪ Got my crew in attendance ♪
♪ Have I got your attention ♪
♪ Oh whoa oh oh, oh whoa ♪
- The lip liners and the contouring and the white dot
on the nose, that is all influenced by drag.
I mean, where else would it come from, you know, clowns?
(sexy upbeat music)
- Embrace us because if you don't, RuPaul's gonna be
the only person that gets credit for
an industry that you don't have a part in.
(sexy upbeat music)
(slow music)
- A lot of times, our ideas about
what gender means are very surface.
I'm masculine because I just am that way,
I just look that way, that's what my body is.
And what drag, especially drag makeup, plays with
is the actual constructed-ness of those things.
The ability to make yourself look masculine
or make yourself look feminine draws a question
in people's minds about how real
or natural those things ever are because each
and every one of us goes through decisions and steps
and styling ourself every morning to push ourself
in whatever direction we want to be perceived in.
And drag just pushes that idea so far to an extreme
that it makes natural or essential completely impossible.
And I love that.
There's so many options within drag
and all of them are over the top as we all should be.
- In drag, there is so many different types of drag.
They all have this common denominator is that
they're all these underground kids that weren't afraid
to express themselves in this world that allowed them to,
where all these influences are impacting the world now.
- You see it in fashion, you see it everywhere.
Everyone pulls inspiration from everyone
at the end of the day. - [Man] For sure.
We all do but it's great to acknowledge where it came from.
(inspirational music)
- A lot of them attribute it to Kim Kardashian
and the artist that worked on Kim Kardashian that did
the same technique that were aware of those trends.
That'd be really interesting to be like,
hey, this has actually been around for like decades.
(electronic music)
- Back then, I called the makeup 1992.
What do I mean by that?
Back then, the queens would put on a little bit of makeup.
Foundation, lipstick, little bit of blush,
little bit of highlighter, lashes.
- We had to wear makeup to get into clubs back then
and also it was the cheapest way to be different.
So I used to buy red lipstick and put it around my eye
or buy colored pencil and draw a line across a face.
It was all about being different and doing it cheap.
- There was a lot of naivete about drag makeup back then,
just because, you know, it was unexplored territory
for a lot of people that were just getting into drag
so a lot of us who were just starting
would rely on store bought drugstore makeup.
- Watching queens over the years, performing with them,
you tend to sneak a look at when they're doing their makeup.
You notice they do something that you never done,
so you try it on yourself and see if it works.
It might, it might not.
- This other queen that I worked with named Yasmeen,
I wanted to get into the drag section.
She goes, she's gonna do half of my face
and I'm gonna do the other half.
So I had a piece of paper and I was writing down notes
because there was no instructions back then
so I needed to write down a notes to try
to help me remember what I needed to do.
It was atrocious.
Atrocious.
I would get a F for effort.
- Each drag artist has their own way of transforming
their face and it's so interesting to see 'cause it's
so much more than just adding color to your face as it is.
It's about re-structuring your face into something new
and I love watching other people do it.
- When you get into drag, you're wearing a mask.
I can hide behind that and become a sort of character
and it turns out the character's just
who I am on the inside but I was scared to be.
I've always been very shy but pour some liquor down
my throat, put some makeup on my face and I hit the stage.
(laughs)
- Some of the drag queens have such
a specific style that they've pulled from,
like it's their identity, like Divine.
Like, seeing that-- - [Man] Divine.
- [Woman] amazing exaggerated makeup years later
in The Little Mermaid, how like,
she had influenced the character Ursula.
- You have your looks, your pretty face.
♪ You say you wanna go where the lights are flashin' ♪
♪ I make it happen ♪
♪ You say you want a man that's always packin' ♪
♪ I do damage ♪
- I was there right smack dab in the middle
as drag morphed from this underground art form
into this pop culture phenomena.
It was very interesting to be there because drag all of
a sudden took this like major turn over
the course of just several years.
Drag became very popular like on daytime TV talk shows
and as plot lines in sitcoms, and they were used
in music videos, etc, and so there was just
all this interest in drag collectively.
I mean drag has always been a really fun
and exciting genre that just really
was very marginalized and so when drag
did start becoming popular in the 90s,
I was the first person to say, oh yeah, this isn't a trend,
this is here forever, and then when it did fade,
it was like ha-ha, I was wrong.
