Charlotte drag performer lifts our quarantine moods with Plaza Midwood music video
Did COVID-19 replace your thoughts of a summer party with a socially-distanced bummer?
Enter Lolita Chanel: the much needed dose of happiness — and glamour — we all needed. Chanel took to the streets of Plaza Midwood to film an incredible drag performance set to the tune of Dua Lipa’s “Hallucinate.”
“COVID has definitely made a lot of people go through certain stress and anxiety that they weren’t necessarily prepared to deal with, me being one of them, and I’ve always felt like drag and makeup has been my passion to escape the deepest parts of my mind,” they said. “So I was hoping that this video would be a way to just cheer everybody up and make us not think of how things are right now, but that later down the road that things are going to get better.”
BECOMING LOLITA CHANEL
By day, Chanel is a regular cis male, Sebastian Abraham, who was born and raised in Charlotte. After a bad breakup, Abraham needed an outlet and found joy in drag.
“I had a cousin who worked in a wig store and a friend who knew his way around the drag scene. So during Pride in 2014, I put on a wig, t-shirt, a skirt and some heels and went to Pride in drag. And the rest was history,” Abraham said. “Then I was just performing as often as I could, and it became a huge passion of mine from there.”
Chanel likes to be considered a traveling queen, but has not been able to perform many shows due to COVID-19. After a start at The Scorpio, they branched out to other locales to avoid just performing at bars. Since then, Chanel has performed at Chasers Charlotte NoDa and The Peace Pipe.
THE MAKING OF “HALLUCINATE”
Like many Americans, Abraham was furloughed from a new position at a financial institution in Charlotte as the coronavirus shutdown lingered.
“I was just at home, and my mom and I decided, you know, we’re going to be at home, let’s make something out of it,” Chanel said. “We started walking through the neighborhood to try to get in a little more fitness, and I noticed that every time I would walk I would listen to [Hallucinate] and it would give me such an energy boost. Slowly but surely, like most of my other performances, I just started seeing the idea in my head so I immediately contacted my friend to film it.”
Abraham assumed the role of Chanel to execute the summer’s hottest video, which was meant to be a part of a digital drag show that local drag queen Onya Nerves runs for fundraising to benefit local organizations like Transcend Charlotte and Time Out Youth. Chanel, Nerves and best friend Jaime Crespo took to the streets of Plaza Midwood to bring the video to fruition.
“I’ve always seen Plaza Midwood as more of an artsy place. You can go there and see just about anybody from any walk of life,” Chanel said. “For me, I think Plaza Midwood is the best representation of what Charlotte really has.”
To create the video, Chanel had to perform the full song in each outfit you see. The team started getting ready at 10 a.m. that morning and began to film around 1:30 in the afternoon — Rome wasn’t built in a day, and one cannot simply look that fabulous without proper time to prepare.
“Everything came out really well. The one that really hurt was the one where I did my split,” Chanel said. “The split wasn’t the part that hurt. It was the fact that I was wearing pleather black latex thigh-high boots in the scorching North Carolina sun.”
Let’s all just take a moment to respect the determination and resolve, as we’re all likely lying around in quarantine fashion (read: gym clothes with questionable food stains).
“Being able to be in front of a bunch of people was great. In the original audio, you can hear people in the background screaming, and that’s what I miss the most about performing, just that energy I get from having other people see me,” Chanel said.
“In the outfit with the neon hair, we kept having to go back and record again because people were honking. And me being the person that I am, I hear someone honking, yelling ‘yeeees’ or ‘queen’ or whatever, and I would always stop and say ‘thank you!’”
Chanel said the performance pushed through one of their biggest fears.
“I consider Plaza Midwood to be a more progressive area, but it was also nerve-wracking because this is still in the Bible Belt. Someone could not be a fan of what I’m doing,” Chanel said. “But not only were there cars honking, after I finished filming my big neon hair moment, I had a mom with her two daughters come up to me and ask if she could take a picture, and it made me think that the world is not as dark as I think it is sometimes. It was so cool; I was a little emotional.”
STAYING POSITIVE DURING COVID-19 AND LOOKING AHEAD
“If I had to put a label on myself, I would consider myself a glamorous plus-size Latin diva,” Chanel said. “I wear my Latin pride on my shoulder, and hopefully everyone else loves it, too.”
Chanel is a testament to self-love, especially during a difficult time. Many of us are stuck at home. Routines have changed. It’s more difficult to get out and exercise or find the resolve to dress up or put on makeup. But Chanel’s video is a reminder that even during dark times, it’s alright — and even healthy — to take the time to put on mascara or an outfit that makes you feel beautiful.
“I’m glad it made people want to be like, you know what? I deserve to look good for myself, even if I am stuck at home,” Chanel said.
“There are those days where I don’t feel great. I acknowledge those days when I am not feeling great in my skin,” Chanel said. “And then there’s those days when I look at myself in the mirror and I’m like, ‘B****, you’re the best thing that ever arrived on this Earth. Beyonce has nothing on you. You look phenomenal.’”
Jot down that phrase for the next time you’re feeling down.
“You have to have those days where even though you might be beating yourself up over how you look, you need to think to yourself, ‘I am the baddest thing that ever walked on this green Earth.’”
Chanel is a reminder that not every day has to be fabulous, but that quarantine does not mean you can’t flaunt everything you’ve got. And if you’re already craving another incredible video for inspiration, they’ve got you covered.
“This is not going to be the last video I make. I have a full schedule of videos. So either I’m going to get a call from my job to go back to work or to pick up some equipment and start working from home, but I’m not going to stop here,” Chanel said. “This is not going to be the last video you’re going to see of me.”
You can follow Chanel’s glamorous adventures on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
