Speaker 1: I'm t T and I'm Zakiyah and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
Speaker 1: We've been seeing some of our favorite you know, media stars,
Speaker 1: are some of our favorite black girl media stars getting
Speaker 1: kind of bullied on the internet. Yes, I mean from
Speaker 1: Ayisha Curry talking about how she is struggling with being
Speaker 1: thrust into this whole world of being Stephen Curry's wife,
Speaker 1: very very young and being a mother and not really
Speaker 1: being able to find herself. Serena Williams with her foray
Speaker 1: into the golp Ones, Kiki Palmer, people have really been
Speaker 1: ganging up on her. It just feels like the list
Speaker 1: goes on and on, and black women and media are
Speaker 1: never given the race that a lot of their white
Speaker 1: counterparts get. And I think that that is something that
Speaker 1: is systemic. We see it across a lot of cultures
Speaker 1: where the darker your skin is, the harder people are
Speaker 1: on you, and it just makes living in your day
Speaker 1: to day more precarious because you are hyper aware of
Speaker 1: how you're existing in every space. The darker your skin is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, One of the things we've talked
Speaker 1: about is the democratization of media. It used to be
Speaker 1: television and just a few channels, but with opening up
Speaker 1: access to share messages and the ability to respond to
Speaker 1: the people sharing messages, we didn't start fresh. We came
Speaker 1: with the same drama we've had all these years ago,
Speaker 1: your mama's drama, your grandmama's drama, your great grandmother Listen,
Speaker 1: it's still here mm hm exactly. And so I think
Speaker 1: when we think about this, I think we kind of
Speaker 1: want to know what is the path, what has the
Speaker 1: path look like, and where should we be looking for
Speaker 1: it to go. I think that was a great what
Speaker 1: do we know and what do we want to know?
Speaker 1: I think we can jump straight into the resitation. Our
Speaker 1: guest today is icon Mikayla Angela Davis. She has a
Speaker 1: long career in fashion and journalism. If you feel like
Speaker 1: you don't know who this is, google her you know.
Speaker 2: Who she is.
Speaker 1: She's an image activist who describes her work as examining
Speaker 1: how identity, race, gender, beauty, and style intersect with black
Speaker 1: culture and mainstream media. She co wrote the bestseller The
Speaker 1: Meaning of Mari Carrie and co created the documentary series
Speaker 1: The Hairtails, which puts a spotlight on black hair and
Speaker 1: identity in contemporary culture. Mikayla has won a ton of
Speaker 1: awards and is a living legend. Mikayla, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us today. Let's jump straight into your book, Tenderheaded.
Speaker 1: Your book starts with the retelling of your first day
Speaker 1: of second grade when a group of older girls surrounded
Speaker 1: you and had a girl to hold a pair of scissors,
Speaker 1: and then they tried to cut your hair. I don't
Speaker 1: want to give away too much because it is a
Speaker 1: great story, but just no, your brain survived the attempt
Speaker 1: at jumping. Can you talk to us about how that
Speaker 1: has shifted your perspective of what it means to be
Speaker 1: a black woman?
Speaker 2: The Hairtail. It's interesting because I've been using hair as
Speaker 2: a thesis as an organizing principle to talk about black
Speaker 2: women's identity, humanity, and culture. My first day of school
Speaker 2: at all black school, that I couldn't wait. I couldn't
Speaker 2: wait to be with all black girls, right I was little,
Speaker 2: you know, and having that near death experience around my hair.
