[Applause]
my name is Ryan Richardson and I'm
living a double life actually no that's
not true at all so they tell you that
you should always start this thing with
a good hook and that sounded like such a
good opening line I was like I'm gonna
go with it no but in seriousness for
many years I did live with a bit of a
secret maybe even a big one the secret
was well I'm what you might call the
beauty queen for more than a decade
beauty pageants were my hobby actually
they were more like my sport they were
the sport that I took up when playing
football with the boys was no longer a
sustainable solution for me yeah that's
me the one with my name written on my
helmet I can't figure out why is if I
was going to lose it off my head
nevermind but nonetheless in pageants as
with with all the sports that I played
before them I poured my whole self into
competition and like the elite athlete
that I was I trained year in and year
out and for it I was rewarded handsomely
with scholarships that funded the bulk
of my college education with the
communication skills that rests at the
foundation of what ended up becoming to
sir rapidly ascending career and with
the network of while the accomplished
peers all around the country many of
whom I have the privilege of calling my
friends but all the while I was building
that rapidly ascending career and
intentionally keeping a high wall
between it and my pageant life I did
everything possible to try to keep my
little hobby a complete secret from my
professional community when I competed
for Miss black America I had to take a
week off of work and I told my
colleagues that it was to spend
much-needed time with the family I lied
I got on a plane and flew halfway across
across the country to pursue a
decade-long dream and when I won Miss
black America I reached just this
highest of highs I celebrated quietly
I mean quietly the way only like a car
deprived beauty-queen canceled was like
an extra-large actually cheese pizza in
my lap a bottle of champagne in one hand
the TV remote in the other but quietly
nonetheless
and the next Monday I put my heels back
up on the show for tired my makeup and
without any fanfare or fuss I went back
to my day job at that point I was a vice
president of a hundred million dollar
global technology company I was managing
a team in three cities across two
continents and I just jumped back into
business as usual and into an
environment where I had every intention
of never speaking of what I had just
accomplished which is strange right
because typically when we earn notable
accolades we want to share that news I
mean I remember earlier in that year
when I had been named to a certain
magazine's list of the most influential
black executives in corporate America I
had to be convinced not to buy like
framing two copies of this magazine for
everyone in my company it was a thing
but this when this one was different
don't get me wrong it was it was big it
was the biggest it was the culmination
of ten years of hard work the product of
my literal blood sweat and tears and
approximately three and a half pounds of
makeup but I knew that this
accomplishment also came with
consequences consequences that I might
suffer if folks who didn't know me or
didn't get me or didn't yet understand
the full extent of my capacities learned
that I had competed in a beauty pageant
a beauty pageant in fact I was even
concerned that some folks who did know
me who had praised my talents and had
watched me excel at my craft would
suddenly start to doubt my capacities
conventional wisdom had taught me that I
have reason to fear that my life is a
beauty queen could somehow compromise my
position my hard earned position as a
credible respected influential executive
I was well aware of that expectation
that the woman who is as frivolous as to
leverage her physical appearance for
personal gain does so because she no
doubt lacks certain intellectual
all gifts right and while I always knew
that attitude was fundamentally wrong I
couldn't risk my credibility falling
victim to it that that was the reason
for the secrecy
that was my greatest fear but of course
now it's the new Miss black America that
secret was gonna be pretty hard to keep
within 72 hours back at work I'd been
outed by a Google Alert and I had to
learn to embrace this identity that for
so long I regard it as a professional
liability and I can say now that I've
certainly settled in to living in my
truth proudly and boldly but that
journey has not been without friction in
the last year I've had my capacities and
my intelligence questions I've had my
credentials scrutinized and my basic
value challenged in a way that I never
experienced in my career before I came
out as a beauty queen so many of my
fears in this last year have been
validated but so has my strong belief
that it's about time for us to rethink
our understanding of what beauty really
means particularly for women now before
I get ahead of myself and y'all start
rolling your eyes I'll let you know that
this talk is not at all intended to be
my defense of beauty pageants I will
concede to y'all and all of the internet
that like so many other competitive
sports communities the beauty pageant
world is a totally bizarre alternate
universe is weird I get it
this talk is also not about like the
woes of being pretty because that would
be obnoxious this talk isn't even about
who our culture of patriarchy and white
supremacy and capitalism upholds as the
standard bearers of beauty I'd love to
have that conversation but it's a
different one altogether instead this
conversation this talk is about
challenging the fundamental idea that
beauty is somehow inconsequential that
it lacks practical value that it's
important only exists in a vacuum devoid
of more serious matters this talk is
about why it's time for us to cancel the
notion that when
are either beautiful or smart that we're
either consciously attractive or
competent dare I say that we are sexy or
respectable that we cannot be all of the
above because beyond that concept being
insulting in a logical and so easily
debunked it's also rooted in this kind
of anti feminism that has real and
substantive impact on the quality of
life for women I'm not exaggerating when
I say that to deprecate feminine beauty
is an act of aggression it is an
intentional effort to encroach on our
power here's what I mean
power is the capacity of some persons to
produce intended and foreseen effects on
others by the way this is the part of
the program where I geek out for a
couple minutes so sit tight get
comfortable
dr. Dennis Rong is credited with this
definition of power he was Canadian
sociologists and author professor
emeritus at NYU and a self-described
