- Where's our Martin Luther King?
Where's our Malcolm X?
To do that, to put someone as like, here's our hero.
Okay that's so much pressure on somebody.
I want all of us to kind of fight
for our own abilities - [Interviewer] Yeah.
to exist and take up space
and then just fight for each other,
find your hero within.
I wasn't prepared for what 2020 would end up being.
On new years, I was like everyone else saying,
this is going to be my year.
What's my next project?
What am I doing next?
How am I going to make money next?
How I'm going to do this next.
And being forced to stay inside made me realize that
I could take a break.
Now I'm just kind of getting used to being home alone.
What I would normally do is fuck her out,
I'm not going to lie.
What I would normally do is fill this with sex
and people, and just always having fine people around me,
which is lovely, it was fun.
Oh my God, it was so fun.
For the last seven years, I've sent a good morning text.
That has been my life, is just all constantly
sending a good morning text.
I haven't sent a good morning texts in seven months.
Dating was such a huge part of how I knew myself.
I knew myself as a partner.
And now I say, baby, I got it to me.
And I, I needed that to happen
before I could do anything that I'm doing right now.
- [Interviewer] Why?
- I mean, I just love being in service.
I've just always been serving
and I needed to serve myself this year.
I grew up poor.
I was like, I had a foster home experience.
I felt like I was in charge,
I just naturally felt like I was responsible.
I never was a kid.
I never, ever really got a chance to be a kid.
And just to worry about kid shit.
And so once I finally could make money,
I started working at 14,
I was contributing to my household and I was,
I just always felt like I had to take care.
I thought when I was growing up,
that I needed just money and fame,
and a lot of people around me,
a lot of people to know my name, but this year I realized
that none of that shit really matter.
And it took quarantine for me to realize
that all I really wanted was the freedom to be myself
and some safety, a sense of safety.
Every time I go outside,
I'm not sure if I'm going to be met with any kind of racism,
homophobia, and transphobia that I experience
on a regular basis.
As a black queer trans person,
I am constantly on the pursuit of freedom and safety now.
I think that if I can get a shred of that
then I'm bringing everybody with me, so we can all get it
because it doesn't matter how much money I made
or how many billboards I'm on.
That's not the goal.
The goal isn't getting into the cute party
with the cute outfit,
and you know the brand deal.
The goal is let's actually have a sense of safety
and freedom for all of us.
And that requires being bullish about your beliefs
and standing up for your shit and standing up for yourself.
This is my quarantine look,
I've been obsessed with my dirty sneaker boots from ASOS.
I love them.
They make me walk fast.
I feel like if I'm moving really fast and just big,
people kind of stay out of my way.
And so I like these big, chunky, dirty sneaker boots.
I love a cool sweatsuit.
I like, it's also coordinated,
so I don't have to work too hard.
But underneath, I always have a thong on,
'cause it's just like, I like, I'm non binary.
I like playing with gender,
I think it's all fucking funny.
I love overalls, and then I love a hoodie.
I like being able to hide in them.
It's just like, I feel so cozy.
And if I ever need to,
I can put my hood on and then I just feel hidden.
It's like my security blanket.
This is my favorite article of clothing.
It is a thrifted oversize shirt
with a whole bunch of beautiful black men's faces
illustrated on it.
I call it my barbershop shirt.
It says, "Braids, blades and fades" on it.
(laughs)
It's so amazing.
And I just have this as a little flag in my back pocket,
just so you know that I'm black as fuck.
Sometimes when I have a really good outfit,
the, some of the things that I have to deal with
get bypassed.
Which is really like, that's why I love clothing so much.
'Cause it's like, even if people are the most transphobic,
homophobic, racist people that I'll ever come across,
I will still walk into spaces like that,
and they'll be like, "Damn, that's a good suit."
And I'm like, I know.
People can say a lot of shit about me,
but the one thing that they can't say
is that I don't look good.
So when I was growing up, I always hated how muscular I was.
It took away my femininity.
Having a lot of muscle and having an androgynous appearance,
I felt like I wasn't allowed to present femininely.
But now as I get closer into my trans identity, honestly,
I love it.
I love how masculine I can be,
and how deep my voice is and that I started to grow a beard,
like PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome,
but it, you end up having like facial hair.
I like my facial hair,
I like it.
I like that I have a beard.
I can, I'll just find myself like stroking my beard
in talking to people.
And so a lot of the things that I thought were really bad
and wrong about me, I genuinely,
and this isn't on some kumbaya, I genuinely like,
I love my masculinity and I love my facial hair.
If I didn't have those things, I'd look like everybody else,
and I don't want to.
- [Interviewer] When was the last time you cried?
- I feel like recently I've been,
I have been crying a lot, its...
- [Interviewer] Why?
- Because I don't believe that, I just,
I just have no faith that this country will do what's right.
I just I've, I've been,
I feel like I've been wronged on this land so many times
that I'm prepared to be wronged again.
And so that's why I was like look,
I'm prioritizing fun over everything.
When we have fun, everybody else,
it helps so many other things things.
The fun, the joy slices it, all of this hatred
and shit that we have to exist, deal with.
All I know is that I can't change.
Everything about who I am now,
it's getting more and more just kind of like, this is it,
and this is how it is, you know?
I think before I was adapting and changing and shifting
for everybody that I met to make people comfortable,
and now I'm just not there anymore.
It's been such a fight to be this secure in who I am now.
So what I can show everyone is how to be unwavering in you.
- I'm Lily.
- And I'm Alisa.
- And we're the mother-daughter co-founders
of Style Like You.
If you agree that facade separate us
and being radically honest brings us together,
help spread the movement for self acceptance
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