Ever "Cooked" Your Concealer? You Probably Learned How From A Drag Queen

The secret to immaculate concealer? Let it cook. 

No, this does not require any sort of kitchenware—simply let your makeup sit for a few minutes before blending. That way, the formula will settle on your skin, thicken up, and avoid sinking into lines or pores. It's a reliable technique used by many celebrity makeup artists, particularly those who favor a razor-sharp contour, but "cooking" or "baking" has long been a staple in the drag community in order to help stage makeup stay put during long performances. 

Think of banana powder as a setting powder and color corrector combined. It helps absorb excess shine and keep foundation locked into place, but because of the sunshine yellow hue, it also helps neutralize discoloration and offers a brightening effect.

It's perfect for securing a flawless, radiant finish for a long period of time, which is why it remains a hero product in many makeup artists' beauty bags. "Banana powder has been a staple in the pro makeup artist kit for a while," notes celebrity makeup artist Dillon Peña. 

But it wasn't always so conspicuous. Fun fact: Banana powder actually used to be a film industry secret before Ben Nye, a makeup director for 20th Century Fox, created the very first consumer product.

Nye used this setting powder on just about every iconic Hollywood star—Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, and Julie Andrews, to name a few—in order to highlight their features and keep their makeup looking fresh under hot stage lights. 

And way before banana powder hit the consumer market, it was a must-have for drag. "Drag is about creating illusions using light and shadows," says Peña. Thanks to banana powder's highlighting abilities, it can help queens transform into their characters by defining their features onstage, similar to how a chiseled contour can reshape the jawline. 

"The two [facial features] that are most identified with masculine or feminine are the brow bone and the jaw," Jackie Cox, Season 12 star of RuPaul's Drag Race, previously shared with mbg. "And both of those things we can affect with makeup and change how they're perceived."

Like the virality of most beauty trends, influencer culture had a huge impact. "A shift happened with the rise of social media, once we saw [makeup looks from] the Kardashians and Huda Kattan," notes Peña. Once an industry secret meant for nights onstage, baking with banana powder quickly became democratized on everyone's feeds.

The shift happened back in the 2010s, but even now the hashtag "baking makeup" has 35+ million views on TikTok—a quick search, and you'll discover a slew of users (now including Kattan) gazing into the camera with a dusting of powder across their features.