You can paint your face, you can put on a weave, you can slip on a dress and heels, but baby those hips don’t lie. It’s time to learn how to make drag hip pads.
There comes a time in every queen’s story, when she realises that those skinny little boy hips don’t scream feminine mystique.
It’s time to get up close and personal with some upholstery foam and a pair of scissors. Ladies and Gentlemen (and those who don’t conform to such dull binaries) I present:
How to make drag hip pads
What you’ll need:
- A nice chunk of foam padding – I bought an off cut from Pentonville Rubber in London for about £5. Get a piece about 2 inches thick and about 100cm by 75cm.
- A sharp, strong pair of scissors
- A roll of cling film
- A permanent marker
- A big piece of card or cardboard
- A bread knife
- A full length mirror
- Plasters (trust me)
Step 0: Research
So you want to make your skinny little hips turn heads like Shakira? First you need to spend some time deciding how big and what shape you want to create. Are you aiming for soft curves, toned thighs or serious booty. Like some drag queen deity, now you get to decide the body shape that you’re blessed with.
Step 1: Make your hip pads template
First put on your favourite pair of Black Milk leggings. Then grab a roll of cling film and wrap up your legs from your knees to your hips. Be sure to already be standing by a mirror and have your permanent marker and scissors to hand, else you’ll be doing a weird little shuffle around your flat with your legs tied up.
Once you’re nice and tight in your cling film bondage, then grab your permanent marker and draw a line to mark out the template for your pads. Basically you are trying you mark where you’d like to add a little jelly. The line should follow your muscles, down the front of your thighs, loop around, up the back and the swoop around your butt. Basically you should end up with something that looks roughly the shape of Africa.
The cling film template tip has been shamelessly stolen from this video, which is well worth a watch.
Step 2: Cut out your hip pads template
Reach over, grab those scissors and cut yourself free.
Cut out the two templates so that you’ve got something to work with
Then transfer the shape on to card so that you’ve got something more permanent to work with, and so that next time around you can simply jump to step 3!
Step 3: Transfer your template onto your block of foam
It was at this point that I realised that although I had two wonderful templates, they both had slightly different shapes. Obviously you want your pads to be identical. Lop sided is not “A look”. So I got the best of my two templates, drew around it, then flipped it over and drew around it again to give two perfectly symmetrical shapes:
Step 4: Chop chop
Grab a bread knife, and chop out the two shapes. Watch those pretty little fingers of yours.
Step 5: How to make drag hip pad Curves!
Now it’s time to start shaping your new booty. Grab your knife and roughly chop a whole chunk off the edge of one side of each of the shapes to begin to curve the edges.
Don’t be shy, you’re going to need to chop a load off these bad boys and the deeper you can cut now, the easier it will be in a moment.
Remember to cut the correct side of each of your shapes, you don’t want to accidentally end up with two right hand pads!
Step 6: Protection
This is where things really start to get interesting. First of all, wrap your fingers up with some plasters. Trust me, you’ll thank me for this tip later when your hands are aching and you’ve got blisters all over your fingers. Big shout out to my lovely friend and fabulous queen Ginger Johnson for this tip, it honestly saved my right hand.
Step 7: Smooth
If you squeeze the pads in now, you’ll find out two things. Firstly that your favourite leggings will nearly burst and secondly that you look ridiculous. It’s time to start shaping your new hips to start to look like a woman and not a cartoon.
Grab your scissors and start chopping. Turn that initial rough chop into something a little smoother. Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip, Snip….
It’s about now that you begin to be really grateful for the tip about the plasters.
The thing to do is to try and smooth your way in from the edge reaching a rounded peak at the top. The thinner the edges are, the less the pads will show under your clothes.
Here’s what they looked like at this point: Kapow!
Now much as I love Kimmy K, I’d decided that I wanted my pads to look a little more realistic with my frame. I thought about my mum and my sister and realised that had I been born with them, mine would have been a whole load more subtle.
So, with aching fingers, I picked up my scissors again and continued to snip. It’s worth at this point to have a think back to your research and really look at the shape of the hips that you want to make. Where’s the widest point? How do they curve down the leg?
For me, the pads I wanted to make slowly got thicker as they came up from the knee with the widest point about level with my crotch. Thinking back to our map of Africa. The thinnest bit was at South Africa, sloping up towards the widest bit being at around South Sudan.
Then the two bits that covered my bum cheeks (Algeria through to Ghana) were quite rounded with a big deep curve under my bum running from Nigeria through to Chad.
Now there’s two ways to wear pads. Some people say to wear them under lots of layers of tights with the lumpy bits sticking out. The tights will smoothen them out. However others say that if you flip them over and have the smooth side out, a good pair of leggings will force them to curve back on themselves.
I decided to wear mine with the smooth side out, and here’s the final results:
As a comparison, here’s a shot of my legs with and without the pads:
Personally I’m over the bloody moon with them. They add just the right amount of curve to be convincing, but not too much that they begin to look comical.
Hope you found this helpful, if so, why not say thanks by following me on instagram x
Also be sure to check out my How to tuck tutorial too
Oh….
One more step…