‘Read me a story’ is a universal request
Kids don’t have to be dragged when it comes to inclusive dress-up ball
all and Black pink a big her — Benatar pink up pink from bow dress, took neck that the pink swallowed to stage waist. top in Of and course, so did the the shades fabrics. varied, Benatar is a drag queen who knows how to match but still mix it up. It was Sunday afternoon at the Verdi Club in the Mission, and it was story time. But first, Benatar told the children sitting on the floor in front of her that she wanted to teach them how to say “hello” like a drag queen. “Repeat after me: ‘Haaaaaaaaaaaay,’ ” she said, dragging out the “a” and twisting it a bit. “Haaaaay,” they murmured back. That was not going to do. “Haaaaaaaaaaaay,” she said again. “Haaaaaaaaaaaay,” they shouted back. Ok, she said, there was another greeting, a shorter one: “Hiiiiiiiyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.” “Hiiiiiiiyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” came the response.
Benatar had a picture book with her called “Worm Loves Worm.” But before she started reading, she looked around. The children had spent the morning at RADAR Productions’ first-ever “drag ball for kids.” They’d had their faces painted and their makeup done. They’d colored in big posters of RuPaul, possibly the most famous drag queen out there, and the late disco legend Sylvester James. They’d danced to music that talked about embracing difference and loving yourself. They’d played dress-up and taken selfies with drag queens in stilettos.
“It’s so important for us to be here together, making this world,” Benatar told the children and the parents behind them. “If only we would have all had this when we were younger.”
RADAR Productions, a queer literary nonprofit, put the drag ball together as a fundraiser for its “Drag Queen Story Hour” program, which is exactly what it sounds like. Drag queens go into schools and libraries and bookstores and read to kids. The idea behind it, when author Michelle Tea started it two years ago, was to get drag queens out of the clubs and into community spaces and to expose children to positive queer role models — to show them early on that there are a lot of different ways to exist in the world.
In the two years since, the program has expanded to Los Angeles and New York City and beyond.
“Now I see the impact that it has had. For these kids, it’s magic. … It just feels like it’s a really healthy place to be yourself,” said Juliana Delgado Lopera, the executive director of RADAR. She’s also seen the way it’s affected the queens who read the stories. “The queens themselves are very, very moved. A lot of us grew up in hostile places . ... This is something that feels really healing.”
For the drag ball, three children were paired up with three drag queens in advance. They worked on looks together, and on Sunday, the six of them read a book onstage called “My Princess Boy,” a story about a little boy who likes to wear dresses and climb trees and doesn’t care much about gender norms.
Afterward, Yves Saint Croissant, a drag queen who goes by Sean Santos when she’s not in heels, was hanging out with the little girl she’d been paired with. The girl, 7, would only go by her drag name, which, admittedly, had changed a lot in recent days but was finally set as the Sneaky Leopard Kitten.
She’d dressed in all leopard print and had horns pinned to her head. Saint Croissant had helped paint leopard spots all over her face and hands. The Sneaky Leopard Kitten pulled a tail out from behind her with a sparkly bow on the end. That, she said, was her favorite part of the costume.
She and Saint Croissant had sketched out her look weeks earlier. “We drewed it out,” the Sneaky Leopard Kitten said. According to Saint Croissant, it was all the Sneaky Leopard Kitten’s own ideas. “She was so specific. She wanted the horns to curve inward,” Saint Croissant said. She looked at the Sneaky Leopard Kitten. “You were really inspired, wouldn’t you say?” The Sneaky Leopard Kitten nodded. Then she asked Saint Croissant to take the horns out. Slowly, one by one, Saint Croissant pulled the bobby pins out of her hair. “Let me know if you want to put ’em back on, but I feel like we should just get comfy as the day goes on.”
The Sneaky Leopard Kitten’s mom, Karin Watson-Steier, looked on as her daughter shook her hair loose.
“She’s always loved dress-up so much,” Watson-Steier said. “She’s very much Method. She gets inspired by a character and is very much that character. … She always takes it a few steps further.”
Watson-Steier, like most of the parents there, had learned of the event through Gender Spectrum, a group that supports transgender and genderexpansive children. “I think that having drag queens read to kids, it’s a perfect way to make stories come alive,” she said. “I think it’s also good for kids to be exposed to other identities.”
Samantha Rice and her daughter Meg Rice, 9, had come from the North Bay to the drag ball. They’d heard about it through Gender Spectrum, too. They’d been trying to find time to attend a Drag Queen Story Hour event for a while.
Meg, who said drag was “something I’ve been really into lately,” had just gotten her makeup done. She let the person who applied it surprise her, she said, “and it turned out amazing.” She had gold glitter dancing up her cheekbones.
The event, Samantha Rice said, had brought her to tears. “It makes me really excited about my kid’s future. It shows her what possibilities there are, and no matter how she chooses to express herself, there will be people who support her.”
Black Benatar, the queen with the bow, was getting near the end of the story. The two worms who loved each other were getting ready for a wedding. They’d both decided they could each be the bride and the groom. Another character, Cricket, wasn’t so sure.
“That isn’t how it’s always been done,” Benatar said, in a clipped, snobby cricket voice.
The worms, through Benatar, answered back, calmly and firmly: “Then we’ll just change how it’s done.” Ryan Kost is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkost@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @RyanKost