This photo captures backstage at the DragStar finals, Theatro Rival, Rio de Janeiro, May 2025.
Amid open makeup jars and improvised containers, drag queen Natasha Brizza faces herself in a magnifying mirror—and begins her transformation.
The interrupted gesture, the focused expression, the half-drawn eyeliner, the parted lips: everything here is truth. It’s about extravagance. But also presence.
This is the hour before applause—where performance hasn’t begun, but the fight is already onstage.
In the backstage of a drag competition, what unfolds isn’t just aesthetic transformation: it’s identity affirmation against a world bent on erasure.
To be drag isn’t just “getting ready.”
It’s claiming existence where many wish no reflection remained.
It’s gluing on lashes when the world claws to rip them off.
It’s turning a makeshift dressing room into territory of self.
