“My family’s reaction to me wanting to do makeup and drag was a really good reaction. At first, they were iffy about me doing makeup but I just did it anyway. They were kind of forced to accept it. They support me now and that is all that matters ,” reported Anthony Lopez, Sahuaro’s very own drag queen.

In Ms. Krause’s AP classes, it was required to do a senior project and present it at the end of the year. Anthony, who has been featured in The Paper Cut before for his make-up skills, decided to do a drag show; it was his first time performing and he knew it would be a good learning experience. For those who do not know what a drag show is, it features performers singing or lip-syncing to songs.

Anthony has been doing makeup for two years and drag makeup for about one and a half years. He has spent an estimated $2000 on hair and makeup. “I have A LOT of makeup, wigs, and clothes that I have worked really hard to save up for. I probably bought about 80% of it all myself.” Anthony’s mom bought him the jacket and the stones for his show.

Some of the challenges he faced was stoning his jacket that he wore to the drag show with rhinestones and this took about 15-20 hours. “Styling my hair from a curly tangled mess to pin straight took a whole night.” The tedious part for Anthony was learning the lyrics to the song he was going to perform because he had to listen to it over and over. Anthony performed “Kids in America” by Kim Wilde, choosing this song because it had to be patriotic and it was the first song he thought of. He was not nervous at all and performed in front of like 100 people.

“I loved the event and everyone was really nice. We had a lot of fun and my performance went well.” Anthony made plenty of new friends while at the event. His best friend Melissa came to show him love and support during his performance. “Melissa lived for it, she was like screaming!”

Anthony’s advice to anyone who wants to be a drag performer is, “Don’t take it so seriously, have fun with it because if you’re doing it for any other reason other than to have fun doing what you’re passionate about, then just stop.”