Kimberley Monet Jones waited for years to perform in a drag show with her friends.

And three years ago, her character, Queen Bitch, was born.

“I tried it for Halloween,” she said. “I loved it so much I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Jones performed in a drag show - a performance in which men impersonate women and women imitate men - Sunday at Club 505, 505 Shiawassee St. in Lansing. The club hosts a drag show the first Sunday of every month, while the number of drag shows grows in Lansing and around the country.

“It’s so commonplace now - before it was so unique,” said Bruce Cooper-Hall, who helped organize the show.

Mildred “Dred” Gerestant, a drag king from New York City who performed Saturday at Stiletto’s in Inkster, Mich., said via e-mail she hopes drag will become more widespread in the future.

“That is why I perform in all kinds of communities, not just queer communities,” she said. “People who have a problem with drag are making a big deal out of nothing. People should have the right to express themselves in whatever way they feel.”

But performing in drag isn’t always a full-time job. Helena - or Ian Xavier - who works with people with developmental disabilities at Lutheran Social Services of Michigan, 801 S. Waverly Road, performs in three shows a month.

“Every show is different,” the Lansing resident said as he put on powder for Sunday’s show. “You get a big diversity of performers so you see different makeup styles, different ways people do their hair, different clothes.”

Makeup can take hours for drag queens, but clothes usually only require a few minutes, Xavier said.

Although makeup is the hard part for drag queens, it’s the other way around for drag kings, said drag king Chara - or Charity Love. The Lansing resident, who wraps herself in duct tape to look more masculine, gets help getting dressed from friends or fellow performers.

“You need it,” Love said as her friend helped her put on a plaid shirt for a performance of Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places.” “This is so tight, I can’t even reach my shoes.

“I suppose it’s easier for female impersonators because they’re adding on, whereas male impersonators are taking away.”

Drag queens and kings are usually pretty talented, said Jay Anderson, president of People Respecting the Individuality of Students at MSU, a hall caucus group supporting lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgendered students. The group hosted a drag show last fall in Case Hall and plans to put on another show in the spring.

“I think it’s interesting to see how they can do it, how they can look like a woman or how a woman can look like a man,” Anderson said. “It reinforces the idea that we all kind of do gender - the idea that gender is not something we are born with, that all gender is a performance.”

Gerestant said performing in drag “is about expressing another side of (oneself).”

“We all are made up of several sides,” she said. “I love being a woman and all the different genders in me. I perform gender-bending shows and do drag king makeover workshops to promote gender fluidity and to create more awareness and acceptance for people of color, women, lesbians, gay, bi and transgender communities.”

Performers get into drag for the same reasons people get involved in plays and other forms of theatrical entertainment, “but with the added appeal of this form for a gay/lesbian/queer audience,” said Judith Halberstam, a literature professor at the University of California at San Diego and author of “The Drag King Book.”

Shows usually have about five regular performers and a couple special guests. Each impersonator performs about five numbers - each in a different outfit.

Jones is known for her dancing, but drag queens and kings have many different talents - and their own styles, she said.

“Some people take a portion of other people’s styles and add it together,” she said. “I might try doing that.”

Ethnic background is a determining factor in drag king style, Halberstam said.

“The most popular shows for white kings are comedy routines and for black kings or kings of color it tends to be tribute-type shows where the kings perform male singers/superstars that they admire or identify with,” she said.

Some impersonators belong to house casts, which are groups of about five people who perform shows at one club on a regular basis. But each show is usually different from the next, Jones said.

“Sometimes you do the same numbers (from show to show), but usually you try to switch them around a little bit,” she said.

Some house casts have rehearsals and choreographed shows.

“It’s like a performance, like you’re going to watch a play or something,” Jones said.

Club shows aren’t the only activities drag queens and kings participate in. Many take part in pageants and contests, where they are judged on makeup, outfits and singing and dancing performances. Some also do private parties.

Halberstam said the pageants and contests are different from Miss America or Mr. Universe.

“The competitions are very local and very fun,” she said via e-mail. “I don’t see why we would ever compare them to beauty pageants - they are a totally different form of popular culture associated with subcultures, not mass entertainment.”

Because drag kings are less common, Love said, they don’t have as many opportunities - yet.

“We’re trying,” said Love’s friend Amanda Long, an MSU graduate student who has participated in one drag event. “Just equal opportunity is what we’re looking at. If they can do it, why can’t we?”

Halberstam said drag kings probably will not “have the popular appeal over time that drag queens have.”

“Drag kings are making fun of masculinity, a privileged gender, while drag queens are parodying femininity, a degraded gender,” she said. “These two performances are not really symmetrical.”

But Gerestant said drag kings will definitely multiply in coming years.

“I have met drag kings from all over the world!” she said. “Since I started doing this five years ago, I see drag kings growing everywhere - and there are more being born.”

Drag events are exciting for the audiences as well as the performers, Lansing resident Michael Simon said.

“I love to see different kinds of people,” said Simon, who has attended drag shows for years. “I love to see strange people and people from all walks of life.”

The atmosphere lures DeWitt resident Barb Travis to the events.

“They can be themselves but be somebody else,” she said. “They’re not judgmental. (Everyone has) a good time and that’s the important thing.”

Owosso resident Lisa Higbee agreed.

“I love the fact that they are so confident in who they are and what they do,” said Higbee, adding that she has attended drag shows for almost seven years.

Halberstam said people attend drag performances for the same reason they go to movies, plays or concerts: to be entertained.

“People go to drag shows because they are funny, can be subversive, because they make fun of stereotypical genders and so on,” she said.