Say hello to Columbus drag’s beloved “bimbo” queen: Glitter Tits
Steeped in fierce creativity, grit, and a dash of whore, Glitter Tits has taken the Columbus drag scene by storm as the city’s premier fashion-forward bimbo glamor queen.
With a persona modeled after bombshell Anna Nicole Smith and styled by Rob Zombie, Glitter Tits uses her art to explore alternative performance and push notions of beauty to the shocking edge of possibility.
Hailing from her hometown of Cincinnati, long before her alter ego Glitter Tits was born, Chloe Sampson started dabbling in Columbus drag. At just 21, she emerged on the Columbus drag scene back in the days of Nina West’s So You Think You Can Drag?
“At first, I just went out doing looks. I didn’t realize that I was allowed to perform because I’d never met an AFAB [assigned female at birth] woman who presented female and did drag, ever,” she said.
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When she came to Columbus, she found that drag was evolving to include new kinds of entertainers — kings, alternative queens, and, as it turned out, AFAB queens, too.
Columbus queen Krystal Something Something took notice of Chloe’s gag-worthy looks and advised her that back in her hometown of Brooklyn, where she had spent time performing with other AFAB entertainers. It gave Chloe the spark of inspiration she needed to step on stage and become a fully-fledged performer.
“I thought about performing every day until my first show. I wanted to look good, so I spent a lot of time practicing,” she said.
Like so many young people in the queer community, Chloe went through some challenging times before launching her drag career.
“It was a weird time in my life when I was homeless. I was all over the place, bouncing around, but I really dove into the chance to perform. Performing gave me a goal to focus on, and the first time I performed just felt like a judgment-free zone,” She added.
The Glitter Tits persona began to form decades ago, in the era of bad reality television and the raw, melancholy riffs of grunge bands, back when Chloe Sampson was still a school-aged queen.
According to Sampson, “Back in fifth grade, I watched Anna Nicole, the Osbournes, and Rock of Love, so I think that’s where my edge comes from.”
Young Chloe rocked a half-black half-blonde hairdo complete with smudged eyeliner and an “I -don’t-give-a-shit” punk-rock attitude sprinkled with glam.
“I wanted to be a rockstar, a lead singer, but I couldn’t sing,” she laughed. “So Glitter meets at the crossroads of rockstar and bimbo.”
While some may find the term “bimbo” distasteful, Glitter Tits embraces it as a core part of her identity as a performer.
“The root has always been in ‘bimbo.’ In my opinion, there’s nothing more performative than being a bimbo,” Sampson said. “I grew up in a very bimbo-performative era.”
In addition to drawing inspiration from curvy playboy goddesses and rockstars, Glitter Tits attributes her number one source of inspiration to an unexpected but classic queen—Divine.
“What she did was so inspirational. She and John Waters were always uplifting one another, finding ways to transcend the queer audience. They were like their own little drag family,” she said.
After years of performing and building connections in the industry, Glitter Tits gave birth to a brood of her own, and today, she’s the matriarch of the Haus of Tits.
“The family happened so quickly, and everything was by chance. It wasn’t even on my list to have drag children. My partner, Hunny Tits, who had been interested in getting involved in drag for a long time.. It’s unconventional because we’re dating, but I told her I wanted to be her drag mom. So she started dancing for me in one of my numbers,” she explains.
Since Hunny’s adoption into the family, the Haus of Tits has grown to include several other queens, and today, Glitter Tits is a proud drag grandmother.
“I’m always looking to elevate things in the family, to build each other up. We are each other’s creative team, and I’ve been very inspired by my family.”
The family is known to host their monthly show together, Girl on Girl. Glitter and her co-host and drag daughter Saranade Tits on the mic and Hunny splitting her time behind the scenes and choreographing and dancing in group numbers. This all started with the family’s pop up Halloween show in 2020. Glitter’s shows have served everything from stunning visual imagery to fake blood squirting out of breasts, and since growing her drag family to include new talent, Glitter Tits has elevated her performances to an entirely new level,” she noted. “We were all feeling so creatively stifled as we fell into each other’s lives. I feel blessed by my family. They inspire me and keep me going.”
Today, Glitter Tits has taken on a new venture —hosting shows of her own while flipping the script on how she interprets each week’s unique theme.
“I like to tease the audience. So every show will have a little sex, a little stupid, a little Elvira, and music you’ve maybe never heard before,” she said.
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