For some drag is just a hobby, but for others it’s a business.

Joshua Farrell, a female impersonator from Des Moines, said he has been doing drag shows since October 1999 under his stage name Keyana Iman.

Farrell said he doesn’t do drag for a living, he does it for fun, but sometimes he thinks about doing it full-time.

“I’ll go through a stage where I’ll want to do it for a living for like a month,” he said.

Farrell said it’s a lot of work and it can be expensive. A dance costume usually costs around $400.

“You wear a costume four times, your dance costume is paid for,” he said.

He said he has about six costumes that he rotates from show to show.

Farrell said he works for his family’s construction business, but doing drag is more difficult.

He said he’s questioned whether it’s something he wants to do all his life.

“I know I’m good enough, but I always think, ‘Is that a career future?'” he said.

“You know, when you’re 50, can you still do it? So I try to worry about other things that might be more important. Is it always going to make you happy? Look at the people who’ve done it for so long. Are they happy?”

Justin Hope, senior in early childhood education and president of the ISU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Ally Alliance, said the LGBTAA is putting on a drag show as a fundraiser for students to go to the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference from Feb. 17 to 19.

“These conferences have kind of shaped me into the leader that I am today,” he said. “[The conference has] given me that kind of fire for activism and a fire for wanting to create change on [Iowa State’s] campus and given me the tools I needed to become a leader.”

Ross Wallace, also a female impersonator from Des Moines, said he has been doing female impersonation for eight years under the name Selena Sakowitz.

He said he enjoyed various types of performances while growing up.

“I was actually a vocal performance major at Drake University,” he said. “That’s where I really developed my fascination to be on stage in front of people, entertaining.”

Being a female impersonator was a way for Wallace to stay involved with an art form he found to be very entertaining and unique.

Through his years of being an impersonator he has developed a passion for his art, which he described through an experience he had after a show.

“At the end of the night, there was an after-party and my legs locked up like I could not bend,” he said.

“I had done so much. After all that, it was 12:30 at night. I was exhausted but so energized. You could have been doing it for 12 hours straight and you are ready to fall over, but if you come away from it and you still feel like, ‘Wow! I’m ready to go.’ That’s basically what it was for me.”

Wallace said although he is a female impersonator, he is not transgendered.

“More often than not, the people that are going to fall in that category are people that do not perform,” Wallace said. “Your typical transgendered individual is somebody that is just looking to live their daily life.”

Some transgendered individuals use drag as a way to feel out their gender identity, he said.

“There are some drag queens that I have known of that have been performers and competitors and done a lot of that as kind of an initial stage for them to kind of see how it would work out for them,” he said.

“And they’ve stuck with it, and they’ve found that way of expressing themselves and finding that inner person that they wanted to be, and have gone forward and gotten that operation.”

He said that some performers who have altered their bodies did it for the purpose of the entertainment.

“For example, I’ve known people that have had face, cheeks pumped, and hips pumped and Adam’s apples shaved down and things like that,” he said.

“Not that they want to be a woman – they may have breasts, but they have no desire to get rid of .” he said, pointing to his crotch. “People that I’ve known that have done it are people that are going to do five shows a week. People that basically live and breathe being in drag.”

Wallace said anger was what got him to the point of putting on a dress and performing.

“I got really pissed off at a man, and I wanted to do something really radical that nobody would expect me to do other than rampage and break things,” he said.

“On a personal level, that was what psychologically got me to that point.”

Wallace said he has enjoyed being an impersonator.

“It’s definitely an industry where you learn to respect and appreciate other people,” he said.