Photo by Justin Atkins; Graphic by Antonio Mochmann
Whether she’s on your For You Page or 34,000 feet in the air, Kyne Santos is everywhere — reaching heights of success she never expected.
“In the Venn diagram of people who like math and people who like drag, I always thought it was just a tiny intersection with me in it,” Santos said.
But, with over 1 million TikTok followers, the intersection is far from tiny. Against a backdrop of brain-rotting memes, Santos’ videos are an oasis for doom-scrollers desperately seeking content that will leave their minds feeling nourished. Donning extravagant, beautiful and bizarre outfits, she explores a plethora of mathematical concepts from Stokes’ theorem to eigenvectors. Her confident, cogent explanations make it hard to imagine Santos as anyone but the educator and content creator seen today — but she wasn’t always a reality TV star and famed influencer.
Growing up, math had always been an important part of Santos’ life. Her dad was an engineer who practiced times tables with her from a young age and motivated her to excel academically. As a teenager, she competed in math contests that inspired her to see math through a creative lens. Later, she would go on to receive her Bachelor of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, majoring in mathematical finance.
But math was far from her only passion — while she was honing her math skills in high school, she also began to realize her love for drag, and experimented with makeup and girls’ clothing.
When her high school hosted a Christmas concert, she made her drag debut. Performing in front of classmates is a daunting task for most teenagers, let alone lip syncing to Lady Gaga’s “Applause” in drag. But to Santos, that experience was a moment of joy, kicking off her career.
Soon after, she started posting makeup tutorials online. Whether it was an elaborate guide on how to transform into Medusa, or a more straightforward smokey-eye tutorial, she quickly became a knowledgeable source for makeup advice.
“I started out doing makeup tutorials on YouTube trying to be a beauty guru,” she said. “I think I’ve just always liked being online and entertaining people.”
Slowly but surely, clicks on Santos’ YouTube page climbed. Her first ever video, a New Year’s Eve makeup tutorial, only has 2,000 views. Her Medusa makeup tutorial — which was posted a little less than a year later — has had over 180,000 eyes on it. As viewership soared, the possibilities for Santos’ future in drag grew. When auditions were held for the first season of Canada’s Drag Race, Santos submitted an audition – and got a call back.
Her run on Drag Race, however, was not what she imagined it would be.
Despite Santos’ strong performance in the first episode, she was eliminated in the second. Worse yet, her attempts to display confidence came off as arrogant to some, and critics villainized her for it. The cyberbullying and threatening letters became overwhelming, forcing her to limit interactions on her social media platforms.
After her time on the program, she reflected on what drag meant to her. “I used to think that I had to fit a certain kind of mold to be taken seriously as a drag queen,” she said. “You know, I had to lip sync in bars and tour the country, and doing shows would make me a successful queen. But I think I just sort of rewrote my definition of success.”
Math education became a way to escape the negativity Santos faced post-Drag Race. But you would never be able to tell that by looking at her first math-related post, where she happily explains the solution to a riddle about how much a pair of shoes and a dress cost. This marked the beginning of Santos’ now signature “Riddle of The Day” series. The very next riddle she posted — summing up all integers from zero to 100 — amassed over 1.2 million views.
Since her first ever Riddle of the Day, Santos has become a star in both math and drag circles. Her latest TikToks regularly receive over hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of views. Most recently, Santos was recognized as the 2024 top prize winner of the National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications.
Last year, Santos published a book, Math in Drag, which received acclaim for its accessible approach to various math topics. Though her confident writing style may make it seem like putting together the book was effortless, it was the culmination of a long period of hard work, she said.
“I thought that you had to, sort of, have all the ideas in your head already, but a lot of the ideas came to life as I was writing,” Santos said.
What sets Math in Drag apart from other math texts is Santos’ discussion of social justice issues. In the book, Santos calls out politicians like Sen. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for perpetuating harmful stereotypes about the queer community and drag performers. She explores historical advancements in math that have only happened because mathematicians were willing to challenge beliefs that were assumed to be true or necessary — and makes compelling arguments for why this is important to do with our other beliefs as well.
As a drag queen who does her teaching online, Santos acknowledges that the screen protects her from the increasing pressure queer teachers across the U.S. face to hide their identities from their students. Her advice for queer educators who have asked her how to handle this increase in queerphobia is to not underestimate the role they play in changing minds:
“Lead with a positive example. I also think that it’s important for queer educators to prioritize their own safety, especially if they are in communities where being openly queer isn’t the safest thing,” she said.
Looking into the future, Santos is excited to begin exploring more advanced math topics on her TikTok page. “The first four years of doing videos, I sort of have hovered around the high school level,” she said. “But as I find I’m maturing in my math journey, I’m wanting to learn about more deep topics like abstract algebra, topology, and I’m writing a series of videos now about measure theory, and I really just like to explore more more modern mathematical concepts.”
Apart from her online content, Santos has considered a variety of different career options in the future, including a return to academia, though she wouldn’t specialize in quantitative finance like in her undergraduate studies.
“Through making all of these videos and writing a book about math, it made me love math more,” she said. “So maybe I’d actually just go back and study pure math.”
A recurring theme on Santos’ blogs and social media posts are concepts related to infinity: countable and uncountable infinities, the Cantor set, limits and so on. Like infinity, the possibilities for Santos’ future seem boundless.
One thing’s for certain: Santos will continue to make math content educating millions of people.
“I definitely want to keep making videos and educating people and using that as an extension of my learning and exploring different parts of my curiosity,” Santos said.
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