[StyleLikeU] So does
the stripping down part
make your more nervous
than the talking part?
[Crystal] Oh, yeah, definitely.
[StyleLikeU] Why do you think?
[Crystal] I'm a poet.
My job is to talk.
It's just that
I've always had I guess
body issues as well.
So it's just showing off everything is
a bit nerve-wracking for me.
I come from a family of eaters.
We're from the South, so food is big part
of us loving each other.
It brings the family together.
So even as a kid my mom never,
said anything about my weight.
The only thing she would say
is that like, I'm too thin.
She'll be like, "You need to eat more.
I'm worried about you."
I was thinking, okay so maybe if I did
lose all this weight then
I wouldn't be bullied,
then people would like me,
then I would get a boyfriend.
(laughs)
And like I would fit in with the kids
and I wouldn't feel so sad.
I'm at a point in my
life where I'm trying to
not perpetuate fat-phobia.
So even saying things like,
"Oh, I feel fat."
You know I know that that's like
perpetuating that kind of language.
So I always try to reframe my sentences
and reframe my thought process
and unlearn those things.
[StyleLikeU] Can you talk
about what your style says 
about you? Including your hair.
- Yeah, my hair is a big part of me.
Growing up, I went to a
predominantly Hispanic school.
So everyone had, like,
hair down to their back.
Just, like, flowing and
curly and beautiful.
But, you know, I'm black.
So I had -
I would perm my hair so my hair would go
no longer than probably right here.
So I mean, just imagine
constantly having to
straighten your kink and me,
I would have really bad scabs in my hair
'cause the perm would burn it.
I would be so sad because I'm like,
"I'm never gonna be
beautiful like these girls."
There's a reason why people
still perm their hair
after it burns, after it
breaks off, after it--
you know, there's a reason why we do it
and it's because it's
ingrained in us that's not--
that it's not cute, that it's not pretty,
that it's not acceptable,
that it's not professional
in the work place.
And then I reached the point
where I was like, "No."
And then it came into me
stepping into my own power,
into my own blackness, into
my own black femininity.
This is crochet braids
right now. I'm natural.
I was in Texas for a poetry competition.
I was having a great time with my friend,
we were at a bar and
then this, the waitress--
the waitress (laughs) she was like,
"Oh my God, I love your hair.
Is it real?"
And she kinda reached for it,
and I was like, "Don't touch me".
And like she got so offended.
She got so offended
that I was so offended.
And I'm just like,
"You're not trying to..."
Like, I'm not a dog!
You do that to someone's dog.
You be like, "Oh my God,
this is so cute. Puppy!"
and you start petting it.
If you saw like a normal person,
like, honestly, if you
saw like a white person
you would never be like,
"Oh my God, I love your hair.
Let me just pat you down."
That would never happen.
Honestly, I feel like people
don't see us as real people.
It's, like, something to be touched
or something to be looked at
or something to be put in a glass box
and examined.
Like, I'm a queer black woman,
this whole world tries to silence me.
[StyleLikeU] At the
time were you aware of--
that you were interested in women?
Or... where were you in that?
- I feel like I became aware
I was interested in women
when I was, like, 15.
But I was like, "I can
be interested in them,
but that's it. What am I
gonna do? Date a girl? No!
That's ridiculous! That's ludicrous!"
Like how do I explain this people?
I mean when I got into high school,
people showed more interest in me
and I would just take anyone.
I never really dated any man that I liked.
It's kind of like, "Oh,
they thought I was cute" so,
"Okay, he thinks I'm cute so,
I guess I should do things with him."
It with him that I had my
first sexual encounters.
Not actual sex or intercourse,
but you know just sexual encounters
that made me just
completely uncomfortable.
It was just really uncomfortable
but I was like I don't know
how to tell this man "no."
I don't know--
'cause I don't want him to get mad at me
or yell at me.
There was this one girl
and she was openly gay and she was like,
"Yeah, I like girls. So what?"
And I saw the way that
the girls in my school treated her.
She wasn't beautiful the
way that they thought
people should be beautiful.
The way that they thought
women should be beautiful,
and she was like, "I don't care.
I think I'm gorgeous."
And I mean, I will always
admire that about her.
'Cause, like, honestly
at the end of the day,
like a hundred people
could call you beautiful
but if you yourself don't
think you're beautiful
it doesn't mean anything.
Like she was doing activism before
I knew what activism even was.
To be in a classroom
with people who hate you,
you know, which you could
parallel that to being
in a world filled with people
who hate you for being black,
for being a woman, for being
queer, for loving yourself,
for not caring about what
their opinions, right?
And to say that, "I don't care.
I still love myself..."
That is so empowering
and that itself is activism.
And I thought she was crazy!
I was like, "How? She is insane."
Like, she's not gonna
break down or anything?
Honestly, saying no to your oppressor
is a form of activism in itself.
And whether it be like--
Obviously the girls
weren't her oppressors,
it was, you know, white supremacy
and beauty standards and all
these systematic oppressions
working in these young girls.
And to say no to all of that
being so sure of herself,
I was like, "Wow".
[StyleLikeU] Can you keep going into
when you did start to find your own voice?
- So I went to this program called
The Boys and Girls Club.
It was an after school program
and my brother and my sister went there.
I took poetry workshops.
I didn't start going on the mic until
maybe 11th grade 'cause
I was just so scared.
I was like, "I could never do it",
"I don't have poems like them",
"I'm not smart the way they are".
So in slam culture, when you hear
something you that you
like, you snap your fingers
or you say "Mmm".
So I would do my poem
and people would start snapping
and I would be like, "Oh
my God, they like it!"
So it just made me feel like
people wanted to listen to me,
which I never felt like before.
Being onstage, I would shake so bad.
It was like my body was vibrating,
I was so nervous.
I felt like I was gonna faint.
'Cause I went to this
organization called Urban Word
where I was surrounded by
a lot of conscious people.
People who talked about racism,
who talked about systematic oppression,
who taught me it was okay to talk about
the fact that men
cat-called me in the street,
the fact that people called
me a nigger in the streets
and it's okay to talk about that.
[StyleLikeU] And that's
happened to you in New York?
- Yeah, like a homeless man one time.
In 2014, it was right after I
made the Urban Word slam team.
I was walking from my dorm
and this homeless man was like,
"You nigger" and I'm just like,
it's just interesting how words that
that this man, who has lost things,
still thinks he's superior to me
because I am a nigger.
And this is not to
this is not to bash
homeless people at all.
But it's like--
[StyleLikeU] It's a systematic oppression.
- It's a systematic oppression.
"It doesn't matter 'cause
at the end of the day,
I'm white and you're
just another black person
who I can oppress."
'Cause I never--
I went to a predominantly black school.
I didn't know--
I knew racism was something that happened
but I always thought that it
happened and then it stopped.
Like there's no more.
Growing up in the Bronx
everyone looked like me
or was either you know, Hispanic
or you know, Muslim,
or you know, black.
Like I didn't see any white people.
I didn't have any --
I didn't feel the oppression.
But when I went to NYU,
which is a predominantly white school,
I was like "What is going on?"
I would be the only person in--
the only black person in my classes.
And I'll be expected to
speak for my entire race
and I was like, "This is crazy!"
[StyleLikeU] When do you
feel the most vulnerable?
- When I'm with a partn--
When I'm with somebody.
Like, romantically.
'Cause, I don't know, I've been--
I mean, I've only been
in two relationships.
The one I had last year
and the one that I'm in now
and -- I'm just so insecure
and it's like I just make things up.
And it's just like sometimes
I just feel crazy, you know.
'Cause I've just been
hurt so much, you know?
I'm just like, "are you
gonna hurt me?" Or like--
I mean, my mom knows now that--
She understands now
that this is depression,
this is what it is.
But I remember first trying to
talk to her about it and she was like,
"What are you talking about? We're black.
We don't deal with that kind of stuff."
Like, "Man up."
And the news reporter says,
"Jesus is white".
She says it with a smile on her face.
Like it's the most obvious
thing in the world.
So sure of herself,
of her privilege,
her ability to change history,
rewrite bodies to make them look like her.
She says it the same way politicians
say racism no longer exists.
The same way police officers
call dead black boys thugs.
The same way white gentrifiers
call Brooklyn home.
She says it with an American accent,
her voice doing that American thing,
crawling out of her throat,
reaching to clasp onto something
that does not belong to her
and I laugh to myself.
What makes a Black man a Black man?
Is it a white woman's confirmation?
Is it her head nod?
Is it the way she's allowed to go on
national television and
autocorrect the Bible
and God Himself?
Tell Him who his Son really was?
What makes a Black man a Black man?
Is it the way reporters retell
their deaths like fairytales?
The way their skulls
split across pavements?
The way they cannot outrun a bullet?
How can she say Jesus was a white man
when he died the blackest way possible?
With his hands up,
With his mother watching,
crying at his feet.
Her tears nothing more than gossip
for the news reporters
or prophets to document.
With his body left to sour in the sun,
this human stripped from his black,
remember that?
How the whole world was
saved by a black man.
By a man so loved by
God, he called him kin,
called him black,
now ain't that suspicious?
Ain't that newsworthy?
Ain't that something
worth being killed over?
[StyleLikeU] Wow.
- Thank you.
(snapping)
Thank you.
Thank you.
- Thank you so much for watching our video
and for being such an incredible
supporter of StyleLikeU.
- We're Elisa and Lily,
a mother and daughter on a mission to
inspire acceptance by
revealing what's underneath
personal style.
- Through radically
honest docu-style videos,
we are leading the fashion
and beauty industries
towards self-love,
diversity and inclusion.
- Join our movement by
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