Italian teaches men how to live like a Queen

Andrea Berardicurti, the man behind the stage name La Karl du Pigne, set up the Drag Queen College in Turin to teach men how to pull off drag — dressing as a woman. ‘‘The key is to exaggerate,’’ Berardicurti said. ‘‘What is important is to leave people with their mouths open.’’

A night spent watching Berardicurti’s show in a gay club, where he was dressed up and mimed to songs by Eurythmics’ singer Annie Lennox, tempted Ginobili, 32, to take the $63 class. According to the course programme, he too could learn how to dress and walk like a queen and lip sync to drag favourites Liza Minnelli, Shirley Bassey, Kylie Minogue and Marlene Dietrich.

‘‘A drag queen is nothing without her make up,’’ Berardicurti said, plumping a powder puff. ‘‘You have to create a mask — to erase your original face and build something different.’’

Snapping open a beauty case, Berardicurti set to work on his students, moisturising, plucking and shaving. Burly beard lines were smothered before stunned faces disappeared in a puff of heavy white powder. Glitter, gloss and smell of grease paints filled the room scattered with man-sized spiked heels and strappy sandals with Madonna-like pointy bustiers and slinky frocks.

Once Berardicurti’s transformation was complete, Ginobili leaned forward to study his pencilled eyebrows, rouged cheeks and blue-bobbed hairdo in the mirror. ‘‘I feel the same inside,’’ the company secretary said. ‘‘I just look different.’’

When Berardicurti got his break in Rome’s ‘‘The Killer Cow’’ club in the 1980s, drag was a gay phenomenon. Now, straight men can be found on stage while their wives and children watch, he said. ‘‘I don’t do this because I’m attracted to the idea of being a woman,’’ said 36-year-old guide Raimondi. ‘‘I feel very much a man.’’

Berardicurti, 45, first stepped out as a drag queen at a Mardi Gras carnival some 25 years ago. ‘‘I knew I wanted to express my female side…it’s how a lot of men start. I caught the bug,’’ he said. ‘‘Drag is a drug.’’

Now he works as a drag-queen hostess in a gay club, mingling with party-goers and putting on shows which he said earned him enough to live on. Besides, drag was the only job he wanted.

‘‘When I left it for 2-1/2 years, they were the unhappiest years of my life,’’ he said. ‘‘When I’m in drag I feel fabulous.’’ (Reuters)