There were kind of a couple factors for the New York scene.
Mayor Giuliani cracked down hard on the night life
and so that killed a lot of the drag scene
but at the same time the media kind of lost interest
and there was a whole different era.
It wasn't like you could go to the internet and say well,
if mainstream media doesn't want us anymore,
we can start our own websites.
We were totally dependent upon the powers that be
to sort of declare if drag was popular or not
and so they treated it as a trend and they lost interest
and so the whole drag kind of phenomena went on hiatus.
Even RuPaul, who had become a star,
the big star out of that era, her career went on hiatus
and so it wasn't until really when Ru,
again started RuPaul's Drag Race
that drag started picking up again
and has become even much more popular than it was before.
- Back in the early days, I think we were just very happy
that we had somebody like RuPaul that was doing her makeup.
We weren't trying to look like her back then.
We're like, let she do her, we do us.
And then 10 years ago out of the clear blue,
RuPaul came back with a new face, a new music video,
a new attitude and this new glammed-up look
that you just couldn't take your eyes off of it
and every time she showed up again on the camera,
her face was looking fiercer than the last time.
And we were like, damn.
So everybody just started running out
and started playing with the makeup.
Trying to copy what she was doing on her face.
One of the queens that literally made a mold for it was
a queen from Drag Race called Raven.
She came up with this face that
every queen now started to copy.
All of a sudden it was like people are watching other queens
online doing makeup would try to like copy some
of their style and add it to them
and now it's 10 years in and we now have a million looks.
There's a million looks that launched a million ships.
- When I moved to New York in 2007, in most cases women
were wearing very small jewelry pieces, very lightweight
makeup and things like that but now we've seen
a progression, especially with social media
and these shows that it's driving women
to actually become more glamorous, to have eleganza.
An eleganza extravaganza so it's all about pulling
out all the stops and just really increasing
the amount of makeup that they wear
and the looks that they put together.
- I work a day job, retail and I have some
of the young ladies that I work with having,
oh, will you show me where you get your big lashes?
Will you show me how to put them on?
And they're at work, flapping their eyelashes.
- Kim Kardashian's makeup artist, or at least the woman
who was very influential in getting
their first look established for the public,
has said that she borrowed contouring
or learned about contouring from the drag world.
If you watch some of those housewife shows,
they've got more makeup on than drag queens.
- The clients themselves, they become more aware with
all that's happening right now with social media
and makeup, they become more aware so the girls
they're actually asking to be beat down.
They want to be highlighted, they want to be contoured
so I tend to keep it on a lower scale.
They're in baby drag I'll say.
(laughs)
That's probably the best way that I can describe it.
They want their eyes to pop but they don't want
their lips to play backseat to anything.
They definitely want to see both eyes popping
and lips sizzling which again is total drag.
Usually in makeup, you'll want to make one feature pop out
whereas drag is no, make it all pop.
Make it all pop, sparkle and shine.
- Drags are performers.
They sweat, they dance, they earn their money every night
and they have to look fierce and you have to look flawless.
Every picture, every angle has
to look great for the staged light.
- The reason why we would do highlighting
and contouring is because when you're
on stage under bright lights they have a tendency
to actually blow out all of the features.
So highlights pull things forward
and contours push things back.
- Drag queens like to do things bigger, brighter
and bolder and the whole idea is
to project all the way to the back.
- That type of makeup translates to social media,
what people want to look like is perfection at all times.
- They call it selfie makeup-- - [Man] The selfie makeup.
- [Woman] because you're basically doing drag
whether you know it or not.
- [Man] Right.
- [Man] I don't think that the drag community gets
the credits that they deserve for the trends that
are happening right now all over social media
and all over the world with makeup.
- Regular girls are now doing the highlighted cheeks.
Regular girls are now doing the extra plumped up lips.
Regular girls are now going out with their faces
fully beat for the guards as Laverne Cox would say
and they're like, where'd you get that from?
You got that from watching.
You got that from seeing it somewhere along the line.
- I don't think that they even
know that they get influenced.
Maybe it's in their subconscious, right, because the drag
is so mainstream today that they
see some pictures or videos or shows.
