Chiquitita on embracing her heritage and pushing boundaries through drag

Brooklyn-based drag queen Chiquitita (@chiquitettas) opens up to In The Know by Yahoo about her drag persona and how her drag journey helped her discover her identity. While in drag, Chiquitita evokes old Hollywood glamor; out of drag, her style is more laidback.

“I found drag before I really figured out who I was, and it later led me to the realization that I never wanted to take the drag off,” Chiquitita says. “I kept comparing myself to these gay boys when there was no comparison to be made. I wasn’t like them, I was never like them. There’s all these core memories that make you, that shape you. And sometimes it takes 20 years to figure out what they mean.”

Chiquitita first came across drag when she was 15, having seen a video of a drag queen on Tumblr and thought to herself, “I can do that.” And that’s exactly what she did. After starting to do drag herself in 2015, she left school the following year to pursue it professionally and has been ever since.

Chiquitita says that her drag persona is very cheeky. “It’s in the name,” she jokes. The persona is also very glamorous and sultry. “She has this essence to her that I don’t really see too much in other drag queens, but I see it in myself and it’s pretty powerful.”

Early on in her drag career, Chiquitita started incorporating her Hispanic roots into what she does. She finds that she can connect with others who share similar backgrounds and shows them that it’s OK to be who they are. “I’m happy to be like, ‘You can exist as a queer person from Central America,’” she says. “Because there is so much machismo in Hispanic culture. I think that it’s empowering to be like, ‘I’m actually not going to entertain that.’”

From collaborations with the Brooklyn Museum or Netflix to producing her own drag shows in Brooklyn, Chiquitita is able to bring a community together — a career she feels blessed to have. “I want to take in and acknowledge the now. I want to be grateful for that,” she says.

The post Chiquitita on embracing her heritage and pushing boundaries through drag appeared first on In The Know.

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