Narcissism is a strong word, but it is narcissistic to expect everybody in a culture to reflect your own image back at you.
I'm really proud of the way that 'Pose' has brought people's families together and touched people's hearts and opened people's minds. It's really incredible to see. It's a show about love and family, and it highlights what it really means to have a family and to be a family and to love your family.
It's the Met Gala - everyone is huge. It feels very hierarchical, and I get really nervous in hierarchical spaces because I feel like everyone deserves to feel just as special as everyone else, but that's just not the way it is in this business.
My love is not measured in reciprocity. That's not the way I learned love.
People who have trouble finding acceptance and love in their life settle for whatever they can get.
I don't always feel seen.
I want to be a conduit for healing.
Everything I do is political.
I get to decide how my body shows up in any space. When I'm walking into a place like the Globes, I want to make it very clear that how I show up is to further the freedom of everybody.
I think Hollywood is an incredible tool to teach people. It brings stories and information to the television screen, to the movie theater screens, that people get to empathize with.
Emotional information is very, very rich in influence. You're giving somebody something to connect with, to see themselves in.
It's just really frustrating how people are just so selfish in this industry. It makes me very angry.
I would love to see all agencies connect to models more for who they are and can be as opposed to what they've done.
'Pose' has basically been a trip for everyone. We're all in different phases of our individual evolutions, but we've embarked on the journey together.
As a black person of non-gender-conforming experience, my first existentially reciprocal and affirming experiences were in the New York ballrooms.
I think 'Pose' is unique in that it's not just a trans story - it's about family. It's about love. It's about friendship and acceptance and really deconstructing humanity, and the ethical side of that, with how we treat people who are different than us.
I'll use shea butter to moisturize my skin, or coconut oil.
I'm not particular about makeup, but when I do wear it, I am partial to Fenty. That is what I own. I own it because it is partial to the various colors and shades of black women. It is one of the best cosmetic companies around as far as trying to remove toxins from makeup, and Rihanna is empathetic to the experiences of trans women.
'Pose' feels like a family. I love them all. It's just really beautiful to see everyone else evolve and trying to figure themselves out the same as I am.
As a person of color, I feel like I'm socialized to feel like a remnant of poverty or something primitive, and I don't feel like that at all. I can be myself and be me.