Speaker 2: You know, that was a pivotal moment because the story
Speaker 2: could have been these black girls are mean they don't
Speaker 2: like me because I'm light skinned and I got long hair,
Speaker 2: and that's it, right, or the choice I made was
Speaker 2: something's going on with us, and they are not gonna
Speaker 2: cut me out of the Black girls society. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: watch my bat hence on the cover, you see how
Speaker 2: my hair is doubled up. I did that after that
Speaker 2: incident because I'm like, they're not gonna cut my hair,
Speaker 2: but they're also not gonna cut me out. And so
Speaker 2: that kind of became a way of being because I
Speaker 2: knew that my hair and my skin was complicated and
Speaker 2: how it confounded and complicated and triggered things in other
Speaker 2: Black girls. And it was one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: I wanted to layer in history also in Tender Headed,
Speaker 2: so that we can also understand the context in which
Speaker 2: black women were organized. It was there was strategy around
Speaker 2: us being in conflict with each other, right, there's policy,
Speaker 2: there was propaganda, there were practices and laws around color
Speaker 2: cast system, and so it was really important for me
Speaker 2: to kind of dig into that history.
Speaker 1: For those of you that don't know, colorism is a
Speaker 1: racial distinction within the African American community that further fragments
Speaker 1: blackness based on skin tone, and there's a hierarchy associated
Speaker 1: with your proximity to whiteness. So the more Eurocentric your
Speaker 1: features are, the more privilege you receive. So we want
Speaker 1: to talk to you, MICHAELA, about the history of colorism
Speaker 1: and how it showed up in your life and in
Speaker 1: your work.
Speaker 2: I grew up in DC and I went to high
Speaker 2: school at Duke Gallingy School of the Arts, and so
Speaker 2: that was a very different experience. Had I gone to
Speaker 2: another kind of school, I probably would have experienced the
Speaker 2: color cast system because it gets around teens. But we
Speaker 2: were united around being artists, so I didn't get that.
Speaker 2: It really came to fruition once I started working in
Speaker 2: media and working in fashion, because I'm very clear that
Speaker 2: my proximity to whiteness and my how I presented got
Speaker 2: me to be in certain spaces in a certain way.
Speaker 2: And I'm also aware of the legacy of people like
Speaker 2: Angela Davis, other light skinned radical women who we can't
Speaker 2: go in and change the DNA, but when we get
Speaker 2: in a room, we're gonna bring as many black girls
Speaker 2: with like. So I'm from that school. So that was
Speaker 2: part of why I wanted history in this book. For instance,
Speaker 2: The first quote unquote American it girl was an enslaved
Speaker 2: child named Ida who was very, very, very fair. Abolitionists
Speaker 2: took a photo of her with a pretty dress, her
Speaker 2: hair slicked down, her hand, on a stack of books
Speaker 2: and sold this image and basically was saying slavery was
Speaker 2: wrong because look how close to us it can get.
Speaker 2: Not slavery is wrong because it's a violent, brutal crime
Speaker 2: against humanity. But there are some enslaved people that are
Speaker 2: so light, so close to white. So that began the
Speaker 2: propaganda of light skinned closer to the master society, closer
Speaker 2: to the freedom of black people, like this notion that
Speaker 2: we could save the race. But even more diabolical TTY
Speaker 2: is that by the end of the Antebellum era, ten
Speaker 2: percent of all formally enslaved people were at the term
Speaker 2: I'm going to use the terms mulatto right, So that
Speaker 2: means there were six hundred thousand empirical pieces of evidence
Speaker 2: of serial rape against black women. So that population was
Speaker 2: at the time more disgraced than the enslaved that were
Speaker 2: not missed because they were proof of rape. There was
Speaker 2: no other explanation for their existence. And these are children
Speaker 2: that came out of black women's bodies, and that's often
Speaker 2: lost in the conversation. Right, these are still children of
Speaker 2: black women, and so what happened was in an attempt
Speaker 2: to sort of reshape the narrative out of being in
Speaker 2: this shame space of product of rape, it ballooned into
Speaker 2: that they were better and privileged. And that ballooning of
Speaker 2: that propaganda at the time. This is media. So it
Speaker 2: started in the antebellum era of selling this notion that
Speaker 2: light skin and particularly girls were favorable. So that's what
Speaker 2: we're having to grapple with. We're grappling with history and
Speaker 2: media and propaganda.
Speaker 1: So with this history of colorism, you saw it continue
Speaker 1: to manifest throughout your work. Mainstream media was prioritizing lighter
Speaker 1: skinned women.
Speaker 2: I remember in the time when I was working music videos,
Speaker 2: you could not cast a brown skinned girl and there
Speaker 2: was no response, no public response to that. So we've
Speaker 2: made progress because at least there's a glad bag and
Speaker 2: there's a record, and there's some education. But what I
Speaker 2: offer this, is it a privilege to be at odds
Speaker 2: with your sister? Is it a privilege to be set apart?
Speaker 1: So how do we make progress and shift the way
Speaker 1: that things are.
Speaker 2: So I'm hoping we have more complex conversations around these notions,
Speaker 2: around colorism and privilege. What I hope this book does
Speaker 2: is get us in conversation with each other, because black
Speaker 2: women are going to save this world if it can
Speaker 2: be saved, absolutely, and so we need to heal ourselves.
Speaker 1: It feels new and fresh when folks are saying, oh,
Speaker 1: Lupita Nyungo is so beautiful, and so is Isa Ray,
Speaker 1: and so are these dark skinned black women, and that
Speaker 1: there was a time where this it was just not
Speaker 1: possible to be characterized as beautiful when you were dark skinned.
Speaker 1: And so if feels like we're making those incremental changes,
Speaker 1: but then it also feels like we're still being held
Speaker 1: back when it comes to the images that we see.
Speaker 1: And you are an image activist, can you unpack what
Speaker 1: that means to you today, especially in a media ecosystem
Speaker 1: that is driven by algorithms, clicks and the spectacle of
Speaker 1: it all.
Speaker 2: I a long time ago put all my chips on
Speaker 2: black women, like all of them. And if there's any
Speaker 2: group in this population that is going to work to
Speaker 2: become whole, it's black women. So I'm very encouraged by
Speaker 2: the Independent media that black women are making and making,
Speaker 2: so whether it's on Instagram or TikTok, there's so many
Speaker 2: other places to go. It's not just back in the
Speaker 2: day where it's like just MTV. You know, you were
Speaker 2: like where big pop culture was happening. Because that's what
Speaker 2: we're really talking about, right, this pop culture and how
Speaker 2: it influences us. And you know, I was making magazines
Speaker 2: like Vibe and Honey and magazines were Instagram and so
Speaker 2: it's so much to consume. And I'm still exploring this
Speaker 2: because it's challenging these times because it's just so much,
Speaker 2: so fast, and black women are being targeted in a
Speaker 2: way like if we And this is also where history
Speaker 2: is so instructive. I think part of our revolution and
Speaker 2: liberation and healing is coming together irl, like in real life,
Speaker 2: you know, putting down the media, putting down the phones.
Speaker 2: Just you know what brunch looks like. You get a
Speaker 2: brunch and you see all these black girls dressed up.
Speaker 2: You just get like something and you just flutters and flourishes.
Speaker 1: The vibes are always just right.
Speaker 2: Yes, So we have to take care of our mental
Speaker 2: and emotional self because it's tough right now.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, you know, you briefly mentioned your work with magazines,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about that a little bit
Speaker 1: because I feel like magazines are the lost art. I
Speaker 1: am old enough to remember picking up a Vibe magazine
Speaker 1: my uncle used to have them at his house, or
Speaker 1: picking up Essence and living through the pages and just
Speaker 1: like loving every bit of it. And it was also
Speaker 1: the first time I was really seeing like black women
Speaker 1: high fashion shoots.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: And in the book you talk about the rise and
Speaker 1: challenges of black media institutions like Vibe and Essence. Can
Speaker 1: you talk more about why that form of black media
Speaker 1: was so important during that time and what it meant
Speaker 1: to Black folks who were experiencing those magazines.
Speaker 2: It was so powerful because for generations, even though Black
Speaker 2: people knew they were innovators and culture specifically not only
Speaker 2: That's why I love Evan like vintage Ebony will give
Speaker 2: you life. And God blessed the Astrogates who has kept
Speaker 2: the archive in Chicago. Bless that artist, because it's really
Speaker 2: important to see all the black progress and innovation. But
Speaker 2: in culture, we had never had a record that we
Speaker 2: wrote specifically, and hip hop was that rocket, right because
Speaker 2: we had money, we had some positionality. We had some agency,
Speaker 2: so we had a chance to in our own tongues,
Speaker 2: with our own eyes create you know, si Like while
Speaker 2: there was a rolling Stone and a spin and a billboard,
Speaker 2: there's vibe, you know. And so it was very powerful
Speaker 2: that you didn't have to wait to be anointed to
Speaker 2: be on the color of Rolling Stone as a black artist,
Speaker 2: and that we would talk critically about Snoop or right
Speaker 2: really like spent a month investigating Lauren Hill. That was important.
Speaker 2: And we had something to run to. I remember back
Speaker 2: in the day, like you would run to get your
Speaker 2: write old magazine, but that was like people you know
Speaker 2: this this was like critical journalism, top rate photography, new trends.
Speaker 2: We were the leaders. We got in front of pop culture.
Speaker 2: So it was monumental and it was too short. But
Speaker 2: I actually have been in the process of writing the book,
Speaker 2: especially that part, experienced some grief around the fact that
Speaker 2: we don't have a town square in media in that way,
Speaker 2: like there's lots of small, great pockets, whether they're podcasts
Speaker 2: or subjects or whatever, like you would look to essence.
Speaker 1: Right, we aren't all coalescing around one big correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm very I'm sad that we don't have
Speaker 2: a vibe or a honey or an essence that has
Speaker 2: a real presence in the culture.
Speaker 1: So if someone is listening to you right now and
Speaker 1: they're saying I want to get into media, whether it's
Speaker 1: social media, print, editorial, you know, whatever the format, what
Speaker 1: advice do you have for them.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we're actually trying to do in the
Speaker 2: work right now because part of writing the book. And
Speaker 2: this is just my perspective, right Like, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of other I'm sure there're gonna be some editors
Speaker 2: are going to come for me because I came for them.
Speaker 2: But I just wanted something on record that we could
Speaker 2: reflect on together because I don't know. What I do
Speaker 2: know is that we're always seeds, right like, we always
Speaker 2: find something else. I just don't know what it is.
Speaker 2: But part of why I wanted a record of what
Speaker 2: happened from what I saw to partly be a cautionary tale.
Speaker 2: The money, the patriarchy, the lack of support. When I
Speaker 2: was contributing to Vanity.
Speaker 1: Fair, I was just about to bring that up.
Speaker 2: More than fifty percent of their photoshoots would be canned.
Speaker 2: The amount of money that they put in the trash
Speaker 2: was my entire photo budget for Honey, So there was
Speaker 2: no room for experimentation. There's no room for black girl imagination.
Speaker 2: We just had to hit the track and win before
Speaker 2: they even saw we were out there running. And the
Speaker 2: advertising industry is notoriously racist. Hip hop helped break some
Speaker 2: of that up, but as you see it for tracks
Speaker 2: like there's a moment where we're hot, and you know,
Speaker 2: I had several friends this is kind of bleak, but
Speaker 2: I had several friends that said, like George Floyd was
Speaker 2: their executive producer, Like they got their shows done or
Speaker 2: their organizations funded because of George Floyd. And the guilt
Speaker 2: not that's over, they're taking DEI. So we're always vulnerable
Speaker 2: if we only look to establishment, and that's why history
Speaker 2: is really really instructive. Absolutely, so I hope to have
Speaker 2: many of these cross gen conversations so we can have
Speaker 2: some strategy about how to build and maybe how to
Speaker 2: perhaps recover and restore. Very early on, I started an
Speaker 2: esthetic practice of looking at life and beauty not through
Speaker 2: a Eurocentric lens. That is harder than it sounds, particularly
Speaker 2: with you know, if I'm coming of age in the
Speaker 2: eighties and nineties and I'm looking at Vogue because I
Speaker 2: was a fashion girl, like I looked to that fashion
Speaker 2: in art. There's a photographer that I referenced a lot
Speaker 2: in the book, Ruven Fonnador, who's brilliant and he's Colombian,
Speaker 2: and he too didn't work from a Eurocentric lens. So
Speaker 2: what that means, how that plays into real life or
Speaker 2: when I was contributing to Vanity Fair, is that when
Speaker 2: we and we often did things together, we did not
Speaker 2: create images through their lens and they didn't quite know it.
Speaker 2: They knew something cool was happening, but we also did
Speaker 2: it at the level of craft that they were accustomed to, right,
Speaker 2: meaning our tech nicole, our craft was on par and
Speaker 2: maybe even superior. So if one is wanting to work
Speaker 2: in the mainstream wherever that is fashion, law, tech, science,
Speaker 2: come with your own lens and look, you know, because
Speaker 2: science and science however, the scientist is right, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, the body of the person through which
Speaker 2: this information flows. Absolutely So I think that that was
Speaker 2: the strategy and I worked on it for years and
Speaker 2: again it wasn't easy. So that's important for us to
Speaker 2: consume the beauty of us, whether it's art, whether it's
Speaker 2: soul trained whether it's reading books.
Speaker 1: You know, Michaela, I think this is such a great point.
Speaker 1: I think something that folks grapple with is being one
Speaker 1: of one in a room and trying to push the
Speaker 1: envelope and being a little afraid of being ostracized because
Speaker 1: they're coming with a different perspective that might not be
Speaker 1: accepted by the mainstream media.
Speaker 2: What are you afraid of? Because we're so familiar in
Speaker 2: white spaces. We know their history, we know their institutions,
Speaker 2: we know their tricks. Why are we bothered? And not
Speaker 2: so much bothered because it's annoying because it is the
Speaker 2: same tricks, But why are we afraid? We know who
Speaker 2: they are? They don't know who we are. We have
Speaker 2: a lot of power. If we didn't, they wouldn't try
Speaker 2: to take our vote. If they didn't, they wouldn't try
Speaker 2: to take our jobs. If they didn't, they wouldn't try
Speaker 2: to take our titles.
Speaker 1: I really loved everything that Michaela had to say. It
Speaker 1: really gives a fresh perspective on her because she's definitely
Speaker 1: a black woman who I feel like I've seen my
Speaker 1: whole life. And to hear her stories, her personal stories
Speaker 1: about her life and the work that she's done, and
Speaker 1: how as a photo activist, how she's been able to
Speaker 1: kind of disrupt the system. I think it's really encouraging
Speaker 1: because it doesn't end with her. She's passing the torch
Speaker 1: on to the next generation and we can already see
Speaker 1: the shifts happening right in front of us. So true.
Speaker 1: Tt SO, I think when we look at media and
Speaker 1: we're on social media or looking in magazines or watching movies,
Speaker 1: that we should always keep in mind that there's a
Speaker 1: long history of the treatment of women of color, specifically
Speaker 1: black women, that we also need to be remembering. And
Speaker 1: so when you see a black woman being talked about
Speaker 1: in the media, ask yourself a few questions like is
Speaker 1: she being treated fairly? Is this the same treatment that
Speaker 1: a white woman would receive? And if you don't feel
Speaker 1: like it is, call it out because this is how
Speaker 1: we make strides. It's when people say this isn't right
Speaker 1: and we need to be different, we need to be better.
Speaker 1: You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope
Speaker 1: Labs podcast tt is on X and Instagram at dr
Speaker 1: Underscore t Sho, and you can find zakiya at z
Speaker 1: said so. Dope Labs is a production of Lamanada Media.
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Keegan Zimma and our producer is
Speaker 1: Issara Asevez. Dope Labs is sound designed, edited and mixed
Speaker 1: by James Farber. Limanada Media's Vice President of Partnerships and
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Speaker 1: and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex sugi Ura, with
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Speaker 1: by us T T show Dia and Zakiah Watki