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The blonde wigs were impossible to miss. At Kitty Ko in Bengaluru on September 20, Izzy B and Sylveria Frost stepped out in towering blonde hair and the kind of glamour that makes drag feel less like a costume and more like an alternate universe. Miss Bhenji, hosting the night, laid down the rules before the performances began: nobody touches the queens, and nobody touches their hair.
The room was there for late singer-songwriter Dolly Parton. But long before the tribute began, it was clear that the night belonged to the queens who had spent years learning how to become themselves.
For Lilith, Izzy B and Sylveria Frost, drag has been less about performance than invention. Each has built a persona from different pieces of her life — makeup, dance, fashion, performance, queerness, ambition and, sometimes, survival.
Drag is a highly creative performance art form rooted in LGBTQIA+ culture where drag artists or drag performers use stylised clothing, makeup, and wigs to exaggerate and satirise gender constructs.
But it is entirely separate from transgender identities. While trans is a gender identity, drag is an artistic, temporary performance. Within the drag community, artists are broadly categorised by the gender expression they perform: drag queens hyper-exaggerate and perform femininity, whereas drag kings lean into and satirise stylised masculinity.
23-year-old Lilith came to drag after years of collecting skills without quite knowing where they would take her. Growing up in Kashmir and later moving to Bengaluru for college, she was always drawn to makeup, hairstyling, design and dance. She trained professionally as a dancer, experimented with makeup and found herself repeatedly picking up new interests before moving on to something else.
Drag gave those scattered interests somewhere to meet. “I have always been into makeup. I love makeup.” But conventional makeup eventually felt too familiar. She wanted something that would make her stand out, something that would challenge her. Drag offered exactly that.
Her first experience in drag was in New Delhi, about two years ago, when her best friend put her in drag. What began with a more conventional makeup look eventually became something much more distinctive: a completely white face that she now considers part of her signature.
Drag is political
Lilith’s performances went well, but she soon found herself frustrated by another part of being a drag performer: waiting for someone else to create a stage for her.
So, earlier this year, she started The Q-List, an events company designed around the kind of queer space she wanted to see in Bengaluru. She felt that many existing queer spaces were heavily centred around gay men, while women, trans and non-binary people could find fewer spaces where they felt completely comfortable.
“I decided to create the space that I wanted to see.”
The Q-List is invite-only. A ticket alone is not enough to get in. Lilith wants people in the room to know that the space is meant to be respectful, allowing everyone to let their guard down.
She has hosted around six events so far, including a Taylor Swift drag show, and says every one has sold out. At the Taylor Swift drag party, queens take the stage to perform Taylor’s biggest hits, while fans can test their Swiftie knowledge with themed trivia and sing along to their favourite songs.
That impulse to build rather than wait to be included runs through her understanding of drag. She sees the art form as political precisely because it challenges who gets to occupy space, who gets to be visible and who gets to decide what femininity can look like.
“I think drag is very political, and I think we should keep it that way.”
Dolly Parton fits naturally into that philosophy.
In India, Dolly’s place in queer culture is less familiar. She is often known simply as the country music legend behind ‘Jolene’ and ‘9 to 5’. But Drag performers have long drawn from her towering hair, rhinestones and unapologetically glamorous femininity. She even lost once to a drag queen in a Dolly Parton lookalike contest. Dolly wrote the song ‘Travelin’ Thru’ for the 2005 film Transamerica, a film about a transgender woman, and has consistently welcomed her LGBTQ+ following.
Lilith did not grow up as a devoted Dolly fan. She first encountered her because of Miley Cyrus and only later learned about their relationship and Dolly’s larger cultural legacy. What stayed with her was less a particular song than Dolly’s willingness to be completely herself.
For Lilith, that means refusing the advice to blend in. People have told her not to stand out too much, to stay where she is comfortable. Her response is, “Why not? You only have one life. Let’s just have fun.”
Her chosen name reflects that. The precise origins of the mythological figure of Lilith remain unclear. She is often suggested to have been a Mesopotamian goddess. In Christian doctrine she is considered Adam’s first wife before Eve. Refusing to bow to men, Lilith is believed to have been cast out of heaven.
“I can relate to that. I like to stand out. A part of standing out is not bowing down to anybody. Through my career, I had lots of opportunities come up where I could’ve become part of something bigger, but that would require me to give up my autonomy as an artist. I did not do that. That is why the name Lillith resonates with me.”
That was the Dolly she wanted to bring to the stage — not a literal imitation, but the big hair, confidence and unapologetic personality associated with her.
‘Two lives’
For Izzy B, however, the stakes of becoming a drag queen have been much more complicated. At 26, she has spent nearly three years performing as Izzy B and is now the eldest daughter of Miss Bhenji.
The drag mother-daughter relationship is a profound chosen family bond. It blends professional mentorship with emotional connections. A drag mother is often an experienced queen who takes an emerging artist under her wing.
Izzy describes herself as a look queen and female impersonator. She has performed at Kooth nights, which are high-energy club events celebrating south Indian cinematic music and folk dance beats; Mujra-inspired shows, which are theatrical; expressive drag performances rooted in classical Mughal-era courtesan storytelling and poetry; and drag brunches celebrating Bollywood divas, who are channelled for their hyper-glamourous dramatic expressions and campy dance routines, like actors Madhuri Dixit and Rekha.
Offstage, her life looks very different.
She comes from a conservative Muslim family that does not know she is a drag artist. Her wigs, makeup and costumes are kept at her drag mother’s house. She gets ready there, becomes Izzy B, performs, and later returns home and changes back.
“I am managing two lives,” she says.
That double existence is one of the hardest parts of drag for her. There is the freedom of the stage, where she can be completely visible, and the careful negotiation of home, where that identity remains hidden.
