As someone who is immersed in pop culture all the time,
I have to tell you guys I am so tired of talking
about representation.
The problem that I have with this conversation about representation
is that sometimes that's all we talk about, and then we're no longer talking about human experiences.
I am so very honored to be introducing all of these content creators who are about to join me up here
because I feel like, through their work and through being who they are,
what they do amazingly is find that balance that we actually need between representation
and actual human experiences.
So, without further ado, please help me in welcoming my wonderful panelists.
Hey, y'all!
Hey!
Hi!
So, what message about beauty do you really, really, really want to hear less of?
I guess, wouldn't it be great if beauty wasn't judged by the outside?
It's a tremendous amount of pressure.
I don't think we place anywhere near the same kind of value on your inner beauty,
and I'd like to see more of that.
If you were to google me, you would find images that maybe don't align with what I look like now.
And that had everything to do with the standard of beauty that I felt like I had to achieve
being a gender non-conforming/femme person.
And once I reached a certain pinnacle, I was like, "F*ck this sh*t."
Like, "I'm cutting my hair, I'm gonna have hairy legs, I'm gonna wear a collared shirt and Converse.
What are you going to say about it?
I'm still incredible."
So, I actually wanna ask, Dexter, you a question.
After you appeared on a runway, people thought that this problem of essentially "representation"
was fixed.
It was like, "Boom. We've seen Dex. It's gone."
And we know that that is not how it works.
My experience with that fashion show — it was the first time I had ever done anything runway,
anything fashion involved, anything where the outward appearance is specifically what it's about.
It is how you look.
And I was super nervous and everything like that, but the overwhelming support that came
from not just through the room but also the power of the internet, going viral,
it was great, but it also started a conversation where ...
"Oh, why are we looking at this big, gay, black guy walk in heels."
And it's like, "Why are you not looking at it and why are you not embracing it and
why are you not taking a second to realize this person is enjoying their life.
Let me see how I can do that in my own."
You know?
I actually wanna go talk to Kayla a little bit because I think that you have such an interesting story.
I play Matilda on "Everything's Gonna Be Okay."
She's a very unique character who has autism.
And this event is the perfect opportunity to come out publicly for the first time that
I am actually on the autism spectrum.
So many characters on television today are portrayed by people who do not have a difference,
and honestly people with a difference are fully capable of portraying our own type
and we deserve that right.
With so many changes in the industry right now, why not now? Just give us our chance.
Include us. We can do this.
I cast this show. It's my show.
Oh. You were, like, in the door — you were there before we had even met about talking about casting.
And I remember leaving and saying to Stephanie,
"Oh, God. If we find anyone better than that, I'll be just over the moon."
You know?
And that's just me complementing you.
Thank you.
Why can't trans women or trans people play cis gender characters? Right?
Because for so long it's always that struggle of a cis gender person playing a trans person.
A script doesn't really necessarily cover it. This is a very specific gender. Right?
It's just simply flipping that script.
It's not enough just to have a diverse cast.
If you don't have the people behind the cameras who are representing,
then how are you writing those stories authentically?
I believe that writers of color can write white characters because they live in the white world.
I don't think that white writers can write characters of color very well because we don't live in that world.
We've already seen those stories. We've done that. Let's see new stories!
It's ultimately practical and audiences are so sophisticated now and they wanna see themselves,
so it's both mercenary and I think correct to tell new stories.
We're sort of ingrained as writers, some of us, to think that we have to put attractive people on television
and the idea of what we think attractive is.
You know?
And something I would encourage all creators and writers and everyone to try to do
is think out of the box when you're casting a little more.
Take that risk, and Freeform will let you do that.
They really want you to do that.
Right now I think everybody is trying to be politically correct and they want to fit in
and smooth everything over.
I think there's nothing wrong with telling people,
"I don't understand, but please tell me because I would like to know."