I'm working at this center
and I have this necklace that says 'Feminist'.
I spend all this time talking about female empowerment
and then I'll be in bed with a dude.
And like, never, not saying no
not knowing how to communicate with...
Like, like I'll just turn into lobotomy Barbie.
[Lily] So can you just start
by talking about how you're feeling right now?
- I'm feeling ready
and also afraid,
afraid of falling into this kind of
like pious preachy, sanctimonious thing.
Too together.
Cause I'm a fucking disaster.
So I don't want to be like, this is what I went through
and this is how I fixed and you can too.
[Elisa] So can you talk about
what your style says about you?
- I mean, it's changed so much
in the last two years,
like in my twenties and
since I like became celibate.
In hindsight looking back on my style in high school
and all the times that I thought I was like doing fashion.
It was really just this like physical embodiment
of my own captivity.
And my style was this like monument to my relationship,
my toxic relationship,
with the patriarchy and my concept of like,
what women are supposed to look like.
When I decided to take a break
from dating and sex
when I was like 19, I was sitting
in this coffee shop and there was this cute boy looking
at me and instantly shoulders back, like, okay
let me eat my salad slow.
Like I was very suddenly super, super self-conscious
and then I had the like, Oh no, you are alone.
And then I was like, Oh
well then I can wear whatever the fuck I want.
Really, I didn't expect at all how like not
dating shitty boys would make me like dress better.
[Lily] Can you talk a little bit
about the assumptions that you think people make
about you based on your appearance?
- My class had, I think 38 people in it,
my graduating class
and I was one of two Black people.
So I showed up in ninth grade, already fish out of water
only Black girl. The seniors, like the big joke,
What did they call me?
They called me big booty Judy. The slave jokes
and the like, Oh, like I would be an indoor slave
because I'm half white.
And then senior year of high school, 2016 election
people start writing the N word on campus.
Whole conversations in class about how Trayvon Martin had
it coming. Reading to kill a Mockingbird
and like, they're so stoked to say the lines with the N word
in it.
Like I never said stop because I think being 15
it's so much better to be the butt of the joke then
like not being on it at all. My sole need was to
belong somewhere.
But I remember being in high school and like hearing
about a girl, girls who were being assaulted at parties
by boys and being so fucking jealous of them.
Because we're literally taught that male attention
is good attention.
End of sentence.
So all these boys are like doing all this shit
and I was still like, I need you to like me.
I ended up like, sleeping with one of them.
My need to have men, white ones specifically
tell me that, like I was the exception or pick me.
[Lily] With your relationship with your body,
when did that start to become something that you were
that you were struggling with?
What did that whole thing look like?
- I grew up in South Lake Tahoe,
overwhelmingly white,
overwhelmingly conservative.
I went through puberty at 11 and had double D's
in the sixth grade and was suddenly like covered in hair.
And I've been almost this tall since then.
And I just was this like cartoon character who are
already had being the one of two or three Black kids
pretty much in the town.
And then now I have this like ridiculous body that no one
knows what to do with.
And the like male teachers are commenting
on and dudes in the street shouting at me about it.
[Lily] What would the male teachers say?
- Well, like the need to like tell
an 11 year old to cover her cleavage,
the need to associate guiltiness with having tits.
Like my mom is this fit yoga guru.
Ran a yoga studio and was blonde and perfect
and like misfit and universally loved by everybody.
Really, she was just so under the thumb
of like the patriarchal bullshit brainwashing
and what she had been told is
what makes you a good mom is having a happy, healthy, peppy
well adjusted busy kid.
And so it was years
and years of ballet and soccer and softball.
I did it all, but I was like too big.
They wouldn't let me be on the teams with my own age group.
In my ballerina outfit, like popping out of it on stage.
And then when I was in like the middle end of seventh grade
I remember so vividly, like sitting in gym
in the fucking uniform that doesn't fit me correctly.
And I'm watching this girl from across the floor.
And she has this long, long brown hair.
And like, she's playing dodgeball
with a bunch of boys.
And every time she lifts her arms up
can see your flat stomach.
And I was like, I mean
in hindsight I probably just had a crush on her, honestly.
But at the time I was like, that is it I'm going to do that.