In fashion people like Peter Phillips and Pat McGrath
and Val Dal who are all inspired by drag.
For them it's much more of an homage
and taking their culture and then elevating them
and doing something different.
- There's that expression, high tide raises all ships.
So even though the great majority of the money probably
and the attention is going to RuPaul Drag Race Queens,
there's a general interest in drag
so it's every place from your local drag corner bar
to television shows that are getting all this attention.
- This is Jo Ryan, your hostess with the mostest.
Las Vegas, it's Saturday night, how are we feeling?
(cheers)
- Drag in Vegas now, I mean, we have sold-out brunches
and we have our new supper club show
and it's so accepting here and you kind of have
to thank RuPaul's Drag Race for bringing
it to the mainstream like that.
I mean, when I was growing up
you couldn't walk outside with makeup on.
It was very frowned upon and it was very scary
to go to the bar in drag but now we can paint at home
and come here in drag and it's just so free.
- We went from having primarily gay community
to then expanding out to this mainstream audience
and bringing them in.
- RuPaul was the first ever drag queen to be in
a MAC Viva Glam advertisement campaign
in the 90s and that was so impactful.
That lead to all the musics and TV shows
and today it's global.
It's incredible.
(upbeat music)
- We are at Drag Con because we are lovers of drag and--
- Lovers of glamor.
- And lovers of beauty.
Inner beauty and outer beauty.
- [Blonde Girl] Yeah.
- And we love doing makeup, like both of us.
We love getting dressed up, we love doing the makeup.
This is what we do on the weekends.
- It's really cool to see that everyone is like,
fully highlit and contour depth so the way they look
on the outside matches sometimes
how they feel on the inside.
- If you're able to be you, that inner person's trying
to come out and that's a form of drag.
Like Ru says, if you can't love yourself,
how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?
- We want people's jaws to drop and without drag queens
we wouldn't have known to do that.
(upbeat music)
- With the rise of You Tube makeup artists
and people clearly being influenced by drag,
it is a sign of changing times that there
is acceptance in the world.
Before, drag was taboo and now it is acceptable
and we're seeing it in mainstream so I think it's
a reflection of progress that society is making.
- It is such an exciting time to
be a drag performer, a drag queen.
They're getting television slots,
commercial slots, makeup tutorials.
They are traveling the world doing solo shows
and group shows and making money.
When I started there was none of that.
You had one option and that was to perform in a bar.
- When I launched the Nicopanda MAC collection,
I did a flash fashion show at Macy's.
I had Aquaria, Naomi Smalls and the Drag Kid Desmond
is amazing and to see them cat walking
inside Macy's was incredible.
(upbeat music)
- When people say that drag is more mainstream,
what that really means is that young people
in the middle of nowhere who don't have access
to queer culture get to see and know and love drag.
If I had had that experience as a little kid
in the middle of Illinois, it would have changed my life.
I thought I had invented cross-dressing
'cause I kept it as something secret
and almost as a source of shame.
And to celebrate on such a big platform
that exploring gender, being variant with your gender
is a beautiful, positive, successful thing.
I think that's a powerful message
that every young person needs to hear.
- One of my biggest experiences and highlights
of this weekend is all the children.
So any of the children that I've seen,
I'm like, hey can I grab a picture with you
and they come dressed up, they're in drag,
they're in costumes and like Joey said,
the parents are bringing them.
Seeing the families come here in support.
Gay, straight, bi, it's amazing.
- How do you feel about being here?
Is it fun?
She's really excited about meeting some of the drag queens.
- I see young people really pushing themselves
to have authentic and even queer expression of gender.
It's amazing that that's becoming more part
of discussions within high schools, within families at home
and I think that drag has had a huge role in that.
In shaping discussions and just in introducing young people
to the ideas of being non-binary or being trans.
Drag has allowed queer people to
be normal in mainstream society
and that's really powerful because we are.
It may seem over the top and outlandish
but it's normal and healthy and it's a good thing.
And so, as that gets to be recognized as beautiful
in its own way, I think we're gonna see a big increase
in people's safety and happiness.
- One of the best parts about doing drag makeup
is the experience that you have and the bond
that you make with the person who sits in your chair.
Whether that's even you putting the makeup on yourself.
(upbeat music)