Smoke, mirrors, and a whole lot of make-do glamour

It ain’t easy being a queen.

We see it when we watch and re-watch episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race: These courageous individuals carrying around and nurturing their more glamorous alter-egos that are meant to live nowhere but in the spotlight and require hours to be coaxed out from decidedly less sophisticated-looking shells.

Drag queens are like Cinderella and her rag-tag gang of mice and birds by day, sewing up gowns and hair pieces. Then for just a few hours at night, they transform into the foxier stepsisters, invoking iconic women with their lip sync-and-dance numbers. At the end of a long day, they shed off all that makeup, crystal-embedded pasties, and fake hair, only to do everything all over again the next day and the day after that.

The ladies of Club Mwah! know this life well, performing three nights a week at the Mandaluyong club in addition to all the other shows they do. Backstage at eight o’clock on a Friday night, just a couple of hours before the stage curtains rise for Folies de Mwah!, they primp at their vanity desks, only halfway done in their transformation; in various states of undress and with their hair pulled back into tight buns, the ladies look like slightly husky prima ballerinas.

“When you can do drag queen makeup, regular makeup artists are in awe of you,” declares Aya (government name: Joselito Molano), who has been with Club Mwah! since 2006. “In makeup school, it’s not part of the regular curriculum; you have to take a different course for it. Not every makeup artist can do drag.”

And not everyone can be a drag queen, either—but everyone’s free to try. Even as they half-balk at giving out their real (and masculine-sounding) names, the Club Mwah! girls are open with their beauty secrets, some even with their sob stories. It seems all that work of creating an illusion every night has made them do away with unnecessary pretense. “I had to stop taking hormones because we’re doing hours and hours of dance rehearsal everyday,” Folies lead dancer Koko Artadi (real name: Maximillan Plaza) admits. “With the hormones, we get tired more easily, we have mood swings, and retaining dance steps becomes more difficult. That’s why we look muscular—we look more manly now because we had to stop with the pills.”

In their mimicry of how women look, drag queens have turned what it means to look feminine on its head, and it hasn’t stopped spinning since. For women who want to amp up the glamour factor, here are some of the ladies’ beauty secrets. Sashay, shantay, copy away—just don’t fuck them up.

Throw away all the makeup rules you’ve learned

Forget downplaying the eyes when you’re sporting popping red lips, or muting your lip color when you put on smokey lids. There’s no downplaying in drag makeup, just overplaying. “Eyes, lips, cheeks—everything is highlighted,” says Charlito Maputol a.k.a. Cha Cha. “The showier, the better.” As for picking the best kind of foundation to prep the face with, stick foundation is best followed by cake makeup. “Actually, we do three layers: foundation, cream, then powder. Cream-based makeup works best because we have no time for retouches in between numbers, and nothing must melt or be washed off by sweat while we’re onstage.

“Most of us started out knowing how to put on pretty makeup,” Cha Cha continues. “Almost all of us have worked in Japan and there, you have to look womanly to earn money. But here at the club, pretty doesn’t register well onstage. It’s always more, more, more.”

Don’t bother buying high-end expensive makeup when local ones will do

Drugstore brands such as Fanny Serrano, Ever Bilena, Careline, and Nichido can do the job adequately. Plus, according to Koko, “they stay put better in our weather.” Pricey maquillage also has great staying power, but since drag queens sashay and shantay how many nights a week, the smart bet is on low- to middle-end brands. “The audience wouldn’t know anyway if you’re wearing MAC or Kokuryu on your face.”

Even with their gravity-defying lashes, drag queens prefer no-name brands. “Actually, we prefer these specialized lashes. We buy them from someone who hawks them outside the club,” Koko deadpans.

Regardless of the season, black is the in color

“You have to choose an eye shadow that is black, like really black and not just gray,” Aya advises. “Or else, your eye makeup will be washed out by the stage lights.” The same goes for the klabebe, a general term used for whatever black-hued powder drag queens use to disguise their hairlines. “It can be eyebrow powder or eye shadow as long as it’s black,” explains Lorenzo, a tall transgender woman who had learned how to put on makeup by observing artists beautify club entertainers (“hostesses”) and picking up discarded makeup kits to practice with. “A woman’s hairline looks softer, oval around the edges compared to a man’s, which is usually square. So we have to disguise that with the klabebe. There’s also lipstick for the hair that’s sold in Daiso.”

Black works to shape the lips as well. To create full lips with a perfect Cupid’s bow, the ladies use a black liner to draw outside of their natural lip line. “The better for the audience to see our mouths,” says Aya. Especially when they are lip syncing for their lives.

Some of a drag queen’s beauty arsenal is sourced from the bookstore

Koko’s hot pink lips sparkle, complemented by her equally sparkly turquoise eye shadow, and they are both courtesy of National Book Store.

After lining their lips and putting on red lipstick, the queens put on top a dusting of fine glitter of the color of their choice. “Sometimes we spit them out,” Aya jokes. “Or we realize we’ve swallowed them when we look at what we leave in the crapper later.” For their eye makeup, they use glue to help the glitter adhere to the skin. Aido Eye Putti, a brand of eyelid glue used to create double folds on the lids, is a common product among the drag queens’ beauty supplies.

What goes on must come off

Alter-egos are released only during special times, as 24/7 exposure will rob them of their power. At the end of the show, to help drag queens strip their skin clean of makeup, a bookstore item also comes handy: adhesive tape. “With regular cleanser, the glitter on our lips and eyelids just spreads to other areas,” Aya explains. “Better to remove them dry first.” Afterwards, the ladies’ favored skin cleansers will do.

For Aya, though, nothing has worked as well as the Perla laundry bar. “We put on layers and layers of makeup, and ordinary makeup removers take a long time washing everything off. But this one is really effective. Even before all these expensive brands started coming up, Perla has been tried and tested, And even though it can remove makeup, it’s still gentle enough for my skin.”

A version of this story was published in 2012 in the lifestyle section of The Philippine Star. All images are by cottonbro on Pexels.