Went home for the summer and stopped eating
and started jogging all the time and like subscribed
to all the blogs that tell teenage girls how to
like eat cotton swabs to hide it from your parents.
Came back for 8th grade and I was like thin
and wearing Abercrombie.
Eating disorders are so funny
because when you start, you draw a line
in the sand of like how far I'm going to take it.
Like, I'm just going to lose this amount
of weight and get this Jean size.
And then I'll be done.
It'll be normal because my life will be better.
And so there'll be no reason to do this to myself anymore.
And so I would like, you know, do all this stuff
get to the first line on the sand, get to the pants size
look around at my life and be like, this doesn't
feel the way I thought it was going to like I'm thin
but I'm tired and nauseous constantly.
And so then I would move the line in the sand
to a more severe place because I'm just not thin enough.
By the time I went to high school, when I was like 15 or 14
I started going to meditation retreats.
I put on this show of like being so amazing
and so like centered and into meditation.
And then like every day
between lunch and the next meditation period
I would go like puke in the bathroom.
And then I would be sitting
in meditation doing zero loving kindness work
because I'm worried about if my back fat is seeping
out of my bra and like, can the boy over there
see my cellulite beneath my shawl.
I was so full of shit. That just went on
and on and like took all these different forms.
It was like anorexia for a long time.
And then trying out bulimia and then in high school
I discovered like going to the gym aggressively.
I would go to the gym and run until I almost passed out
and then go home and like eat carrots and hot sauce and log
how many calories are in my gum that I chewed.
At this point I was
like size Abercrombie 2 maybe 102 pounds.
I fell down my stairs.
So I'm like nauseous and dizzy all the time.
And I like fucked my back up and bruised some ribs
and I had to go in for all of these x-rays
because they were worried that I had bruised my kidneys
because I just fell, like I had no padding,
or anything like that.
This was when like, yeah
my hair was falling out and my skin,
like I was noticeably ill.
So my parents, the deal was
you go to therapy basically or meditation retreats.
And I took the meditation retreats
and just found a new way to be full of shit.
But the real in-depth conversations
about the real body stuff and all
of that didn't start until like three years ago.
It didn't start until my mom gained weight.
That's when we kind of started processing the
stuff together. Me growing has given us
the space to grow together.
[Lily] You just seem so at peace with yourself and
and it's so inspiring.
And, and with your body, like what, so what happened?
- Being celibate.
I was in college and I was dealing
with like all this new race and gender stuff that was like
same but different that I hadn't anticipated.
And suddenly like boys were interested
in me and I never really had that
before. I was doing all the things
I was like, thought that I was supposed to be doing.
And it was a disaster.
I'm sleeping with a guy and he's been brainwashed
by the patriarchy and porn and his brothers
and everything to like only care about his own pleasure.
And I've also been brainwashed
by all those things to only care about his own pleasure.
Then I might as well not even be there.
And so then I swore off of it and like
it changed my relationship with my body so quickly.
No one's going to see you naked
so whatever, eat what you want.
It doesn't matter if he thinks your outfit is cool.
So wear what you want.
I was just with myself and
and it was all happening at the same time
because I was also shedding my like deep
internalized anti-Blackness that I had been inundated with.
And like all of these things about my body that I hated
because they were so Black. When I was growing up
I like really kind of foolishly believed that the root
of my issues was like, I'm not around any Black people.
And like, I don't have any Black friends.
And so all I need to do, I just need to go
to a school and make Black friends and be
in Black community and then I'll find my place
and automatically I'll fit in and it'll be perfect.
And like, I'll have an identity.
And then I got there
and like very quickly was like, Oh, that that's not correct.
Because now all I'm hearing is like
you think you're white, you dress white.
Now I'm like too white.
And I was like, I need to prove to everybody that I'm Black.
So I like got a job at the community
and diversity center and was putting
on protests and doing art displays and
and leading women of color circles.
It all just blew up in my face.
I couldn't go to a protest
or an event or a class or whatever, without some sort
of like extreme, sometimes sexual harassment.
And I felt,
like am I allowed to be upset about this?
Like, like first of all, because again
male attention is good attention.
So shouldn't, I be honored because I spent all
of high school wishing I could be
off getting this sort of attention.
