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crazy stuff goes on in this
industry if i ever
visibly saw somebody obviously being
abused or sexually abused or spoken down
to
i would stand up in less than a second
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have i heard about it yes have i seen it
done to other people
no i feel like in this industry it's
very competitive and very ambitious
so if you showed that the slightest bit
of being weak
you can get taken down very easily i've
been on sets for the past seven years
where sometimes you feel pushed you feel
like you can't say no or else something
you know is going to happen with a
campaign or something else is going to
happen with
this but you know i've learned this year
that
my boundaries are something that can't
be crossed and can't be pushed and
some shoots i wish i could go back and i
wish i could have never done them
but sometimes i guess you have to mess
up to be able to move forward
for me like i've just always been a
little bit of like an insecure
person or anxious and when you're
constantly
like people are constantly taking your
photos or touching you like it's very
and you're kind of in the limelight in
that way it's easy to kind of hyper
focus
on the things that you don't like about
yourself i
see and have empathy towards
my other models that i'm on set with who
are talking about their
bodies and and what they're eating and
the sizes they want to be
and and i know what it's like
to be there and i know that that
pressure is so real
for most of the shoots i'm a part of
the styling is pretty tricky and
sometimes
having a batch of clothes that just
won't fit
has made me feel insecure
like i need to fit the clothes and not
the clothes fit me
i definitely have struggled in the
industry
in terms of like going to a fitting and
just
my feet being too big to fit in the
shoes or my shoulders being too broad
and sometimes it does kind of tie in
a little bit to gender dysphoria for me
in a lot of ways
because there are a lot of girls who are
cis like on set who are you know
who fit into all the clothes and like i
definitely have felt
um different um when i'm
in certain spaces and like i have to try
on certain clothes and i'm just like
different parts of my body like don't
really fit the mold
this industry we all need to realize
that every single person
has their own struggles and their own
issues
of who they are and you can't
you can't make people do things that
they don't want to do
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i think a lot of racism happens
very quietly and very subtly and that
doesn't make it better it just makes it
more insidious and more pervasive
and people really don't get it being
african-american is something that
should be celebrated
and that should be recognized and be an
african-american woman
that is an untraditional-sized woman is
something that
pushes me even further when i first
started
i guess brands didn't know what to do
with my hair and my skin
i would go on set and the hairstyles
said do you know how to straighten your
hair
and i said no and i asked him do you
know how to straighten my hair
and he said no and then you're just like
okay now what
and then that's when i realized i was
like i have to stand my ground i have to
stand for something i have to cause some
change
i refused to do any shows or any shoots
with straight hair and i basically told
them it's afro or cornrows or
nothing one of those things that i heard
a lot was
oh you you know how to speak english
like oh you're fluent oh you
like you don't have an accent and i'm
like i don't tell you you don't have an
accent
i think it's really about peeling the
layers back
and looking this ugly ugly nasty monster
in the face
and being aware of how you've
contributed to it or how those you are
connected to have contributed to it
or how the house you were raised in
cultivated
a environment for you to feel
comfortable
to be racist
every single little
kid should be able to see someone who
looks like them
being considered a supermodel i'm proud
of where
we've gotten with diversity
i think we have a long way to go and i
say that very
very strongly i made it very clear
a couple of years ago that i don't want
to go onto a set that doesn't have
representation of everybody i just don't
and i don't feel comfortable on a set
like that
it gets quite irritating when people
have this one idea of what an asian
woman should be like
when really there's so much more there
are so many types of asian beauties and
just beauties in general i was rejected
a lot
because they were like oh you you seem
so cool but you don't have the look
i'm like what look are you talking about
is it because my eyes are bigger
representation i feel like is the bare
minimum and i feel like
a lot of people act like representation
is like the ultimate goal right like
everyone wants to be seen and heard and
represented
but i feel like representation is a
little bit more complicated than that
there's room then for potential
tokenization because i was always openly
trans and i made
gender always a huge part of the
conversation
and i still do it's something that i
very much care about
but i don't want it to be like the only
thing to define me
it's like okay we're going to include
you but like whoa whoa whoa
we still have to make sure that
everybody knows exactly what you are
so that they know that we're doing a
good job well i want to see tokenism get
thrown out the window
honestly i think there are brands
and designers that genuinely care
about inclusivity and representation and
i think that there
are some that follow it as a trend
and and profit off of it and but it's
not sincerely
authentic the biggest thing that needs
to change
is like how can we be ethical in
representation think about
people as full people and varied
individuals and kind of
honor all facets of who they
are i think that's the biggest change
for me
in the past couple of years is i'm being
included
in things that i never thought i could
be included in
the work that i'm doing now is going to
in the future provide more space
for people after me i take so much pride
in
showing up anywhere i am
to represent us to the best of my
abilities
moving forward that's what every single
person
of influence can do they we need to make
sure that
there are artists from everywhere in the
world being able to have a voice to be
heard and you know to be seen because
there's so much to see out there
and we're doing a disservice to
you know worldwide communities by not
representing them
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