“Being a drag performer in India is challenging. Being a drag performer and being Muslim is another challenge altogether.”
Dolly and family
In 2024, her family discovered her practising dance at a gym in shorts. She was restricted from going out, became separated from friends and stepped away from drag for around eight months. She had to cancel a show she had been preparing for.
For someone whose identity had become intertwined with performing, disappearing from the scene came with another fear: that people would forget her.
During that period, Miss Bhenji kept checking on her. When Izzy eventually returned, Bhenji invited her to become her drag daughter. Miss Bhenji’s house has now become a space where wigs, makeup, clothes and heels could be shared, but more importantly, where the queens did not have to explain themselves.
That sense of chosen family is central to Izzy’s understanding of drag.
She discovered drag after watching RuPaul’s Drag Race and attending her first drag show at Kitty Ko in 2022. A friend encouraged her to try it herself. Her first attempt in 2023 involved a basic wig and a store-bought outfit. But once the makeup went on, something shifted.
“The makeup changes your identity.”
She entered a drag talent hunt later that year and won. Her first proper show, Disco Dolls, followed in July 2023. She remembers the audience responding to her dancing and stage presence and the feeling of realising, perhaps for the first time, that this could actually become her life.
“This is what I want to do.” Today, she is a full-time drag performer.
That life is expensive. A synthetic lace-front wig can cost around Rs 5000, and human hair wigs at Rs 10,000. There are outfits, heels, makeup, padding, stockings and alterations. There is always another character to build and another look to perfect.
“I have to look polished. I have to look good. I have to bring a new persona every time.” The money does not always match the labour.
But the audience keeps her going. Being recognised as Izzy B gives her a rush — a reminder that the person she has created has travelled beyond the room in which she created her.
For the Dolly tribute, she chose a white gown and performed ‘Jolene’, surrounded by two androgynous performers. To Izzy, Dolly is more than a country music legend. She is a queer icon, a “gay mother”, someone whose image and music have travelled through generations of LGBTQ+ culture.
“Dolly is a drag queen.” Izzy wants audiences, particularly queer audiences, to understand that history.
Meaningful inclusivity
For Sylveria Frost, drag began with another kind of transformation.
She had been fascinated by dressing up since she was young, experimenting behind closed doors. RuPaul’s Drag Race eventually gave her the push to take the interest seriously. By then, she had already spent years building a visual language through makeup.
During lockdown in 2020, she began experimenting heavily with makeup. She created content and worked with brands, gradually turning beauty into a creative practice. When she eventually discovered drag, it gave that practice a body.
“I wanted to merge my makeup persona with my drag persona.”
She began performing in Bengaluru in 2024, with her first show in November. Soon, she became associated with a gothic, Halloween-inspired aesthetic. Many queens specialise. Some focus on comedy, others on aesthetics. But Sylveria did not want to be confined to one category.
“I am known specifically as the Goth and Halloween Queen. I didn’t want to be put into one category. I wanted to bring beauty, darkness, femininity and theatricality together through dance.”
She is a Bengali from Jharkhand. She studied in Bhubaneswar and moved to Bengaluru for work. During the week, she works in human resources. On weekends, if she has a show, she becomes Sylveria Frost.
The transformation is labour-intensive.
There is the makeup. The hair. The heels. The stockings. Padding. Alterations. The work of reshaping her body into the silhouette she wants for a performance.
“People think drag is just coming on stage and presenting yourself. There’s a lot of work behind it.”
Then there is the performance itself.
Sylveria recently became a finalist at Battle Royale, a national-level drag competition. She describes the achievement as a turning point. But she is also thinking about what drag can do outside the club.
Her day job has made her particularly conscious of the gap between corporate statements about inclusion and the everyday experience of queer and trans people. She works in IT hiring and has seen companies become more visibly inclusive around Pride Month. At her workplace, she noticed separate facilities for transgender employees and appreciated the gesture. But she also wondered about the people those facilities were supposedly being built for.
“If you have a washroom for transgender people, why are you not hiring them?”
That question has become part of her drag. She wants to take the confidence she has built onstage into other spaces where queer people may technically be accepted but still feel unwelcome.
Dolly entered Sylveria’s life through drag too. After encountering her through RuPaul’s Drag Race, Sylveria went looking for the woman behind the references. ‘Jolene’ became her entry point. So did Dolly’s collaborations with younger artists and her enduring influence on queer culture.
What fascinated Sylveria was that Dolly had spent decades creating a persona so recognisable that she could be transformed, referenced and recreated — while remaining unmistakably herself.
For her tribute, Sylveria imagined Dolly as a doll inside a box: an icon packaged for the world, then stepping out of that box and becoming larger than the object people expected her to be.
It was a fitting idea for a drag queen. Because the central tension in drag is often misunderstood. The transformation may look like becoming someone else. For these queens, it is frequently the opposite. It is a way of becoming more visible.
Legacy
Lilith built a stage when she couldn’t find the kind of space she wanted. Izzy built a second life around a persona she could not yet bring home. Sylveria turned a corporate working life and a fascination with beauty into a performance that lets her question the spaces around her.
Their challenges are different. So are their aesthetics. One builds community through events. Another found family through a drag house. And another is trying to carry the politics of drag into the workplace.
But all three have arrived at the same fundamental question: what happens when you stop asking for permission to be seen?
On September 20, the answer was dressed in blonde wigs, gowns, heels and rhinestones. Later that night, a photograph of Dolly was placed before the performers. The queens lit candles. ‘Jolene’ began.
For a few minutes, the room stopped being a party.
The tribute was for Dolly. But the emotion belonged to the queens standing beneath the lights, artists who have spent their own lives turning themselves into something impossible to ignore.