- My hair, to me, feels like the rings of a tree.
It's my history.
It marks the passage of time in my life.
I remember back in high school,
I didn't really fit in.
I was a minority, and I would wear clothing
that if I felt like when I walked out the door,
no one would notice me, I was doing a great job. (laughing)
So now, whenever I go into a clothing store,
I immediately am like, "OK, what stands out to me
"the most from this entire store?"
And that's what I'm going to try on first.
My taxi driver was freaking out over my hair,
and he's like, "When a woman walks down the street
"and all heads turn to her because she's beautiful,
"that's a good thing, because in that moment,
"she has power," and I was like, "OK,
"it's obviously way more complicated than that,
"but I'm interested in that idea,"
having a look that commands power,
and thinking about that in the context
of everything I've been through in my life and owning that.
I first dyed my hair, well, bleached it blonde,
when I went public about being a survivor.
I was assaulted on the first day of my sophomore year,
and didn't do anything about that for a long time.
After it happened, I made my bed and went to sleep.
I mean, I was obviously very ashamed of it,
even though now I look back, and I'm like,
"I shouldn't be ashamed of something that's not my fault."
I ran into this woman at a party,
and we locked eyes, and we're just like,
"We need to talk about something."
We knew that we needed to meet up,
and she was like, "I had a violent relationship with a guy
"who I've heard raped you, and the thing that happened
"to you happened to me" over the course
of however long they'd been dating.
I met another woman who'd been raped by him,
and talked to the head of the society
that he and I were both in, and learned of three more cases
that had been reported about him.
Me, the initial woman I talked with,
and one of the other women reported our cases
to the school in tandem, but back then,
it was like, "Oh, the three of them are colluding."
We reported it to the police,
and the police were harassing me
and it just was a total circus for about a year.
Our case was closed, there was nothing
that was going to happen,
and we really supported the work
that Senator Gillibrand was doing about campus rape
and knew that it'd be valuable
to keeping our classmates safe,
and it just kind of landed on me,
that I would be the one to come forward.
It was at that moment, right before the press conference,
that I decided I was going to bleach my hair blonde.
(laughing)
Ever since then, it's always been a different color.
I was incredibly scared,
because I was talking about my rape to a bunch of people
that were strangers.
But I think having control over my hair color
gave me a bit of confidence.
A big part of the process of going public with my assault
was having to stop denying my anger and sadness.
I was going to do something about this because I was hurt.
Mattress Performance wasn't just about my rapist.
It was about our rapist,
and it was about trying to make sure
that rape didn't happen anymore.
So I think that when people talk about it
as such an individualized project,
they lose sight of just how grave a danger we were all in.
I knew he wasn't going to get kicked off campus,
and I knew he wasn't going to get put in jail.
The whole point of Mattress Performance
was that everything had failed us,
and we were stuck with him for one more year of school.
The first half of Mattress Performance,
it was purple and then the second half it was teal.
Since then, I have pretty much changed my hair color
every time I do a performance.
So The Ship is Sinking is a performance I did
a little over a year ago,
and my hair is hot, hot pink.
Just like, I was very hotheaded at that moment,
and I even made my armpit hair and my public hair hot pink,
'cause I just wanted to be as ridiculous as possible.
There was a moment during Mattress Performance
when I would get so many interview requests
that my phone would just die.
Reporters all had the same set of questions to ask,
and I was like, a robot me
would be really great at this job.
So I made the robot.
So I took a mold of my body, and reprinted myself,
and pre-recorded all of the answers to the questions
and you could press a question
and Emma-tron would say the answer in my voice.
So I did this performance where I could like,
I was standing here, and Emma-tron is standing there
and people could talk to me, and ask me anything they wanted
but if they asked something that Emma-tron
was better equipped to answer,
I would politely direct them to Emma-tron.
I was feeling a lot of identification with this robot
of myself that I had made,
and I think that's when I started to want
to stop using "she".
"They" is a more accurate pronoun for me than "she",
because of the levels of objectification I've gone through
and I mean, even rape itself is an objectification
of a human being, right?
And that's something I definitely felt.
I was like, "Oh, I'm no more than an object to this human."
And yeah, it's something I feel on the inside.
I look at myself in the mirror and I don't see "she".
The rape counselor at Columbia said "I'm certain
"that I can work with you, and get you to the point
"where you are so okay with what happened
"that you can sit in a room with your attacker
"and not feel anything."
That is not something I want. (laughing)
For me, healing is going to be about accepting my pain
and potentially feeling worse,
because that's just, on the level of survival,
it's unsafe for me to be in the same room as this guy again.
At my babysitter's granddaughter's Sweet 16,
there were so many people in the room
who were all just so happy for this one young woman,
and I think about how many hands go into the making
of a woman. Holding her, hugging her, feeding her,
helping her get dressed.
I just thought of how many people it takes to make a woman,
that some really careless man could completely desecrate
all that labor.
I believe in being that person, to raise your hand in class,
and say, "No, this is a misogynist text."
Being the person in the conversation to cut off somebody
and be like, "That's racist, please stop."
For me, feminism has a lot to do with solidarity
for people of every gender,
every race, every level of ability,
and not just saying it, but acting in a way
that makes that true.