Democratic Socialist before Bernie
Sanders made that like all buzzword II
that's cool and he was one of the
handful of mid-century scholars who were
known collectively in academic
communities as the New York
intellectuals and sadly he passed away
about a year ago but I've been diving
into what is probably his best-known
book entitled power its forms basis and
uses which is regarded as this great
anatomy of the subject of power and in
it
dr. Rong asserts that there are four
distinct forms of power Authority
force manipulation and persuasion and
authority is this really interesting
complex concept that he further breaks
down into five other subcategories that
I hope you'll read about in this book
because we're not talking about them
today but we are going to talk about
these other three forms of power these
forms that are so ever-present in our
lives
force manipulation persuasion we can
probably all cite plenty of examples
both big and small in our day to day
lives and the world
around us of what these look like
whether it's that schoolyard bully who
is just able to physically dwarf all the
other kids on the playground and then he
uses his physical stature to either
intimidate or physically harm other kids
as a means of control or whether it is
the strong man
leaders of authoritarian governments
that use violence in state sanctioned
persecution that squash dissent in their
people we can all recognize these
exercises of force for power and when we
think of power through manipulation
that's where the intellect and the savvy
of a con man like a Bernie Madoff who's
able to trick people into yielding their
trust to him is seen or where great
wealth or access allows those that hold
it the ability to bend people to their
will unwittingly not even realizing
they're ever being controlled influenced
that's think oh 2016 election Cambridge
analytic a six million dollars and
unfettered access to all your Facebook
data that's power through manipulation
and then there's power through
persuasion this final form of power that
is perhaps the most effective and
certainly the most sustainable because
it's inherently consensual it doesn't
rely on fear or violence or duplicity
all of which require this kind of
ongoing cycle of optimization just just
to be effective
now instead power through persuasion
it's safe it's not offensive it's
unlikely to provoke manipulative or
forceful counter action so there is a
certain permanence to power that comes
from persuasion now
I'd argue that the great importance of
beauty beauty being that quality or
aggregated qualities in a person that
gives pleasure to the census or exalts
the mind or spirit the the value in that
is in our ability to use it as a tool
for persuasion beauty does affect the
way in which the world around us sees
and perceives us in our positions
it's the reason that countless studies
into everything from advertising to
worker compensation to political science
have all found that there is a positive
correlation between the attractiveness
of a person and our perceptions of their
trustworthiness of their credibility
studies of US elections and European
elections find that a candidate's
aesthetic appeal does serve as an actual
indicator of actual election outcomes
and that children are able to reliably
predict the outcome of elections based
solely on what politicians look like so
beauty is able to so reliably dictate
our perceptions of persuasiveness of
that great sustainable most effective
power then beauty is and in of itself a
vehicle for power
now all forms of power rely on an
imbalance an unequal distribution of
resources we can't all access the same
powers and without that imbalance
there's no power to be leveraged frankly
we can't all possess the strength or the
the reinforcements to take power by
force and oftentimes we see men because
of their physical size and stature
exploit that particular vehicle for
power we don't all have the intellect or
the wealth that allow us that
manipulative power and while those
assets may be more evenly balanced
across genders they are far from equal
access assets but nonetheless we respect
a reward physical strength genius is
always celebrated the pursuit of
monetary riches is about American as
apple pie but something about beauty is
different
beauty that vehicle for persuasive power
that's trivialized that's degraded and I
spent a lot of time in the last year
asking myself why and it's not lost on
me and hopefully it's not lost on anyone
in this room that of all of those forms
of power that rely on an unequal
distribution of resources that beauty is
the single vehicle that is
disproportionately afforded to
recognized in and leveraged by women so
why again is beauty frivolous why unlike
physical strength or intellect or great
wealth do we at least in women regard
beauty as a liability why are women
forced to make a binary decision between
either openly wielding the power of
their feminine beauty or being otherwise
respected as bright its talented as
valuable Beauty as women is our unique
superpower yet we've been conditioned to
believe that it lacks value that we
ought distance ourselves from and if we
want to be taken seriously and that's
not an accident last time I checked
men are encouraged to abandon any
vehicles for their power that is a
burden that lies squarely on our
shoulders and refusing through social
pressure women the latitude to leverage
all of the tools available to us well
that robs us of influence it creates
divisions between us it doesn't allow
for us to see to realize the full scope
of our feminine power so women today I'm
gonna leave you with a call to action
and that's to check your own hang-ups
about beauty at the door it's to be
mindful of the ways in which you may
actually fit into the very notions that
are designed
to disempower you I'm gonna challenge
you instead to proudly own the inherent
power of your unique beauty to leverage
it boldly and unapologetically whenever
and however you see fit I remind you
that you are under no obligation to live
as either or but actually that you and I
we both have a responsibility to live as
this and that and to in turn model the
full range and diversity of woman's
feminine power it's on us every one of
us in this room to give permission to
the women and girls who will come behind
us to be able to take up space as
dynamic complex whole beings not these
one-dimensional tropes of what womanhood
should be Toni Morrison wrote if you
want to fly you got to give up the
that weighs you down I'm here to let you
notice is that it's time for us to
let go these broken notions of what our
beauty and power actually are women
Mavericks
it's time to fly
you
[Music]