Inspired by our #StayAtHomo series, drag queen Dona Tarte has shared how while many may be new to staying at home for long periods, for many it’s a way of life.
My name is Dona Tarte, I am a drag queen from Dublin and up until lately, I was living in London.
I am a drag queen as well as a Twitch Streamer. As a hobby since last year, I’ve been streaming my makeup process and playing video games where, through streaming, I’ve built a nice small community with people from around the world.
Through holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, I’d stream. For a lot of people within the LGBT+, holidays are not a great time for them as their backgrounds may not be the most accepting.
On top of that, they might be too young or uncomfortable to find their “people” at clubs or bars, for people who wanted to #StayAtHomo before COVID was even a thing, I wanted to try and give that back to this little loving community.
In my own life I’m a baker, I finished up college and flew off to London at the start of the year to become a baker while doing drag on the side. When COVID hit, everything went up in the air and I lost my job and flew home to be with family before we went into lockdown.
From then I started to really push my live-streams even more. The drag community started to grow with Queens across Ireland jumping onto these platforms and asking for advice.
As much as I want to just hibernate, look for jobs and feel bad for myself, pushing to live stream my drag makeup and my Drag Baking Show, Dona Bakes, became a priority.
With my channel, I’ve been able to have viewers from across the world enjoy themselves, chat away, talk about baking and forget about the chaos going on outside.
Since the lockdown, Twitch reached out to me to ask if I wanted to go on the front page and show the world of Twitch how I use the platform to show my transformations and really grow my community as a whole.
Hello my loves!!
We're going to be on the front page of Twitch!!
I'm part of the Twitch Drag Community Develop Program with many other talented Artists streaming makeup on the front page, details below!
Hope to see you there ???#TwitchDrag #TeamStreamQueens #LGBTTwitch pic.twitter.com/AUCVV9RlIO— Dona Tarte ?? (@Dona_Tarte) April 15, 2020
This opportunity is going to drag my little community to a much wider scale that I couldn’t have even imagined. Starting out with the Irish Twitch drag scene, it was just me. But now so many other queens in Ireland either already established or baby queens have popped up.
This opportunity could really give me a chance to work as the first full-time Irish Drag Twitch streamer and pull together that lovely community you feel at Street 66 on a Friday night except online, free and throughout the week!
My goal is to help people who don’t feel comfortable coming out to clubs to find their “people” and really see what our community is like when you get to the core of it… Also, I’ll show everyone how to bake fabulous cupcakes.
Follow Dona Tarte on Twitter, Instagram and Twitch.
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