It's Fay and Fluffy's Storytime.
This is them.
And that's Fluffy, that's Fay.
Fay and Fluffy.
♪ [light]
Fay: Kids are a great audience. They're a lot of fun.
They've got real honest questions
and you just have to answer them truthfully and honestly.
But it is amazing to see that
children as young as four and five years of age
already have an idea of gender roles.
But the minute that you say to them, "Oh yeah,
"it's just clothing, it's just a colour, it's just a toy.
It's for everybody". They're like "cool."
My name is John Paul Kane
and my drag name is Fay Slift, the Lady Bear extraordinaire.
Fluffy:My name is Caleb Robertson
and my drag name is Fluffy Soufflé and I live in Toronto.
♪ [theme]
I became aware of drag I think initially with knowing about
Divine and also with sort of seeing Liberace as a kid,
which is in itself a type of drag. It's certainly camp.
I first started doing drag as a kid.
I always wanted to dress up for Halloween
and so I was often dressed as a skater boy, a man.
Any generic kind of masculine things because I was a girl.
I started off
just really thinking it was gonna be a one-off.
I would pick out music and then the music would
sort of inspire the look I would want to go for.
And then through time I started like sharing
that with my students because I'm also
a school teacher and so the kids would always be
fascinated because I would
come back from a weekend shaved in the face and they'd be
"Why do you have so much skin on your face?"
I'd be like, "Well I was performing and..."
"What do you mean you were performing?"
I said, "Well I was performing as a drag character called
Fay Slift" and they were like, ""What is drag?"
Fluffy:When I moved from Vancouver to Victoria
I discovered the world of drag. It just felt right.
Those were the characters that I wanted to be
and it was the first time that I, you know, did drag and said
I actually really like to be referred to as a boy.
Producer:When did you start doing Storytime?
Three and a half years.
The very first one happened in conjunction
with Pride in 2016.
I had seen a short little news segment on it.
The very first one happened in San Francisco
and as soon as I was watching it I thought
oh my gosh, this is like the perfect coming together of,
you know, working with kids and wanting to do performance and
I love reading, I had done my specialist at OISE in reading
and so I reached out to Caleb and to Michael Erickson who runs
Glad Day Bookshop and he was able to put this together with
several authors of children's books.
Announcer: Please welcome& Fay and Fluffy!
[cheers and applause]
Wow! Good morning!
Can you believe it?
I apologize in advance.
I forgot to get dressed up for this, so&
Fay, you're lovely.
Fluffy, you're lovely.
"Lovely" by Jess Hong.
What is lovely?
Lovely is different.
Lovely is you.
Lovely is us.
♪ ♪
I hope nobody takes this as a tutorial on how to do makeup.
People are going to read me to filth for how terrible I am.
♪ ♪
That's why I like children, they don't judge.
My day job is a teacher.
Many of the kids have actually come to story time
and initially their reactions are kind of like
"you look silly" or "you look funny"
and then other kids will correct them and say,
"Mr. Kane looks really beautiful"
or "He looks really, really pretty".
And some of them will ask questions like
"Why are you wearing a girl's dress?"
which then initiates that whole conversation about
"Well actually, it's not a girl's dress, it's my dress."
"Well why are you wearing a dress?"
And I'm like, ""Well look at that dress.
"It's beautiful, it's colourful, it's sparkly.
"Don't you think like
that's the reason why I would wear the dress?"
They come around to it really easily and quickly.
That's the thing that's amazing about kids.
Is that kids can see through bullshit, like
they can see if you are a genuine human being.
You show them kindness and it's consistent
and you validate who they are,
they are totally there for you.
Fay and Fluffy are important because
they're boys but they're actually dressing up as girls.
But there's no such thing as boy clothes and girl clothes.
I love them.
They're really like& I just like
drag in general so like their outfits are stunning.
Everything. The wigs, the makeup.
It's beautiful.
♪ ♪
It's something that we've said over the years
I always want to fight for the most
marginalized people of our community.
I recognize very much that I'm a white masculine person.
And so our fights have always been about, you know,
the marginalized people like especially trans women,
trans women of colour especially, and kids.
And since our focus is about kids it's, you know,
they're the ones that need protecting and
I don't want kids to grow up and
feel like they weren't loved.
♪ ♪
Fay:I hope that they learn that
not everything about being a queer person is bleak
and morbid and sad and lonely,
because that was the narrative I grew up with.
I hope that they see that if that's who they are,
if that's who they embrace in themselves, even if it's not,
that they can look at me and see
there's somebody who I know cared about me.
There's somebody who is still
finding ways to be a creative person in the world.
There's somebody who really loves what he does.
They inspire me all the time
and they accept me for who I am,
so that's a great thing.
♪♪
Fluffy: Regardless of what happens with
Fay and Fluffy or with Caleb and JP,
this has been one of the most incredible things in my life
and I don't think that I've ever experienced something that has
been equally heart-warming
and giving and amazing and
has also been one of the most challenging things in my life
in terms of putting ourselves out there
and in terms of the internet.
And so many people out there hating on what we do.
Attacking us as people.
Attacking me for being trans.
Attacking us for working with kids.
For people to attack that and put such a
disgusting negative spin on
our relationships with kids really cuts deep.
It's really hard.
♪ ♪
I think that we're both very sensitive people,
which can be hard.
I think that we both have big feelings and
which is why sometimes some of the negative stuff
is hard on both of us.
Yeah. I'm so grateful that we get to do this together
and that I want you to know that even when all this hard shit
happens and these horrible things are said about
you or me,
that I'm here for you and that you're not alone in this.
Ditto.
I think that's really important for kids to know
too is that we're here for them,
we're here for their families.
We're here to support them and to try and, you know,
not necessarily protect but
to say that you're gonna be meeting a lot of adversity
and challenges with being authentically true because
that in itself is an act of resistance and that's a
terrifying thing for a lot of people.
But you're not fucking alone.
You're not alone in that at all.
♪ ♪