INTERVIEW: Da’Shaun Harrison — The Literary Voice To Be Reckoned With
Writer by nature, abolitionist by purpose, organizer by trade, and speaker by day — Da’Shaun Harrison. In this interview, they celebrate their debut book release while discussing the experiences of living at the intersection of identity.
Without further ado family, I bring you back to our table.
This time, we’re joined by future literary icon, Da’Shaun Harrison. They are an abolitionist, community organizer, speaker, writer, and now published author that’s based in Atlanta. Throughout the past few months, there has been much anticipation around the release of their debut book, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness.
So, we’re here to talk about it.
Currently, Da’Shaun serves as Managing Editor at Wear Your Voice magazine and is one of the trio’s co-hosts for the #InTheMiddle podcast. They speak across the nation on topics such as Blackness, Queerness, Gender, Class, Disabilities, Fatness, and the intersection of them all. You can also catch them on occasion making appearances on platforms such as Good Morning LA, Embodied WUNC Radio, THEM, Black Youth Project, BET, Buzzfeed, and others.
With the August 10th release of their first book, #BellyOfTheBeast, it has quickly become the hottest topic around town. Harrison explores the ideology of anti-fatness as anti-blackness in a constructive, poetic way to help readers understand how a lot of us fail to recognize Fat folks as whole beings, and not just political concepts.
They also dive deeper into the interpersonal, systemic issues grappling society by addressing topics such as hyper policing, housing & job discrimination, inequities in healthcare, homelessness, sexual assault, slavery, misinformation in government & policy, gender & sexuality, class, violence, mental health, and desirability politics.
From the moment that this interview was confirmed, I’ve been excited. So, let’s jump right into it.
Darius Caffey: From the beginning idea conception of the book up until now, how has the experience been for you? How has the experience been of coming up with the topic, doing your research, the actual writing, editing, and now being a published author? It must have been a roller coaster.
Da’Shaun Harrison: To say the least, yes, it has been. The concept for the book originally came in 2018 when I was first approached by someone who worked for a major publishing house in New York. They approached me about writing a book and, at the time, you know, like, I was navigating so much; I was unemployed, I was homeless, I was forced into survival sex work and, just navigating a bunch of hardship that I just didn’t have the time or the capacity to write the book.
I think in 2017 is when I discovered Fat studies, and I was like, you know I’m finally able to sort of have the language to describe and put into words what I’m experiencing. But that language has not provided me with resources. So, now I have the language and I’m still out here without the resources that I need to be able to write this book. A year went by, and I didn’t write the book. I stopped thinking about it but in the back of my mind, I was always like “dang I wonder what could have happened if I was able to write the book?” and I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to.
Then in 2019, towards the end of the year, I got an email — funny enough, the email came in the middle of 2019, but I was experiencing some weird stuff with my email to where I wasn’t getting any emails. I didn’t know that I wasn’t getting emails; so, for a while, I was in this dry spell. I was not getting any emails or writing opportunities or anything like that, and it was weird. I was so confused by that, but then a bunch of people was like “hey, I’ve been emailing you and I haven’t gotten a response.” But I was like “well, I haven’t got an email.”
So, my friend, and the person who designed my website, went in, and fixed a couple of things and found out that I had emails that dated back like five-six months. And part of those emails was an email from my now editor of the publishing house that I published with. They were requesting that I write a book or wondering if I had any idea about what I would want to write if I was to write a book. We had a conversation at the end of 2019, and gratefully the opportunity was still on the table. I was amazed that this was something that, for one, I had just missed, and that it was something that they were still interested in.
So, at the beginning of 2020, just a couple of days or around the same time that we went into quarantine for the pandemic is when I signed my contract for the book. I didn’t anticipate writing a book in the middle of all that happened in 2020 but that was like the conception of the idea and sort of how I arrived at writing the book. And it has been a roller coaster. It’s been ups and downs, you know. I was writing this book in the middle of the pandemic, in the middle of the uprisings that were happening, in the middle of mutual aid organizing work. And last year, at the time, I was working two jobs. I was doing both of those jobs while writing this book while organizing and trying to keep whatever bit of mental health I have. I was just all over the place, and I was like “girl, is this book going to get written? we will find out soon enough.” But it got written; it happened.
The first week has been overwhelming but I’m also overjoyed by the response to and the interest in the book. You know, the words I’ve heard from folks who have read even part of the book, not even read the full book yet, but, just the care that the book is being held with, for the most part; it just feels absolutely amazing. So, I’m grateful for that roller coaster and I’m grateful for the conditions under which I wrote the book because I think that it’s making this moment, right now, that much better for me and it’s something that I’m able to appreciate even more.
DC: I agree. And as someone who also started to take my writing seriously during the middle of a pandemic, I feel you on the roller coaster ride that it has been to actually sit down and focus in the midst of everything. But I will tell you that I appreciate you so much for working on this because this book — when I say I read it in two days, I couldn’t put it down. It not only was a great read from start to finish, very educational, but it also challenged me in the way that I think and in the ways that I want to interact with other people, in the conversations that I want to continue having. It gave me the language that you spoke about a little earlier when you were first coming up with the idea.
When you first got introduced to the topic, there wasn’t a lot of language or resources around and I found that in my work as well. By trying to discuss more experiences of what the Black Queer, Trans, and Non-binary looks like for people, there’s not a lot of resources out there and there’s not much wording to go with the experiences that we endure, and the people that we engage with and how we are represented, and interact with others, and engage with. It’s a lot, so I’m glad that you were able to actually put it on paper and put it in a way that helps people understand what these experiences look like, not just for you, but for other people across these communities as well.
DH: No, thank you so much; that means a lot. I’m grateful that it got written too, but really it was that that kept me going. There were so many Black folks in general, but particularly the Black Fat folks who knew I was writing this book and who were just so interested in having the book in their hands. It was that that pushed me to keep going because I was going to try to find every resource that I could to pay back that advance and was going to call it a day. I was like “I don’t know if this is going to work; this year is just so hellish” but it worked out and I’m grateful because of the words that you just offered. That made it all worth it for me and I keep saying I’m grateful because I really am, and I don’t even know how else to describe it besides the fact that I’m just very grateful.
DC: So, I did see the interview that you did with Good Morning LA and there’s a quote, that you had shared with them that I want to bring to our space here.
You said,
“There are many of us that live at these margins all at once, and there is no way for us to live separate lives at one time. So, we have to be able to find a way to hold all these identities, at one time so that we can acknowledge the way that folks are being multiply marginalized”.
And that, to me, was a synopsis of the book and what the book embodied while discussing anti-fatness and anti-blackness and what it looks like for gender expression, and for thinness, and for what it looks like for other people to be able to look into these spaces, to have more conversations with these people.
So, I want to pick your brain at how you came up with the idea, the concept to continue to address the interpersonal and systemic issues within our society, but in the way that you put them in the book?
DH: So, I told you about how I got into Fat studies and how I discovered that in 2017. But I got more interested in Black studies when — actually, I don’t know. I can’t pinpoint an exact sort of time period when that happened. However, it was later than Fat studies when I started to actually read and process what Black studies were and what it was offering. Then while I was in school at Morehouse, I was around a lot of folks who were in Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies/disciplines.
So, when I started to write the book, I was like each of these disciplines or topics, or groups offer something very special and very important. And each of them in some ways is talking about an experience that I’m moving through. They are also very separate disciplines and very separate conversations that are happening. But there are a lot of people in the world who, just like me, are moving through all these identities at one time too and there’s no way for us to separate ourselves into different disciplines, right? There’s no way for me to one day show up as Black, and then one day show up as Fat, and then one day show up as Trans, right? That all happens at one time. So, I wanted to make a multi-disciplinary intervention in the ways that these concepts are compartmentalized or separated and not, then allowed to make room for the full embodiment of a being in the ways that we show up in the world. That was what led to me writing the book in the way that I did.
I knew that, particularly in Fat studies, 99.999% of what’s written is about cis women. And I was like “well, I’m not a cis woman and there are a lot of people in the world who are not cis women, who are experiencing a very similar type of violence at the hands of anti-blackness by way of anti-fatness”. And I think that has to be further explored. So, I’m going to do that by bringing in Black studies, and by bringing in Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies (and their subgroups like Trans studies and Queer studies) because there is something that each of them offers individually that have to be brought together to be able to write the book that I want to write. So that is the backstory for that and kind of how I arrived at, you know, making this an intervention that would cover all three of those disciplines and not just be about an individual topic, I guess.
DC: Going based off on the current world that we’re in and the current critiques of Critical Race Theory (and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work) that’s going on within the government, academia, and everywhere — will the current critiques of it impact the progression of research rooted in anti-blackness and anti-fatness?
DH: I think that this is a tough question for me to answer because I have my own critique of Critical Race Theory. And though, of course, no critique that’s rooted in white supremacist logic of anti-blackness can ever be a valid critique. So, I want to say that first. I’m not offering validity to any of the people who are critiquing it now because it’s not rooted in a liberatory practice. But I do think that Critical Race Theory itself works to, in so many ways, legitimize the law or at least try to offer a lens of dehumanization to people who have never been understood as human. And, as such, I think it offers, maybe even inadvertently, some sort of validity to criminality and the law. So, I have my own critiques of that and intersectionality — and I guess Kimberly Crenshaw more generally.
Despite that fact, I don’t think that the critiques that are happening now around that will necessarily halt any particular work around anti-blackness or anti-fatness because I think that those conversations are happening in two different realms. I think that the folks who are having conversations about or offering critiques around Critical Race Theory are not people who are having the same conversations that are particular to anti-blackness and anti-fatness. So, I think that they will have a larger impact on conversations around race, for sure, and racism. But I don’t think that the conversations on anti-blackness will be necessarily disrupted because they’re not happening in the same spaces, nor are they producing sort of the same conversations in the first place if that makes sense.
DC: With this current work that you’re doing, and even within the past work that you’ve done with editing and writing articles, is this your niche? Have you found this to be your niche topic/audience, or is this just one of your many areas that you will continue to dive into as a writer?
DH: So, I love writing, right? I love writing AND what I’ve discovered is that doing this for a living versus doing it as a passion sort of takes the desire away from you. Now you don’t write to write because you’re passionate about it. You write because you have to make some sort of money, to make a living, and there is not a huge living being made in writing these days unless you are already like a very rich or very popular person, by which I mean a celebrity and I am not. It’s like I’m writing to make enough money to be able to live off to survive. But with what comes with the type of writing that I’m doing — the backlash, and the bad faith arguments and whatnot — I think that it sort of takes away my ability to look at it as worth it because it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like you are barely making the money that you need to survive and dealing with people who want to make your blood pressure go skyrocket. It just sometimes feels like maybe it’s not worth it. But I know that it is. I know that it’s worth it in the long run.
So, I guess, I would say that, yes, this is my niche. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life, what I feel compelled to do. It’s what I feel called to do for the rest of my life and with the rest of my life. And I often wonder how that is disrupted by capitalism and anti-blackness and this ability, or inability, to find balance in working for survival and producing work that you’re passionate about. So, I’m still looking and working and trying for that. I guess I’ll have a better answer in five years when I know for sure, but I do know that this is what I want to do and where I want to keep going within my career. So, we will see where that lands me at in 5, 10, or 15 years. But for now, this is where I’m at.
DC: Do you think it would be easier to discuss or that the topic would be more attractive to people if you collaborate with others?
DH: That’s a good question. I have been able to build such a brilliant, amazing community with folks who are writing in Fat studies and Black studies and Gender studies, who are producing amazing work and I think that there’s like a collaborative effort happening. Like on Twitter where all of us are pulling off each other’s thoughts and writing threads from each other thoughts and citing each other in our threads and stuff like that, I think it’s amazing. I don’t think that we ever see a lot of collaborative work happening in prose writing in general, especially when it’s nonfiction and when it’s theory. I don’t think that we ever see a lot of collaboration. but what I also know is that I am very much someone who is invested in non-traditional ways of writing and showing up in our writing.
So, that is to say, maybe there will be more collaborative work happening in the future; I don’t know. I think that would depend on the person or persons that I will be collaborating with; their writing, their writing style, their writing ability, but also the ways that we are thinking together. I think that there are a lot of people whose work I value, but I don’t think that we’re thinking together, necessarily, and I think that collaborating in that way would make it sort of impossible. But I’m open to it. I’m very open to writing with others. I’ve written a couple of pieces with other people, notably one of my really good friends, Josh. We’ve written like two or three pieces together, and it was fun. It was an exciting thing, but I think it has to be somebody whose writing I trusted and whose thinking is aligned with mine. So, if it comes along, I’m excited about it and I’m ready to embrace it with open arms.
DC: At what point in your life or career, did you rip the vulnerability band-aid off and just say fuck it and start speaking your truth?
DH: I have never run away from vulnerability; well, depending on who you ask. My greatest weakness and my greatest strengths are that I run towards vulnerability like its candy, and I welcome it. You know, part of it is because I’m a cancer and I think that a lot of it is because of trauma. I think a lot of folk lock in or keep things bottled up because of their trauma. But, for me, my trauma has always sort of led me to release everything and being very honest and open and vulnerable and truthful about what I’m experiencing.
So, to that end, I think that vulnerability in my writing and outside of writing has always just been who I am and it’s something that I welcome, because not only do I think that the best writers are beings who are willing and able to allow themselves to be vulnerable. I think that’s the best learning for both folks, the writer and the person who’s reading. I think that vulnerability allows for both to be able to learn in a way that’s impossible to do if you’re not allowing yourself to be vulnerable — as a reader and as a writer. So yeah, I’ve always been a very vulnerable person. I think I will always be a vulnerable person. How it affects me depends on the space, environment, and how genuine somebody is when reading my work or when engaging with me as a friend or romantic partner or a sex partner, whatever. It depends entirely on our relationship, but I think that it has always been a very important part of my life, and it’s something that I’m not willing to compromise on.
DC: In the book, is there any part or any quote that is your favorite right now that you wrote?
DH: I don’t know. For one, I have not read the book since I finished it, in its entirety. Of course, I read like chapters for readings, and I’ve read excerpts for the last couple of talks that I’ve done for the book tour. But I haven’t read the book from front to back, since I wrote it. I don’t even know that there’s a quote — I think that I am a great writer, and I think that I’m able to write in a way that makes pulling quotes kind of easy because the writing is more poetic in a way. So, I will give myself that. I don’t know if there’s a particular point though. I’m looking over there at my bookshelf at the book as if it’s going to pop out, but I don’t think that there’s a quote, at least not that immediately comes to mind, that I’m just like so in love with. But I’m going to read it again and I’ll message you directly and say “hey, this is my favorite quote, I think.”
DC: You say in a 2018 article for Them publication that
“when you think you have done everything in your power to aid Fat people in our fight against oppression, know that you haven’t. And when you have exhausted all other options, ask Fat people how you can show up for them”.
So, I want to ask, just in our space, how can I, and everybody else who’s tuned in, continue to show up for the Fat people in our lives, and around the world, and continue to support them?
DH: I think that this answer is twofold. I think that, more generally, the answer is what I’ve been saying in interviews for the last couple of weeks. I wrote an essay last year in the middle of the uprisings — 99% of the time when I write, I’m writing to Black folks. I’m not writing to non-black folks, and they may read it, but they’re not my audience. There are a couple of times in my career that I’ve written specifically to white folks and last year I wrote an article to white folks on whiteness and on the need to abolish whiteness. Actually, I don’t even think that was necessarily to white folks, I was just writing to write. But the end of the piece was to white folks, and it was sort of addressing the question of how to be a better ally. And I was like “well, for one, I don’t even believe in allyship.”
But there are only three answers: give money to Black folks, house and provide resources for Black folks, and be willing to give up your own life. Take this fight to the streets yourselves. That is how you show up for Black folks. So, in that same way, that is what I believe is the call for folks to show up for Fat folks.
But what I also believe, is that it means being honest with yourself and being more intentional about interrogating the ways that you show up, and in the ways that you are engaging with or not engaging with Fat folks. Particularly in Black, Queer spaces, I think that a lot of folks befriend people who are desirable. They befriend people who are not politically ugly, who are not conventionally attractive — and I hate that language but that’s a term that a lot of people use. They try to make their friend group as Beautiful (with a capital B) as possible. And when they do befriend people who are politically ugly or who are Fat, etc. they do so to make their Fat friend their one Fat friend. You know, the one who provides humor to the group or the one who is an advice-giver/counselor to the group but not somebody who gets to be their full self, their whole self within that space. And so, I think that it means being honest about how you show up in these spaces and how you engage Fat folks or don’t engage Fat folks.
Do you have Fat friends? And if you do have Fat friends, are they allowed to be their full selves and not just somebody that you go to for advice or not just somebody who you go to for their intellectual capacity or not just somebody that you go to for a laugh, but that they get to be their whole self around you and with you and you are also as much of a friend to them as they are to you?
It also means being honest about your sexual attraction, if you are somebody who experiences sexual attraction. What do your sex partners look like? Have they been Fat? Do you have any interest in Fat folks? Do you have any interest in interrogating why you are not attracted to Fat folks? Or, if you are, are you interested in assessing how much of that attraction is actual attraction versus fantasizing about their bodies?
All of that matters.
I think that way too many people are unwilling to interrogate those things, particularly — and it’s not unique to, but it is particular to because that’s who I’m speaking to directly right now — with Black, Queer spaces. I think that so much about our spaces are built on sexual attraction and is therefore not inclusive of people who are not generally deemed to be sexually attractive. But also, people don’t want to interrogate or engage why they think that Fat folks or dark skin folks or Trans folks or Disabled folks are not attractive. And so, the people who get to build a Queer community in a very particular way — and I don’t know that I would say it’s Queer Community, so much as I think it’s the LGBT community or Black, Gay community. I’m using it to be specific, but I think that because of how I define Queerness, I don’t think I would define these spaces as Queer — but there’s not really room to build community in these spaces, because they are built with light skin, thin, able-bodied people in mind. And then, when they are inclusive of other folks, they are very rarely inclusive of Fat folks and Disabled folks.
So, I think it’s really being mindful of that fact because statistically, the people who are sitting in positions of power to be able to employ folks, to house folks, to diagnose folks, and things like that are the people who are thin, who have a particular level of desire capital that Fat folks do not. And therefore, your sexual attractions, if you’re someone who experiences sexual attraction, help define the way that Fat folks are treated outside of just the ways that we’re engaged sexually or not engaged sexually.
Also, I think it’s dishonest to assert that sexuality is not a big part of how so many people engage the world. It’s important still — even if you’re not somebody who has a position of power or whatever — to interrogate that because that is determining people’s entire dating pools and how they’re engaged in Queer community and Black community and Black, Queer community. It matters. I think overall it’s about those three rules around housing folks, resourcing and giving money to folks, and even be willing to give up your life on behalf of their struggle. But also deeply interrogating your own relationship to Fat people and why you do or do not have one and what it looks like in some of the more intimate parts of your lives because I think that — the intimate, the interpersonal spaces — is where a lot of us fail to recognize Fat folks as whole beings, and not just political concepts that we can use in our talking points and ignore in our own personal lives.
DC: With writing, what has been some of the best and worst advice that you’ve ever received?
DH: I like this question. I talk about this a lot because it just baffles me. I think some of the worst advice I’ve gotten from people is to not edit as you go, to just write out all your thoughts and let them flow, and then edit at the end. I think that’s cute; it works for some people. It does not work for me. I cannot finish writing what I need to write if I feel like I left something unedited or unfinished or not fully fleshed out. And for some people, that would be their best advice, to write out all their thoughts and not edit what they’re writing. But for me, that was the worst advice because it slows down my writing process. It slows down my thinking, and it makes me more frustrated than anything else and I’m not allowed to finish my train of thought. So now I’m having to go back over what I was thinking and figure out what I was trying to write and everything else because I need to be able to flesh out what I’m writing first before I can keep going with what I’m trying to finish. So that was, I think, the worst advice I’ve gotten. And I don’t think that I’ve gotten really great writing advice.
I haven’t gotten a lot of advice from people on writing; not on purpose, but because of a couple of reasons. I think that, for one, starting in 2014 being a freelancer made so much about this competitive. People were competing to get bylines and opportunities and not really trying to build each other up. So, I got into the game later than a lot of other folks, in terms of publishing my writing. By the time I started writing, a lot of folks were not trying to offer advice; they were trying to get their bylines built, and it was like every person for themselves. But I guess over the years, there have been a few folks who have offered some very generous advice — even if it’s advice that I don’t use now and advice that I can’t even think of right now.
People who have been very supportive of my writing, like George Johnson, and my coworkers Sharonda and Laura, have always been very nice and generous when it comes to offering advice around writing for me. And then my friends, Justin James, and my friend Antoinette, who designed my website, offer great advice too. A lot of times, it’s not necessarily on writing, at least not from Justin’s end. Justin will tell you in a heartbeat that he is not a writer and will not offer me writing advice, but other great advice on things surrounding writing like brand building and publishing.
There’s nothing that comes to mind about this outstanding writing advice that I’ve got, which is also kind of why I’m like I don’t think that writers should give other writers advice because we all show up in our processes and our abilities very differently. And when we try to do what others do by emulating them, not only do we fail at it, because we’re emulating somebody who is not us, it also stops us from being able to find our own voice and determine what it is that makes up who we are as a writer and what best benefits us. What I will say is — this is not advice given directly to me, obviously, but it is advice that has helped me along the way — Toni Morrison once said that “if there’s a book that hasn’t been written that you want to read, you should write it.” And that advice is what led to me writing Belly of the Beast. So, I will say while it wasn’t advice given to me directly, it has been, I think some of the most beneficial advice I’ve ever read and has led to me publishing my debut title.
DC: As always, we love to end all our interviews talking about those positive moments, and maybe some of those funny moments or inspirational things that have just helped us continue to grow as the people that we are and have contributed to the spaces that we’re able to enter in and create for ourselves and other people.
So, is there any moment in your life that you have used as a building block or something that has propelled you with your confidence, with love, with your knowledge, or anything like that?
DH: I don’t know exactly when, but there was a moment for me where things sort of shifted in terms of confidence and things like that. I think it was around the time that I discovered Fat studies, where I felt like a badd bitch, and nobody could tell me otherwise. And once that moment came, I was like “I’m sorry, y’all can’t tell me shit. This is me; this is what y’all going to get.” I’m dropping nudes on the timeline; I’m feeling my body, myself, my being. It changed everything for me. It allowed me to show up for myself in a way that I had always wanted to but never could because I just wasn’t confident enough. And I don’t know, I think it was in 2018 for winter break where I started writing manifestations for the first time. At that point, I was just determined to have a different reality, to be living in a very different space and it changed everything for me. So now I’m writing with confidence that I’ve never had before, and I’m showing up with confidence that I’ve never had before, and I’m posting thirst traps on my timeline and doing the things because I feel sexy, I feel confident, I feel happy in this body. I feel glad about this body, and nobody can tell me otherwise. Nobody can tell me that I can’t be or that I shouldn’t be because bitch I am. There’s nothing else that can be said or done. I think that was a moment for me. I’m going to call it; it was December 2018 when I started writing manifestations.
You know people do New Year’s resolutions, but for me, it was New Year’s manifestations where I wasn’t just writing things on paper and making goals. I was writing things down and talking to my ancestors about manifesting this thing for my life, and these things for my life, they came. I remember writing those manifestations and then posting my first thirst traps ever on the timeline and from that moment forward, everything changed for me. I know that for a lot of people, sometimes thirst traps and nudes and stuff are just sexual, and for the most part, for me, they are too. But they also helped build my confidence. I feel that if I can take these pictures and these videos and feel myself in the way that I want to feel myself, I feel so confident and so happy. Once I started taking those and doing that and sharing them with the world and wanting to share them with whoever wanted to look, it changed everything for me. And that shows up in how I navigate life in general. Not just with the thirst traps and stuff now, but that confidence spilled over into everything else that I do. I think that’s the best part about all of this — younger me would be so happy about where I am now in terms of my confidence and what I’m allowing myself to do and how I’m allowing myself to show up. So yeah, I think that’s my answer; it changed everything.
DC: So, last question going with comfortability, is there anything, one thing, or two things in your closet that makes you feel the most comfortable?
DH: Ooh I love this question! Absolutely yes! Last year I started getting into wearing heels and loving them. I love a cute click-clack, I really do. I absolutely do. There’s this one pair of six-inch heels, that I have in my closet that is leather and I love them. Whenever I put them on, I feel like I’m in the six-inch video with Beyonce and The Weeknd. You can’t tell me shit in those. And first of all, I’m a natural. I put them on for the first time and I walked around like it was nothing. Now I’m not saying that I’m special, but I think I’m special. I think what feels so empowering about those for me is the young version of me, who was hiding their Queerness and not able to fully embrace who they were and didn’t have the language to describe themselves as Trans. That just feels so affirming and I’m able to happily show up however I want to be in this body and wear the things that I couldn’t wear before, that I wasn’t allowed to wear, that I would have been, in so many words, abused for wearing as a kid. So, those shoes, they do it for me. And, just in general, my closet is full of boots; the brunch boots, the combat boots, the heels — it’s just a variety of boots. I just love and feel so confident in them. I love the way that they make me feel. I just love it, so that’s number one.
Number two is, I have a closet full of crop tops. I actually have on one right now. But actually, all of them are crops tops that I cut and made myself. Again, 2020 was a hard year, but it was also a year where I was able to really find pieces of myself that weren’t lost, but that I just chose to ignore. So, I was like “I mean, you are posting all these thirst traps online and whatnot, what’s wrong with wearing a crop top? It’s the same thing. In fact, you’re more clothed in the crop tops, than you are without a crop top on.” So, I cut up my very first crop top and I loved it. I just felt so free. At first, for so long, I didn’t wear them because when they were worn, they were worn by women, and when they weren’t worn by women, they were worn by cis men who were muscular or thin. I’m not a cis man. I’m not muscular. I’m not thin. And I’m not a cis woman. So, I was like “I don’t know how comfortable I feel about this” but once I wore my first one, I was like “y’all got me fucked up”. I cut up like five or six different T-shirts and made them into crop tops and I love them. I feel very confident and happy in them, and they excite me. That’s number two.
And I know you said three things — I’m going to name a number of things that’s number three because a few things came to my mind. One, I wear a lot of jewelry now. Necklaces, rings, bracelets, and I love it. Being able to walk around with nice clothes on and then being able to accessorize it with a handful of rings or both, hands full of rings, and a necklace, I love it. And if somebody snatches it from me, they won’t be taking anything but like $8 because they are all cheap, but I feel so good in them. It feels nice, and I love it. So, that’s one thing. I also have this Carolina Herrera perfume (or Cologne perfume, whichever one) in my closet that I wear all the time. When wearing it, I feel hella sexy because it just smells so good. I’m like “I could snatch somebody up with this” I love it. So, that’s another one. Then I was also going to say, I have a bunch of shorts in my closet — like the thot shorts that people call them where they’re above the knee. I used to love wearing shorts when I was younger and I stopped wearing them, not for any reason, in particular, but I think, maybe subconsciously. I got bigger and I stopped wearing shorts. But I literally love my thighs, I do. So, I started wearing shorter shorts, and now the only shorts I wear have to be above my knee. The other ones are ugly, and they’re not cute. Like, why are you wearing these? It’s giving very 2005; I’m not feeling it. I need something cute. If you’re going to wear shorts, make them above the knee. Fuck gender norms. Fuck beauty standards, all of that. They have to be above the knee. I think it’s sexy, I really do. So yeah, I love it. that’s my top three things in my closet that make me feel very confident and just excite me when I get to put them on.
DC: It sounds like you have a closet full of confidence to me!
DH: And do! I really do! I was able to build it. I didn’t have this closet two years ago, but now once I got comfortable wearing stuff that I wouldn’t normally wear, I was like “put this in your closet and make that your entire wardrobe.” So, now my entire wardrobe is stuff that I’m happy about; mesh shirts, see-through shirts, crop tops, shorts, some nice, fitted jeans, and boots. I love that. I love it and you can’t tell me shit in any of that.
Although you’re reading this now, I still encourage you to watch the full interview on our YouTube channel. There are juicier details included, along with some inspiration that I didn’t want to spoil for you because it was just that good.
You already know that I’ll be back with more Black, Queer folks being represented at the table. But until next time friends… peace out.
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