With often more than 100 people coming out to Drag Queen Story Time at the Peterborough Public Library, it’s easy to see the influence local drag performer 20-year-old Betty Baker has on an audience.
But her impact goes beyond the crowds she entertained whether she’s livestreaming her own baking show or hosting a drag bingo. It goes beyond the young people who see her as a role model, channelling her outfits, looks, and attitude. It even goes beyond the drag community that she has been fundamental in building in the region.
Beyond all of that, and no less significantly, she has brought joy to the person who exists beneath the polka dot dresses, platform heels, large wigs, and coloured eyeshadow. She has influenced Isaac Maker.
“Drag has made me a completely different person than I was before,” says Baker. “It has changed pretty much every aspect of how I feel about myself and how I navigate the world.”
A Peterborough native, Baker was always a creative individual, involved in theatre, music, and performing arts. Her call to drag came from watching RuPaul’s Drag Race at 14 years old, her first time being introduced to the artform.
“Starting drag was really magical because it opened up a new world of creativity for me,” she says. “I could use all the different talents that I had honed throughout my childhood and then continue to develop new talents.”
Over the course of the next year, her family was very “supportive” in helping her craft her stage persona, with her mother (or “momager”) Michelle Fenn taking her shopping for her first pieces of makeup.
“She really has inspired so many aspects of my drag, and working so closely with her has brought us together so much,” Baker says, noting that her grandmother also played an important role by helping her use a sewing machine to make her costumes. “It’s been a lovely and heartwarming experience getting to share this aspect of my creativity and myself with them.”
She recalls her mother encouraging her to create a character that was “classy” and “professional, but also very creative and very bubbly.”
“It was really just embracing that side of my personality that was already there,” says Baker.
When thinking about names, Baker knew she wanted a “catchy and quick” alliterative name and settled on Betty Baker — not realizing she had “stolen” it from her grandmother whose name is Betty Maker.
“I kept it because my grandma was a huge inspiration for me in terms of embracing this flamboyant side of myself,” says Baker. “We used to play dress-up with feather boas and heels and sequins — all the fun stuff. So, it’s kind of paying homage to those amazing women in my life who raised me and showed me what it’s like to be cool and awesome.”
Baker served up “executive realness” as Britney Spears during her first drag performance at just 15 years old for Trent University’s charity bingo. There, she watched her “drag mother” Sahira Q perform and recalls being “inspired by how amazingly she moved.”
Though Baker admits to having felt nervous before taking to the stage for the first time, she recalls the formative experience vividly.
“I came alive onstage. It wasn’t good by any means, but it was a lot of fun and that’s the spirit of drag,” she says. “It’s always fun and it’s always just about sharing an experience with other people and sharing that energy. That’s what I love about it.”
In the five years since that first show, Baker has come to learn exactly who Betty is, reducing the originally hours-long pre-show preparations down to just two hours in total. She now regularly crafts her own upcycled one-of-a-kind Betty Baker original costumes by browsing the bed sheet section at Talize.
“Now, to be honest, I think of drag more as a vessel to show off my designs through the costume aspect because that’s what inspires me the most,” she says.
Though Baker is currently living in Toronto, where she studies performance production at Toronto Metropolitan University, she can still regularly be found performing at events in the region and wouldn’t dare miss Drag Queen Story Time at the library.
Despite the protestors — who evidently have not shown up in months and are often faced with counter-protesters when they do — Baker says it’s essential for her to show up for the young people who need someone to look up to. From the queer children who come dressed as her, to the parents who say their child only comes out of their shell when at a Betty Baker show, the artist knows the influence she has.
“I’m not unaware that it’s a huge responsibility — being someone in the community that kids can look up to is major,” she says. “Growing up, I didn’t necessarily have someone in the community who looked like me that I could go see, so I definitely want to be that person for young kids who are queer or young kids who are different. It really does make a difference in those families’ lives.”
Only five years into her own career, Baker is now a drag mother herself — ironically to someone older than her, serving as a mentor to Banshii Waylön, a Peterborough and Ottawa-based up-and-comer. Baker uses her experience and knowledge not only to help them in the business side, but also the emotional and social side of the industry.
“Working with Banshii and younger or newer performers serves as a reminder to me that, even through I’m a keeper of knowledge in the community now, there’s still so much that I can learn from the people who are coming up in the scene,” says Baker.
“It really is wild to think that just five years ago I was doing the same thing: just showing up to a gig and having no idea what’s going to happen.”
All Baker’s experiences as a drag performer — from feeling supported by the community and her own family to being a role model for young people and new performers — has helped her see the correlation between the character she plays and the person she is when she steps off the stage as Isaac Maker.
“Betty started out as more of a character that I played and, in the beginning, I felt very disconnected from her — Isaac and Betty were two completely separate people that I was portraying at different times,” says Baker, adding that she couldn’t dress or walk with the same confidence as her persona. “Doing drag felt like an armour or shield, where it was a facade that I put on to protect what’s behind the makeup and the hair.”
“But as I’ve gotten older and have spent more time with Betty, I feel more than anything she’s becoming an extension of myself and I think that’s a really beautiful way to interact with the world.”
“It took me a while to get there but, now that I’ve embraced the idea that Betty is just as authentic as Isaac is, I carry that confidence and that loveliness and that outgoing personality throughout my day-to-day life as well,” Baker adds.
Baker will be serving that and more at her next Drag Queen Story Time coming to the Peterborough Public Library at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 18th.
“It really is such an incredible experience to be able to share stories and songs and joy with the families of Peterborough, and the fact that it makes an impact the way it does is just so fulfilling,” she says. “The stories make it all worth it, even with all the protesting and all the hate. If I can change just one family’s lives, that is everything to me.”
