YouTube famous men’s stylist Kyle Krieger recently got a drag makeover and a lesson on gender identity and presentation from Drag Race alum Gia Gunn.
Gunn competed on season six of RuPaul’s Drag Race and has since come out as trans.
‘I was hoping that you could take me from this furry moment,’ Krieger says to Gunn while touching his beard, ‘to full-on high-whore drag,’
‘Is that possible?’
‘You wanna be like, between a Bianca Del Rio, but not a Milk, so maybe like an Alyssa Edwards or one of those crazy, coo-coo people,’ Gunn responds.
‘Yes, yes!’ Krieger replies with glee.
‘It 100% makes me feel, like, nervous and anxious to be sitting here naked, not normally doing anything like this,’ Krieger tells Gunn.
It turns out Gunn was nervous and anxious too, since she’s never done a makeover like this before.
The process
‘There’s a couple things that we have to do to get you into your feminine look,’ Gunn explains. ‘We have to shave that beard, put those brows down, get you a wig, get you all corseted, tuck all that lovely stuff, and get you into your final look.’
‘I haven’t seen my face without a beard in, like, a couple years,’ Krieger remarks before getting a full-body shave.
‘Now I’m gonna have to be a therapist, too?’ Gunn responds. ‘Hold your hand and walk you through the process?’
Krieger laughs, and then it’s ‘bye bye beardie.’
‘So first, I’m going to put this wig cap on you,’ Gunn says. ‘Then, I’m going to cover your eyebrows.’
As Gunn coats Krieger’s eyebrows in Elmer’s glue stick, he asks how long she has considered herself a drag queen.
‘Well, to be honest, I started studying Japanese classical dance, also known as Kabuki Theater, when I was about five years old,’ Gunn recalls. ‘Being young and not really knowing much about gender and things like that, somehow the women’s roles felt more naturally to me.’
Krieger mentions that he came out as gay during his senior year of high school.
‘There was a lot of surface fears, right? Like, will they make fun of me, all this stuff like that,’ he explains. ‘But that all goes down to the idea of, like, am I gonna end up alone? Am I gonna be loveable?’
‘And I was struggling with my own internal homophobia and living with my own shame. The first time I kissed a boy I felt sick to my stomach and I just wanted to throw up.’
Gunn originally came out as a gay man. ‘Nobody comes out of the womb knowing that transitioning to the opposite gender is even an option,’ Gunn says.
‘And I definitely wasn’t even comfortable with the fact that I am transgender up until a couple years ago,’ she says. ‘Being able to admit that to myself and being able to look at myself and being proud to be who I am and also be public about that, you know?’
Makeup
Gunn goes on to explain contouring to Krieger, followed by doing his eye makeup.
Krieger opens up about being criticized for his effeminate way of speaking.
‘It really triggers those feelings of when I was a kid, not feeling enough, right, and being gay,’ he says. ‘And then, after I processed this, it’s like, you kind of get to the point where you’re like: this is it. This is me.’
‘I can relate,’ Gunn says. ‘For me, as a trans woman, my biggest insecurity is my voice. And I do feel that when I go out in public and when I speak is when I am either misgendered or not validated as female as I look.’
Krieger couldn’t fathom having to put on all this makeup every day.
‘It really puts into focus how much of an art and how committed people are to the art, and, you know, and to transforming every day,’ he says.
Outfit
‘First, I need you to get into a tuck,’ Gunn says. ‘I expect good things!’
But when Krieger failed to deliver on an appropriate tuck, Gunn helped fix it up.
‘Oh, girl, I can’t believe you would tuck like this,’ she says to him.
‘Now we gotta get you some body, okay?’ Gunn says as she helps Krieger into padding.
‘Now we’re gonna lace you up,’ Gunn says as she tightens the corset.
They decided on a sparkly brown dress for the final look.
‘I honestly feel reborn,’ Krieger says.
Watch the full makeover below:
