October 26, 2025 • 23 mins
Titi and Zakiya sit down with writer and image activist Michaela Angela Davis to talk about her book Tenderheaded and the tangled relationship between hair, colorism, and identity. From childhood memories to the legacy of magazines like Vibe and Essence, Michaela unpacks how beauty standards and media have shaped generations of Black women—and how healing begins when we tell our own stories.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm t T and I'm Zakiyah and this is Dope Labs.
Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
We've been seeing some of our favorite you know, media stars,
(00:27):
are some of our favorite black girl media stars getting
kind of bullied on the internet. Yes, I mean from
Ayisha Curry talking about how she is struggling with being
thrust into this whole world of being Stephen Curry's wife,
very very young and being a mother and not really
being able to find herself. Serena Williams with her foray
(00:47):
into the golp Ones, Kiki Palmer, people have really been
ganging up on her. It just feels like the list
goes on and on, and black women and media are
never given the race that a lot of their white
counterparts get. And I think that that is something that
is systemic. We see it across a lot of cultures
(01:09):
where the darker your skin is, the harder people are
on you, and it just makes living in your day
to day more precarious because you are hyper aware of
how you're existing in every space. The darker your skin is. Yeah,
I think, you know, One of the things we've talked
about is the democratization of media. It used to be
(01:30):
television and just a few channels, but with opening up
access to share messages and the ability to respond to
the people sharing messages, we didn't start fresh. We came
with the same drama we've had all these years ago,
your mama's drama, your grandmama's drama, your great grandmother Listen,
(01:51):
it's still here mm hm exactly. And so I think
when we think about this, I think we kind of
want to know what is the path, what has the
path look like, and where should we be looking for
it to go. I think that was a great what
do we know and what do we want to know?
I think we can jump straight into the resitation. Our
(02:14):
guest today is icon Mikayla Angela Davis. She has a
long career in fashion and journalism. If you feel like
you don't know who this is, google her you know.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Who she is.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
She's an image activist who describes her work as examining
how identity, race, gender, beauty, and style intersect with black
culture and mainstream media. She co wrote the bestseller The
Meaning of Mari Carrie and co created the documentary series
The Hairtails, which puts a spotlight on black hair and
identity in contemporary culture. Mikayla has won a ton of
(02:48):
awards and is a living legend. Mikayla, thank you so
much for joining us today. Let's jump straight into your book, Tenderheaded.
Your book starts with the retelling of your first day
of second grade when a group of older girls surrounded
you and had a girl to hold a pair of scissors,
and then they tried to cut your hair. I don't
want to give away too much because it is a
(03:08):
great story, but just no, your brain survived the attempt
at jumping. Can you talk to us about how that
has shifted your perspective of what it means to be
a black woman?
Speaker 2 (03:20):
The Hairtail. It's interesting because I've been using hair as
a thesis as an organizing principle to talk about black
women's identity, humanity, and culture. My first day of school
at all black school, that I couldn't wait. I couldn't
(03:40):
wait to be with all black girls, right I was little,
you know, and having that near death experience around my hair.
You know, that was a pivotal moment because the story
could have been these black girls are mean they don't
like me because I'm light skinned and I got long hair,
and that's it, right, or the choice I made was
(04:05):
something's going on with us, and they are not gonna
cut me out of the Black girls society. I'm gonna
watch my bat hence on the cover, you see how
my hair is doubled up. I did that after that
incident because I'm like, they're not gonna cut my hair,
but they're also not gonna cut me out. And so
(04:27):
that kind of became a way of being because I
knew that my hair and my skin was complicated and
how it confounded and complicated and triggered things in other
Black girls. And it was one of the reasons why
I wanted to layer in history also in Tender Headed,
(04:51):
so that we can also understand the context in which
black women were organized. It was there was strategy around
us being in conflict with each other, right, there's policy,
there was propaganda, there were practices and laws around color
(05:12):
cast system, and so it was really important for me
to kind of dig into that history.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
For those of you that don't know, colorism is a
racial distinction within the African American community that further fragments
blackness based on skin tone, and there's a hierarchy associated
with your proximity to whiteness. So the more Eurocentric your
features are, the more privilege you receive. So we want
to talk to you, MICHAELA, about the history of colorism
and how it showed up in your life and in
(05:40):
your work.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I grew up in DC and I went to high
school at Duke Gallingy School of the Arts, and so
that was a very different experience. Had I gone to
another kind of school, I probably would have experienced the
color cast system because it gets around teens. But we
(06:01):
were united around being artists, so I didn't get that.
It really came to fruition once I started working in
media and working in fashion, because I'm very clear that
my proximity to whiteness and my how I presented got
(06:22):
me to be in certain spaces in a certain way.
And I'm also aware of the legacy of people like
Angela Davis, other light skinned radical women who we can't
go in and change the DNA, but when we get
in a room, we're gonna bring as many black girls
with like. So I'm from that school. So that was
(06:45):
part of why I wanted history in this book. For instance,
The first quote unquote American it girl was an enslaved
child named Ida who was very, very, very fair. Abolitionists
took a photo of her with a pretty dress, her
(07:08):
hair slicked down, her hand, on a stack of books
and sold this image and basically was saying slavery was
wrong because look how close to us it can get.
Not slavery is wrong because it's a violent, brutal crime
against humanity. But there are some enslaved people that are
(07:30):
so light, so close to white. So that began the
propaganda of light skinned closer to the master society, closer
to the freedom of black people, like this notion that
we could save the race. But even more diabolical TTY
(07:51):
is that by the end of the Antebellum era, ten
percent of all formally enslaved people were at the term
I'm going to use the terms mulatto right, So that
means there were six hundred thousand empirical pieces of evidence
of serial rape against black women. So that population was
(08:19):
at the time more disgraced than the enslaved that were
not missed because they were proof of rape. There was
no other explanation for their existence. And these are children
that came out of black women's bodies, and that's often
lost in the conversation. Right, these are still children of
(08:44):
black women, and so what happened was in an attempt
to sort of reshape the narrative out of being in
this shame space of product of rape, it ballooned into
that they were better and privileged. And that ballooning of
that propaganda at the time. This is media. So it
(09:07):
started in the antebellum era of selling this notion that
light skin and particularly girls were favorable. So that's what
we're having to grapple with. We're grappling with history and
media and propaganda.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
So with this history of colorism, you saw it continue
to manifest throughout your work. Mainstream media was prioritizing lighter
skinned women.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I remember in the time when I was working music videos,
you could not cast a brown skinned girl and there
was no response, no public response to that. So we've
made progress because at least there's a glad bag and
there's a record, and there's some education. But what I
(09:54):
offer this, is it a privilege to be at odds
with your sister? Is it a privilege to be set apart?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
So how do we make progress and shift the way
that things are.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So I'm hoping we have more complex conversations around these notions,
around colorism and privilege. What I hope this book does
is get us in conversation with each other, because black
women are going to save this world if it can
be saved, absolutely, and so we need to heal ourselves.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
It feels new and fresh when folks are saying, oh,
Lupita Nyungo is so beautiful, and so is Isa Ray,
and so are these dark skinned black women, and that
there was a time where this it was just not
possible to be characterized as beautiful when you were dark skinned.
And so if feels like we're making those incremental changes,
but then it also feels like we're still being held
(11:05):
back when it comes to the images that we see.
And you are an image activist, can you unpack what
that means to you today, especially in a media ecosystem
that is driven by algorithms, clicks and the spectacle of
it all.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I a long time ago put all my chips on
black women, like all of them. And if there's any
group in this population that is going to work to
become whole, it's black women. So I'm very encouraged by
the Independent media that black women are making and making,
(11:47):
so whether it's on Instagram or TikTok, there's so many
other places to go. It's not just back in the
day where it's like just MTV. You know, you were
like where big pop culture was happening. Because that's what
we're really talking about, right, this pop culture and how
(12:08):
it influences us. And you know, I was making magazines
like Vibe and Honey and magazines were Instagram and so
it's so much to consume. And I'm still exploring this
because it's challenging these times because it's just so much,
so fast, and black women are being targeted in a
(12:28):
way like if we And this is also where history
is so instructive. I think part of our revolution and
liberation and healing is coming together irl, like in real life,
you know, putting down the media, putting down the phones.
Just you know what brunch looks like. You get a
(12:49):
brunch and you see all these black girls dressed up.
You just get like something and you just flutters and flourishes.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
The vibes are always just right.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yes, So we have to take care of our mental
and emotional self because it's tough right now.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Absolutely absolutely, you know, you briefly mentioned your work with magazines,
and I want to talk about that a little bit
because I feel like magazines are the lost art. I
am old enough to remember picking up a Vibe magazine
my uncle used to have them at his house, or
picking up Essence and living through the pages and just
(13:28):
like loving every bit of it. And it was also
the first time I was really seeing like black women
high fashion shoots.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
And in the book you talk about the rise and
challenges of black media institutions like Vibe and Essence. Can
you talk more about why that form of black media
was so important during that time and what it meant
to Black folks who were experiencing those magazines.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
It was so powerful because for generations, even though Black
people knew they were innovators and culture specifically not only
That's why I love Evan like vintage Ebony will give
you life. And God blessed the Astrogates who has kept
the archive in Chicago. Bless that artist, because it's really
(14:15):
important to see all the black progress and innovation. But
in culture, we had never had a record that we
wrote specifically, and hip hop was that rocket, right because
we had money, we had some positionality. We had some agency,
so we had a chance to in our own tongues,
(14:39):
with our own eyes create you know, si Like while
there was a rolling Stone and a spin and a billboard,
there's vibe, you know. And so it was very powerful
that you didn't have to wait to be anointed to
be on the color of Rolling Stone as a black artist,
and that we would talk critically about Snoop or right
(15:03):
really like spent a month investigating Lauren Hill. That was important.
And we had something to run to. I remember back
in the day, like you would run to get your
write old magazine, but that was like people you know
this this was like critical journalism, top rate photography, new trends.
(15:25):
We were the leaders. We got in front of pop culture.
So it was monumental and it was too short. But
I actually have been in the process of writing the book,
especially that part, experienced some grief around the fact that
we don't have a town square in media in that way,
(15:47):
like there's lots of small, great pockets, whether they're podcasts
or subjects or whatever, like you would look to essence.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Right, we aren't all coalescing around one big correct.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah, but I'm very I'm sad that we don't have
a vibe or a honey or an essence that has
a real presence in the culture.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So if someone is listening to you right now and
they're saying I want to get into media, whether it's
social media, print, editorial, you know, whatever the format, what
advice do you have for them.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Well, you know, we're actually trying to do in the
work right now because part of writing the book. And
this is just my perspective, right Like, there are a
lot of other I'm sure there're gonna be some editors
are going to come for me because I came for them.
But I just wanted something on record that we could
reflect on together because I don't know. What I do
(16:58):
know is that we're always seeds, right like, we always
find something else. I just don't know what it is.
But part of why I wanted a record of what
happened from what I saw to partly be a cautionary tale.
The money, the patriarchy, the lack of support. When I
(17:21):
was contributing to Vanity.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Fair, I was just about to bring that up.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
More than fifty percent of their photoshoots would be canned.
The amount of money that they put in the trash
was my entire photo budget for Honey, So there was
no room for experimentation. There's no room for black girl imagination.
We just had to hit the track and win before
(17:46):
they even saw we were out there running. And the
advertising industry is notoriously racist. Hip hop helped break some
of that up, but as you see it for tracks
like there's a moment where we're hot, and you know,
I had several friends this is kind of bleak, but
I had several friends that said, like George Floyd was
(18:06):
their executive producer, Like they got their shows done or
their organizations funded because of George Floyd. And the guilt
not that's over, they're taking DEI. So we're always vulnerable
if we only look to establishment, and that's why history
is really really instructive. Absolutely, so I hope to have
(18:31):
many of these cross gen conversations so we can have
some strategy about how to build and maybe how to
perhaps recover and restore. Very early on, I started an
esthetic practice of looking at life and beauty not through
(18:55):
a Eurocentric lens. That is harder than it sounds, particularly
with you know, if I'm coming of age in the
eighties and nineties and I'm looking at Vogue because I
was a fashion girl, like I looked to that fashion
in art. There's a photographer that I referenced a lot
in the book, Ruven Fonnador, who's brilliant and he's Colombian,
(19:18):
and he too didn't work from a Eurocentric lens. So
what that means, how that plays into real life or
when I was contributing to Vanity Fair, is that when
we and we often did things together, we did not
create images through their lens and they didn't quite know it.
(19:40):
They knew something cool was happening, but we also did
it at the level of craft that they were accustomed to, right,
meaning our tech nicole, our craft was on par and
maybe even superior. So if one is wanting to work
(20:01):
in the mainstream wherever that is fashion, law, tech, science,
come with your own lens and look, you know, because
science and science however, the scientist is right, you know
what I mean, the body of the person through which
(20:22):
this information flows. Absolutely So I think that that was
the strategy and I worked on it for years and
again it wasn't easy. So that's important for us to
consume the beauty of us, whether it's art, whether it's
soul trained whether it's reading books.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
You know, Michaela, I think this is such a great point.
I think something that folks grapple with is being one
of one in a room and trying to push the
envelope and being a little afraid of being ostracized because
they're coming with a different perspective that might not be
accepted by the mainstream media.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
What are you afraid of? Because we're so familiar in
white spaces. We know their history, we know their institutions,
we know their tricks. Why are we bothered? And not
so much bothered because it's annoying because it is the
same tricks, But why are we afraid? We know who
(21:26):
they are? They don't know who we are. We have
a lot of power. If we didn't, they wouldn't try
to take our vote. If they didn't, they wouldn't try
to take our jobs. If they didn't, they wouldn't try
to take our titles.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I really loved everything that Michaela had to say. It
really gives a fresh perspective on her because she's definitely
a black woman who I feel like I've seen my
whole life. And to hear her stories, her personal stories
about her life and the work that she's done, and
how as a photo activist, how she's been able to
kind of disrupt the system. I think it's really encouraging
(22:07):
because it doesn't end with her. She's passing the torch
on to the next generation and we can already see
the shifts happening right in front of us. So true.
Tt SO, I think when we look at media and
we're on social media or looking in magazines or watching movies,
that we should always keep in mind that there's a
long history of the treatment of women of color, specifically
(22:30):
black women, that we also need to be remembering. And
so when you see a black woman being talked about
in the media, ask yourself a few questions like is
she being treated fairly? Is this the same treatment that
a white woman would receive? And if you don't feel
like it is, call it out because this is how
we make strides. It's when people say this isn't right
(22:54):
and we need to be different, we need to be better.
You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope
Labs podcast tt is on X and Instagram at dr
Underscore t Sho, and you can find zakiya at z
(23:15):
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Our supervising producer is Keegan Zimma and our producer is
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Production is Jackie Dansinger. Executive producer from iHeart Podcast is
(23:35):
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additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Labs is executive produced
by us T T show Dia and Zakiah Watki
I'm t T and I'm Zakiyah and this is Dope Labs.
Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
We've been seeing some of our favorite you know, media stars,
(00:27):
are some of our favorite black girl media stars getting
kind of bullied on the internet. Yes, I mean from
Ayisha Curry talking about how she is struggling with being
thrust into this whole world of being Stephen Curry's wife,
very very young and being a mother and not really
being able to find herself. Serena Williams with her foray
(00:47):
into the golp Ones, Kiki Palmer, people have really been
ganging up on her. It just feels like the list
goes on and on, and black women and media are
never given the race that a lot of their white
counterparts get. And I think that that is something that
is systemic. We see it across a lot of cultures
(01:09):
where the darker your skin is, the harder people are
on you, and it just makes living in your day
to day more precarious because you are hyper aware of
how you're existing in every space. The darker your skin is. Yeah,
I think, you know, One of the things we've talked
about is the democratization of media. It used to be
(01:30):
television and just a few channels, but with opening up
access to share messages and the ability to respond to
the people sharing messages, we didn't start fresh. We came
with the same drama we've had all these years ago,
your mama's drama, your grandmama's drama, your great grandmother Listen,
(01:51):
it's still here mm hm exactly. And so I think
when we think about this, I think we kind of
want to know what is the path, what has the
path look like, and where should we be looking for
it to go. I think that was a great what
do we know and what do we want to know?
I think we can jump straight into the resitation. Our
(02:14):
guest today is icon Mikayla Angela Davis. She has a
long career in fashion and journalism. If you feel like
you don't know who this is, google her you know.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Who she is.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
She's an image activist who describes her work as examining
how identity, race, gender, beauty, and style intersect with black
culture and mainstream media. She co wrote the bestseller The
Meaning of Mari Carrie and co created the documentary series
The Hairtails, which puts a spotlight on black hair and
identity in contemporary culture. Mikayla has won a ton of
(02:48):
awards and is a living legend. Mikayla, thank you so
much for joining us today. Let's jump straight into your book, Tenderheaded.
Your book starts with the retelling of your first day
of second grade when a group of older girls surrounded
you and had a girl to hold a pair of scissors,
and then they tried to cut your hair. I don't
want to give away too much because it is a
(03:08):
great story, but just no, your brain survived the attempt
at jumping. Can you talk to us about how that
has shifted your perspective of what it means to be
a black woman?
Speaker 2 (03:20):
The Hairtail. It's interesting because I've been using hair as
a thesis as an organizing principle to talk about black
women's identity, humanity, and culture. My first day of school
at all black school, that I couldn't wait. I couldn't
(03:40):
wait to be with all black girls, right I was little,
you know, and having that near death experience around my hair.
You know, that was a pivotal moment because the story
could have been these black girls are mean they don't
like me because I'm light skinned and I got long hair,
and that's it, right, or the choice I made was
(04:05):
something's going on with us, and they are not gonna
cut me out of the Black girls society. I'm gonna
watch my bat hence on the cover, you see how
my hair is doubled up. I did that after that
incident because I'm like, they're not gonna cut my hair,
but they're also not gonna cut me out. And so
(04:27):
that kind of became a way of being because I
knew that my hair and my skin was complicated and
how it confounded and complicated and triggered things in other
Black girls. And it was one of the reasons why
I wanted to layer in history also in Tender Headed,
(04:51):
so that we can also understand the context in which
black women were organized. It was there was strategy around
us being in conflict with each other, right, there's policy,
there was propaganda, there were practices and laws around color
(05:12):
cast system, and so it was really important for me
to kind of dig into that history.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
For those of you that don't know, colorism is a
racial distinction within the African American community that further fragments
blackness based on skin tone, and there's a hierarchy associated
with your proximity to whiteness. So the more Eurocentric your
features are, the more privilege you receive. So we want
to talk to you, MICHAELA, about the history of colorism
and how it showed up in your life and in
(05:40):
your work.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I grew up in DC and I went to high
school at Duke Gallingy School of the Arts, and so
that was a very different experience. Had I gone to
another kind of school, I probably would have experienced the
color cast system because it gets around teens. But we
(06:01):
were united around being artists, so I didn't get that.
It really came to fruition once I started working in
media and working in fashion, because I'm very clear that
my proximity to whiteness and my how I presented got
(06:22):
me to be in certain spaces in a certain way.
And I'm also aware of the legacy of people like
Angela Davis, other light skinned radical women who we can't
go in and change the DNA, but when we get
in a room, we're gonna bring as many black girls
with like. So I'm from that school. So that was
(06:45):
part of why I wanted history in this book. For instance,
The first quote unquote American it girl was an enslaved
child named Ida who was very, very, very fair. Abolitionists
took a photo of her with a pretty dress, her
(07:08):
hair slicked down, her hand, on a stack of books
and sold this image and basically was saying slavery was
wrong because look how close to us it can get.
Not slavery is wrong because it's a violent, brutal crime
against humanity. But there are some enslaved people that are
(07:30):
so light, so close to white. So that began the
propaganda of light skinned closer to the master society, closer
to the freedom of black people, like this notion that
we could save the race. But even more diabolical TTY
(07:51):
is that by the end of the Antebellum era, ten
percent of all formally enslaved people were at the term
I'm going to use the terms mulatto right, So that
means there were six hundred thousand empirical pieces of evidence
of serial rape against black women. So that population was
(08:19):
at the time more disgraced than the enslaved that were
not missed because they were proof of rape. There was
no other explanation for their existence. And these are children
that came out of black women's bodies, and that's often
lost in the conversation. Right, these are still children of
(08:44):
black women, and so what happened was in an attempt
to sort of reshape the narrative out of being in
this shame space of product of rape, it ballooned into
that they were better and privileged. And that ballooning of
that propaganda at the time. This is media. So it
(09:07):
started in the antebellum era of selling this notion that
light skin and particularly girls were favorable. So that's what
we're having to grapple with. We're grappling with history and
media and propaganda.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
So with this history of colorism, you saw it continue
to manifest throughout your work. Mainstream media was prioritizing lighter
skinned women.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I remember in the time when I was working music videos,
you could not cast a brown skinned girl and there
was no response, no public response to that. So we've
made progress because at least there's a glad bag and
there's a record, and there's some education. But what I
(09:54):
offer this, is it a privilege to be at odds
with your sister? Is it a privilege to be set apart?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
So how do we make progress and shift the way
that things are.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So I'm hoping we have more complex conversations around these notions,
around colorism and privilege. What I hope this book does
is get us in conversation with each other, because black
women are going to save this world if it can
be saved, absolutely, and so we need to heal ourselves.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
It feels new and fresh when folks are saying, oh,
Lupita Nyungo is so beautiful, and so is Isa Ray,
and so are these dark skinned black women, and that
there was a time where this it was just not
possible to be characterized as beautiful when you were dark skinned.
And so if feels like we're making those incremental changes,
but then it also feels like we're still being held
(11:05):
back when it comes to the images that we see.
And you are an image activist, can you unpack what
that means to you today, especially in a media ecosystem
that is driven by algorithms, clicks and the spectacle of
it all.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I a long time ago put all my chips on
black women, like all of them. And if there's any
group in this population that is going to work to
become whole, it's black women. So I'm very encouraged by
the Independent media that black women are making and making,
(11:47):
so whether it's on Instagram or TikTok, there's so many
other places to go. It's not just back in the
day where it's like just MTV. You know, you were
like where big pop culture was happening. Because that's what
we're really talking about, right, this pop culture and how
(12:08):
it influences us. And you know, I was making magazines
like Vibe and Honey and magazines were Instagram and so
it's so much to consume. And I'm still exploring this
because it's challenging these times because it's just so much,
so fast, and black women are being targeted in a
(12:28):
way like if we And this is also where history
is so instructive. I think part of our revolution and
liberation and healing is coming together irl, like in real life,
you know, putting down the media, putting down the phones.
Just you know what brunch looks like. You get a
(12:49):
brunch and you see all these black girls dressed up.
You just get like something and you just flutters and flourishes.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
The vibes are always just right.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yes, So we have to take care of our mental
and emotional self because it's tough right now.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Absolutely absolutely, you know, you briefly mentioned your work with magazines,
and I want to talk about that a little bit
because I feel like magazines are the lost art. I
am old enough to remember picking up a Vibe magazine
my uncle used to have them at his house, or
picking up Essence and living through the pages and just
(13:28):
like loving every bit of it. And it was also
the first time I was really seeing like black women
high fashion shoots.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
And in the book you talk about the rise and
challenges of black media institutions like Vibe and Essence. Can
you talk more about why that form of black media
was so important during that time and what it meant
to Black folks who were experiencing those magazines.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
It was so powerful because for generations, even though Black
people knew they were innovators and culture specifically not only
That's why I love Evan like vintage Ebony will give
you life. And God blessed the Astrogates who has kept
the archive in Chicago. Bless that artist, because it's really
(14:15):
important to see all the black progress and innovation. But
in culture, we had never had a record that we
wrote specifically, and hip hop was that rocket, right because
we had money, we had some positionality. We had some agency,
so we had a chance to in our own tongues,
(14:39):
with our own eyes create you know, si Like while
there was a rolling Stone and a spin and a billboard,
there's vibe, you know. And so it was very powerful
that you didn't have to wait to be anointed to
be on the color of Rolling Stone as a black artist,
and that we would talk critically about Snoop or right
(15:03):
really like spent a month investigating Lauren Hill. That was important.
And we had something to run to. I remember back
in the day, like you would run to get your
write old magazine, but that was like people you know
this this was like critical journalism, top rate photography, new trends.
(15:25):
We were the leaders. We got in front of pop culture.
So it was monumental and it was too short. But
I actually have been in the process of writing the book,
especially that part, experienced some grief around the fact that
we don't have a town square in media in that way,
(15:47):
like there's lots of small, great pockets, whether they're podcasts
or subjects or whatever, like you would look to essence.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Right, we aren't all coalescing around one big correct.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah, but I'm very I'm sad that we don't have
a vibe or a honey or an essence that has
a real presence in the culture.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So if someone is listening to you right now and
they're saying I want to get into media, whether it's
social media, print, editorial, you know, whatever the format, what
advice do you have for them.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Well, you know, we're actually trying to do in the
work right now because part of writing the book. And
this is just my perspective, right Like, there are a
lot of other I'm sure there're gonna be some editors
are going to come for me because I came for them.
But I just wanted something on record that we could
reflect on together because I don't know. What I do
(16:58):
know is that we're always seeds, right like, we always
find something else. I just don't know what it is.
But part of why I wanted a record of what
happened from what I saw to partly be a cautionary tale.
The money, the patriarchy, the lack of support. When I
(17:21):
was contributing to Vanity.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Fair, I was just about to bring that up.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
More than fifty percent of their photoshoots would be canned.
The amount of money that they put in the trash
was my entire photo budget for Honey, So there was
no room for experimentation. There's no room for black girl imagination.
We just had to hit the track and win before
(17:46):
they even saw we were out there running. And the
advertising industry is notoriously racist. Hip hop helped break some
of that up, but as you see it for tracks
like there's a moment where we're hot, and you know,
I had several friends this is kind of bleak, but
I had several friends that said, like George Floyd was
(18:06):
their executive producer, Like they got their shows done or
their organizations funded because of George Floyd. And the guilt
not that's over, they're taking DEI. So we're always vulnerable
if we only look to establishment, and that's why history
is really really instructive. Absolutely, so I hope to have
(18:31):
many of these cross gen conversations so we can have
some strategy about how to build and maybe how to
perhaps recover and restore. Very early on, I started an
esthetic practice of looking at life and beauty not through
(18:55):
a Eurocentric lens. That is harder than it sounds, particularly
with you know, if I'm coming of age in the
eighties and nineties and I'm looking at Vogue because I
was a fashion girl, like I looked to that fashion
in art. There's a photographer that I referenced a lot
in the book, Ruven Fonnador, who's brilliant and he's Colombian,
(19:18):
and he too didn't work from a Eurocentric lens. So
what that means, how that plays into real life or
when I was contributing to Vanity Fair, is that when
we and we often did things together, we did not
create images through their lens and they didn't quite know it.
(19:40):
They knew something cool was happening, but we also did
it at the level of craft that they were accustomed to, right,
meaning our tech nicole, our craft was on par and
maybe even superior. So if one is wanting to work
(20:01):
in the mainstream wherever that is fashion, law, tech, science,
come with your own lens and look, you know, because
science and science however, the scientist is right, you know
what I mean, the body of the person through which
(20:22):
this information flows. Absolutely So I think that that was
the strategy and I worked on it for years and
again it wasn't easy. So that's important for us to
consume the beauty of us, whether it's art, whether it's
soul trained whether it's reading books.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
You know, Michaela, I think this is such a great point.
I think something that folks grapple with is being one
of one in a room and trying to push the
envelope and being a little afraid of being ostracized because
they're coming with a different perspective that might not be
accepted by the mainstream media.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
What are you afraid of? Because we're so familiar in
white spaces. We know their history, we know their institutions,
we know their tricks. Why are we bothered? And not
so much bothered because it's annoying because it is the
same tricks, But why are we afraid? We know who
(21:26):
they are? They don't know who we are. We have
a lot of power. If we didn't, they wouldn't try
to take our vote. If they didn't, they wouldn't try
to take our jobs. If they didn't, they wouldn't try
to take our titles.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I really loved everything that Michaela had to say. It
really gives a fresh perspective on her because she's definitely
a black woman who I feel like I've seen my
whole life. And to hear her stories, her personal stories
about her life and the work that she's done, and
how as a photo activist, how she's been able to
kind of disrupt the system. I think it's really encouraging
(22:07):
because it doesn't end with her. She's passing the torch
on to the next generation and we can already see
the shifts happening right in front of us. So true.
Tt SO, I think when we look at media and
we're on social media or looking in magazines or watching movies,
that we should always keep in mind that there's a
long history of the treatment of women of color, specifically
(22:30):
black women, that we also need to be remembering. And
so when you see a black woman being talked about
in the media, ask yourself a few questions like is
she being treated fairly? Is this the same treatment that
a white woman would receive? And if you don't feel
like it is, call it out because this is how
we make strides. It's when people say this isn't right
(22:54):
and we need to be different, we need to be better.
You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope
Labs podcast tt is on X and Instagram at dr
Underscore t Sho, and you can find zakiya at z
(23:15):
said so. Dope Labs is a production of Lamanada Media.
Our supervising producer is Keegan Zimma and our producer is
Issara Asevez. Dope Labs is sound designed, edited and mixed
by James Farber. Limanada Media's Vice President of Partnerships and
Production is Jackie Dansinger. Executive producer from iHeart Podcast is
(23:35):
Katrina Norvil. Marketing lead is Alison Kanter. Original music composed
and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex sugi Ura, with
additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Labs is executive produced
by us T T show Dia and Zakiah Watki
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