“Bitch, your look is everything right now.”
That’s what San Franciscan drag queen Pollo Del Mar said on a late 2011 night as she watched up-and-coming drag queen Bearonce Bear get ready to go out to the club she regularly performed at on her night off. However, something was very different from her usual look that night.
Bearonce didn’t shave her beard.
Bearonce, a drag queen who is well known for her bearded drag fashion, originally started out as a beardless queen performing at the Copa nightclub in Ocala, Fla. She started performing when the husband of an old friend of hers, who was a drag queen, begged her to be an extra backup dancer. Bearonce agreed, but at a cost: the beard had to go. For Bearonce, known as Anthony Chiocchi when out of drag, that was the hardest part.
“I was like, ‘Alright, I’m going to shave? Oh my god,’” Chiocchi says. “I have this beard and this is me; I’m a bear. I’m in the gay community, I’m known as a bear and I’m not going to have facial hair? … but okay, I’ll do it for the art.”
Several beardless, hectic and prone-to-malfunction performances went by before that night with Pollo Del Mar. Chiocchi wore no hip pads, no corsets, store-bought pantyhose and a homemade feather belt that hung to the floor. It made him look like his mother, he says.
“My beard is not an addition to me, it is me. So I [wanted] to keep it nice and sharp and black,” Chiocchi says. “It’s part of my aesthetic—it’s glamorous, it’s luscious, it’s majestic.”
But the idea of not shaving his beard while in drag made something click. Pollo Del Mar said that he should stay true to himself and not shave; that the entertainment industry is about evolution and Bearonce Bear was starting within that evolution.
“She was like, ‘Don’t change. Don’t do it,’” Chiocchi says, “and I said okay.”
It was a decision that Chiocchi never looked back from. Since then, Bearonce has gone on to win pageants such as Miss Florida Bearded Queen 2018, inspire hundreds of people and solidify herself as a pillar of bearded drag fashion.
Even as a child, Chiocchi said he was attracted to the idea of showmanship. He spent his younger years as a child model with a “legit” portfolio, but left the industry when his mother said it was affecting his education. Growing up, he wanted to join theater in middle school and high school. However, he never did—Chiocchi says that because he was “chubby” and “effeminate,” he was always picked on, and did not want the possibility of being picked on even more if he joined theater.
“I’m thankful that hesitancy eventually left me,” he says.
“He inspired me. He’s that legend on stage,” says Maryah Beary, a drag queen and close friend to Chiocchi. “He’s a trend setter, because there are people who can lead and people who can follow, and he’s definitely the one that is leading … he’s leading that bearded community and people are looking to him. He’s that one to look at.”
Part of the reason that Chiocchi is spoken so highly of is because of his passion for activism on behalf of the bearded drag community. When he started performing in 2011, Chiocchi says the bearded drag community was looked down upon and was called “Skag drag”—a type of drag where queens make no attempt to hide their masculinity.
Chiocchi recalled several experiences where he was performing and received compliments followed with “but, you have a beard.” One particular experience that stood out to him was a conversation he overheard between judges after a pageant—when the judge was saying that although it’s important to accept all walks of life and types of drag, they should “at least look like a woman and at least shave.”
Conversations like that are why Chiocchi continues to push the limits of bearded drag, he says. He believes it’s important for everyone to feel accepted and that the drag community should embrace all walks of life.
“I hate people being stuck in ruts, and I hate seeing underdogs always feeling like they’re not good enough,” Chiocchi says. “And [it’s great] seeing that in the trying times that we are in, especially within the LGBTQ community, that we still have the strength to evolve and keep embracing our growth, rather than staying here and letting everything happen around us. We are actually going out and keep moving forward, and we’re taking the high road versus the low road.”
Chiocchi says the critics and doubters don’t affect him at all. In fact, it only affirms that he’s doing the right thing and fuels his fire for pushing the boundaries of drag.
“The more that people pushed me, the harder I was just like ‘I’m going to keep doing this, and I’m going to do it, and I’m going to make them gag,” he says.
Chiocchi’s passion and talent has paid off. Bearonce Bear is a finalist for the 2019 National Bearded Queen Pageant due to her recent win in the 2018 Florida Bearded Pageant.
Chiocchi now spends his weeks preparing costumes with Beary, who is helping him with the pageant: working on choreography, designing looks— complete with nails, jewelry and rhinestones—and practicing hair and makeup techniques.
“It’s a lot of texts back and forth, you know, the late night FaceTimes and the morning FaceTimes, or the ‘Hey, look at this! What do you think of that?’ or when you see something on social media, you get ideas that spark,” Beary says. “It’s a lot of planning.”
The year’s pageant will take place on May 12 in Louisville, Ky. Chiocchi says although there will be some “really good competition out there,” naturally, he’s planning on taking home the trophy, especially with all the hard work he’s put into preparing for the pageant.
Through it all, Chiocchi says he wouldn’t change anything along the path that brought him here. He adds that his experience in the bearded drag community has been unforgettable, especially when it inspires someone to stay true to themselves.
Chiocchi recalled a moment when one of Bearonce’s fans contacted her through Instagram and thanked her. The fan felt comfortable and confident enough to paint his nails and wear them in public, whereas before, he only felt comfortable painting his toes and wearing closed-toed shoes wherever he went.
“As Bearonce, to have the community reach back to you and be like, ‘thank you,’ is amazing,” Chiocchi says. “It’s not that I want the thanks, it’s that I want to know that I am helping somebody. It gives me a very complete feeling; it gives me a very whole feeling.”
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