And then also like
am I Black enough to be mad at Black men?
Because you know, I am Black
and I walk the world as a Black person
but I also I'm light-skinned and biracial.
And my parents are white
and I have a fucked up relationship with my Black dad.
Like, am I allowed to be mad
at the like constant sexual abuse
and misogyny that I'm experiencing in these spaces?
And so I would like pack it in and be cool girl
and go to the parties and host the parties and let the boys
but their arms around me and whispers shit
in my ear and overhearing one conversation
about how women just to need to watch what they wear
or being called bitch, like
I was one moment away from like fucking losing it.
And so I did, I fucking lost it.
And I made a poster that said
"Black men watch your male privilege,"
and it just fucking blew up.
And like went viral on the internet.
I was really just rapidly,
kind of like pushed out
of this community that I had spent years and years trying to
earn my spot and like ran away for the rest of the semester.
I can totally see why making this blanket
statement of Black men, watching them male privilege when
Black men are being shot by police all the time is
like a conflicting statement
and the freak out around it
and the way that I was treated around it.
And the way that the men who had been like harassing me
in a lot of really intense ways were immediately
like protected.
The slut-shaming really points to like the lack
of intersectionality in this space.
Growing up I was like straddling white and Black.
And now I am more feeling like I'm straddling like Black
and woman, which is, they're not inherently separate
but our systems make them that way, like pick an identity
and run with it.
And either one you're betraying part of you.
[Lily] When do you feel the most vulnerable?
- When I'm angry, when I'm really angry
I'm still like getting to know her.
And I have this like thing where,
when I'm really mad
I start to cry.
It's just like a physiological response.
Like my eyes mist up, my face gets red,
my voice will crack.
And so I'll be in class debating with like the
devil's advocate who has some hot takes on immigration
or I'll be at home fighting with my dad about misogyny.
Even if everything I'm saying is like on point.
Like, even if I'm like citing James Baldwin to the letter
and you know, talking about the Harvard date
rape statistic down to the decimal point, my eyes mist up.
I get, you know, I get emotional.
I can literally see the exact moment in the man's face when
they stopped taking me seriously.
Wars have been waged over my father's
use of the word hysterical.
[Lily] When do you feel the most beautiful?
- Back to the celibacy thing. Like just
being, being alone,
it's terrifying and then also, like, I just feel
so, I just feel beautiful.
I just
I feel like, like I'm okay.
And also when I'm with my mom, we go and sit on the cliffs
And like for hours
And the sun goes down and we drink hard kombucha
and smoke cigarettes and like dance a lot.
I feel so beautiful when I'm with her.
[Lily] What's your favorite part of your body?
- It looks like my mom's.
There's these pictures of like
just random candids of anytime my mom and my grandmother
and I are together and we'll like, walk, like looking
at the beach or looking at anything.
And we stand in the exact same.
Like we stand like prison guards.
Like we have this like very like, you know
and it haunted me for so long
and the way that I was able to be kinder to myself and
and feel less hatred towards my body
and like the individual physical stuff is just being like
I stand like my grandmother and like me and my mom have
the same belly and I don't hate it on her.
[Elisa] Last question.
Why in your body, in your skin, in your journey,
why is it a good place to be?
- I spent so much fucking time
like punishing her [my Body]
and like,
trying to
force her to adhere to this standard
of beauty that was like, not only completely out of reach
and impossible, but also like objectively pretty
overrated.
And so now I'm just like letting her
do whatever she needs to do.
I feel like I'm in the process of letting
out this like massive, murky, deep polluted breath
that I've been holding since I was like 10.
And so if like, if a side effect of that means
that now I have like a hairy pussy and back fat
that sweats in the summer, then fine.
[Elisa] So amazing.
Thank you.
So, so, so much, how do you feel now?
- I don't have a vulnerability hangover whatsoever
and it's so funny
because I've literally, I mean, I've been
watching these videos since I was like 15
and like full of concepts of
of what I was going to be like when I was a big kid.
And I'm like, I'm nothing, like I thought I was going to be.
And thank God.
I'm so grateful that all of my like hopes
for what I would turn into when I was 16 were wrong.
[Elisa] Hopefully we contributed to that.
- Oh massively, like massively.