The Beauty Regime of Drag Artist Alma Bitches

Drag artist Alma Bitches has become a staple of the Vancouver queer community. Alma—who uses the non-binary pronouns they, them, and their—stars in a variety of drag shows around town, and often uses them to raise money for causes they care about, including the Urban Native Youth Association and the Positive Living Society of British Columbia. “I’m doing things on a smaller scale, but with enough small drops in the bucket you’re gonna have a really full bucket by the end of the year,” they say between sips of iced tea at Nordstrom Vancouver’s Ebar. “If I can just put on a show and somehow have a charitable component, then I’m quite happy with that.”

They also, like many drag artists, had to learn how to do their own makeup without any formal training. But you wouldn’t know it to look at them now—one scroll of their Instagram shows incredible artistry with bold lips, bright eyes, and contoured cheeks. All in a day’s work for Alma.

How did you get into drag?

It’s been almost nine years. I started with a group called The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, it’s a worldwide order of queer nuns with chapters in over 60 cities in the world that raises money for charitable causes. We get all dressed up, we put on really thick, heavy paint, and we piss off the right people and comfort the right people. Through that I was invited to start performing at bars and whatnot as well, and all of a sudden, I ended up with a weekly show, and my weekly show turned into two weekly shows—and now I have two weeklies, a bunch of monthlies, a bunch of quarterlies, and special events.

What drew you to this type of performance?

I’ve always been a little bit of a performer. When I was a kid, I was always doing something, was always putting on some sort of show. In the gay community, there’s a lot of pressure to look a certain way, and I kind of got tired of it—that’s why I prefer to be fully done up most of the time. Because when you’re like that everyone’s just falling all over you rather than being like, “Oh, you should work out more,” or something like that. I think I liked dressing up and looking like someone else at first, and now it’s more of a job. It’s a snowball that’s going down a hill that I can’t stop. It’s slowly taking the place of my old full-time job; I’m self-employed completely, so I work less, as little as I ever have, now doing my regular day job.

Did you have to teach yourself how to do your makeup?

Yeah, I had no experience with makeup, none at all. For the nun makeup, you paint your face bright white and then you put bright colours on it—and I didn’t know to set my foundation, so I put all this white on and then I started trying to put colours on it and it was just so gross and ugly and didn't work. I was so frustrated and sent a picture to the person who was mentoring me and they were just like, “Aw sweetie, come to my house and I’ll show you what to do.” I learned to use powder and then paint on top of that. So I definitely started at square one.

Now I’ve been playing with makeup for almost 10 years, and you pick up a lot. I’ve watched some YouTube tutorials, but I don’t have the patience to just sit there and try to copy somebody. So, and you can see it on my Instagram even from a few months ago to a year ago, I’m always at a different place with my makeup. When I find something I like, I'll do it for a long time and then all of a sudden it just changes and then I’m doing something else. And in Vancouver we’re very lucky, we have a lot of great makeup artists who are also drag queens—and if you’re nice, they will give you the tips.

What’s your pre-show skincare routine?

You want a fresh palette on your face, so I use a product called Daily Microfoliant from Dermalogica to get as much off as I can. Then I use two products, one’s called Dry, so you spray it on your face and it’s going to stop your face from sweating. I put that on, I let it dry for a couple minutes, and then I take a skin prep toner on a cotton pad and I wipe that all over. You just feel your face becoming super shiny and super tight. And then I take a primer from Dermalogica called Skinperfect Primer and I do it on my problem areas, which I see as my nose and forehead. Those four steps I really think make your face nice and velvety-looking for when you finally put your makeup on.

What are some of your favourite makeup products right now?

Right now I’m kind of obsessed with Jeffree Star Cosmetics because there are so many different colours. My last two faces were from the Alien Palette; I was painting with all these browns because I was wearing this honey-brown hair that I just bought. And I just got the Blue Blood Palette, so I’m experimenting with all these blues and greens. Just trying to use high-quality, pigmented shadows—that’s the most important thing, I think.

The foundation I’m currently using is Make Up For Ever’s HD Sticks. And I use a Ben Nye translucent setting powder and some Ben Nye contour cremes. Sometimes people talk about how their makeup moves throughout the course of the day because of sweat or activity, so when you put on your cream foundations, before you powder, you can spray a setting spray; I use one either from Make Up For Ever or MAC. And my friend just turned me on to something cool, it’s these glitters called Lemonhead Los Angeles. They come in all different colours but it’s a little paste, so you take it and it’s wet and you put it on the area, and you can spread it with your finger. It’s the best thing. It takes about 30 seconds for it to dry, so you can move it around if you don’t like where it is. It’s really quite cool stuff. And it comes off really easily; sometimes with glitter it scratches your skin, but this doesn’t do that.

When I’m taking off my makeup I use Precleanse by Dermalgoica. I wipe it everywhere, it just breaks everything down. And I wash with the Dermalogica Clearing Skin Wash and Daily Microfoliant. And Bioderma micellar water; it was recommended to me by another drag artist. Before I started using it I thought my face was clean, but one of the first times I used it I had painted my face teal; I used all my products to get everything off and then put the micellar water on a cotton pad and wiped my face—and the cotton pad was blue. Micellar water just gets in there, it’s a good one for penetrating and getting really deep in there to stuff you don't otherwise see. And people always ask me how I take care of my beard, and that’s one thing I'm really bad about—I’ll just brush it if it’s unruly.

For lips I love to prep the area with a lip scrub, so I use ones from Jeffree Star. They make everything nice and smooth, and I do it just above my lips and all around—because sometimes you want to overdraw your lips just a little bit, sometimes a lot, so you want all the skin to be soft around the area. Most of the time I’ve been using liquid lipsticks; I prefer that over plain lipstick because once you put a liquid lipstick on it just dries and it’s set, if you’re using a good one. I’ve never been one to line my lips, but I’ve started overdrawing my lips even bigger recently, so I’ve been using pencils from Ben Nye and lipsticks from Ben Nye to create a bigger lip effect. But if you want more natural, just put that liquid lip on in the colour that you like and walk out that door!

For those in Vancouver, here’s where to catch Alma in action:

• Weekly: Werk It (Wednesday) at the Junction
• Weekly: Sanctuary (Sunday) at the Pumpjack
• Once monthly: Monday’s Most Wanted at 1181
• Twice monthly: Bye Felicia! (check local listings) at the Biltmore Cabaret
  

This interview has been edited and condensed.