Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've certainly been in situations where I've been rejected and endangered and had my humanity put in question - just as almost every woman on the planet has.
I don't want the same trans story to be told over and over again. I don't want people to get stuck on this very western idea of what it means to be transgender.
I'm not so fascinated by these ingenue roles. I tend to gravitate towards women in plays or shows or films that are more chaotic or have something dire going on.
I used to think I was a gay man with this idea of a muse in my head, like a woman that I thought was inspirational or aspirational. But the woman was actually me.
In an ideal world, I wouldn't have to change my body. I wouldn't have to do all this stuff. I wouldn't have to be pretty or 'feminine,' and people would respect that.
When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I 'do things in front of people.' I don't know why I do what I do. I've tried working behind the scenes. I felt left out!
I want to see definitions of what's beautiful, compelling, palatable, marketable, sexy, and prestigious open up to a wider range of bodies, identities, and backgrounds.
I was always looking at Helmut Newton photos with the Le Smoking suit and Stella Tennant in Self Service magazine. It was never just about an ultrafeminine woman for me.
I feel like my transition, in a broader sense, began the second I left home and came to New York. Because all of a sudden, I opened myself up to options about how to be.
I keep a very cold apartment - I tend to crank my AC just about as low as it can go. I sleep with a big, warm comforter, even during the summer, and just burrow underneath it.
When we say 'trans is beautiful' or 'being trans is the best,' that is a truth we created for ourselves that's clearly not true in every signal we get from the world around us.
I travel a lot, so I don't have a morning routine because where I wake up tends to be inconsistent. But I'm always really, really hungry when I wake up, so breakfast is important.
I think that it should be every woman's choice, depending on how she feels comfortable. I can't think of any objective reason why you should wear makeup unless it makes you feel good.
I'm fun, ruthless, articulate, impatient, maybe a little cavalier. I'm a woman and a feminist. I'm transgender. I'm an actress, a reluctant writer, occasionally a potato-shaped model.
I think it's an oversimplification of somebody's worth to 'cancel' them. We're so quick to cancel but also so quick to lift somebody up as 'the queen,' 'the mom,' 'the dad,' 'the god.'
If you're anything other than a white, cisgender, able-bodied dude, people are going to project narratives, imagery, and context onto you that you might not necessarily see for yourself.
I've gone from the edgy girl to the girl you call for H&M and L'Oreal, which is something neither I nor the myriad agencies that rejected me when I tried to get signed could have predicted.
I feel like the most fascinating parts of a trans life take place after the decision to transition. They take place when you're in this new body, in this new life, and you start realizing things.
If I get too glam and polished and pretty, people are like, 'Hari, why aren't you speaking up about issues?' And if I start speaking up about issues, people are like, 'Why can't you just be an actress?'
There have been moments where I've had to question the way I've used social media and change it. Not because anything was wrong or right but because my needs had changed, and my perspective had changed.
I was romantically socialized as a gay man, and now that I am, for most intents and purposes, a heterosexual woman, I have to learn how to talk to straight men, which is the scariest thing I've ever done.
I want to play Lady Macbeth. I have a big chip on my shoulder about Lady Macbeth. People usually play her as this cold, Greek witch, but there's no evidence of that in the text! I think her intentions are pure.
Fashion gave me my start, and that will always be my home. I'll always be so grateful for all my collaborators and friends I've made there, but I'm so excited to dive head first into just being a working actor.
I prefer men who are queer. Not gay men, but queer men - guys with an open mind. Bisexual men, because they're able to understand the different elements of the body without judging that I don't conform to a certain ideal.
Fashion has always captivated me because, like I said, it has the potential to create narratives about what's beautiful, aspirational, chic, masculine, feminine, glamorous, etc. Generally, this power is dispatched in useless ways.
I think that just because I'm trans, and I feel like I have to prove to people that I'm a woman sometimes, I'm never going to sacrifice my vision of femininity to make it clearer for other people. Even if it sometimes gets cloudy.
Trans-dating is hardcore, and it's really scary. And that's coming from me, someone who couldn't be dating in a more open-minded Manhattan pool of artsy boys and creative folk. Not saying it all sucks. I'm just saying it's not easy.
If you're going to make a film about rage in 2018, 2017... If you're going to make a film about revenge and anger, I feel like that has to be a film about women. I don't really want to watch a film about angry men. I've seen way too many of those.
There are no trans roles, and if there are, they go to Jared Leto or Eddie Redmayne or Elle Fanning... Will there ever come a point where I could play a woman in a realistic, naturalistic drama and have there not be the word 'trans' in the script?
I liked playing video games because I felt like I was inside of the story in a way that I didn't feel when I was just watching something. Any chance I could get to step into the shoes of another person, I would take. I couldn't get enough of stories.
I think that you need to balance a critique of feminine, patriarchal beauty ideals while simultaneously understanding how they can make you safe, and they can make you feel safe, and they can open up certain doors for you that would have been closed.
I admire actresses who are willing to jettison the easy route toward exposure and commercial success as an actor in favor or a slow burn, choosing projects carefully, and building an artistic practice over time that feels specific to who they are as artists.
There's something very noble about the bowling shoe. It has very little pretense, and it's kind of naughty. You have to share them with a bunch of other people, which is so kinky in a way that I like. What other shoes would you actively share with other people?
My only bookings this week came from within my friends. Trans people have been central to New York’s art and fashion scene for nearly as long as those ‘scenes’ have existed as we know them. It’s about time that this reality was represented on the city’s runways.
People make fun of me because I've been known to eat lunch things for breakfast. I'll eat a good salad. I'll maybe have some tempeh or kale in there. I try to make breakfast a lavish meal because, one, my body tells me to, and, two, that's what carries me through the day.
I got the Fire Stick as a gift at the Amazon Emmys after-party in 2015, and because I haven't lived in a house with cable television since I lived with my parents as a child, I've just streamed everything. I can afford cable. I have a television. But I only stream things.
I don't want to say that women who do use makeup or get breast implants or have fake nails are insecure. They're entitled to that, and they should do that if that's what they want to do. But for me, there are no answers. It's just a matter of preference and choice and fetish.
If I ever called myself an activist, I regret it, and I was cornered into it by an industry who couldn't justify me taking up space without saying that I had some kind of radical political agenda because they saw my participation as a radical political thing. Which it was not.
I could have hidden in Boston and lived at home for three years, gone through my transition, taken voice lessons to make my voice more feminine, gotten gender reassignment surgery, and spent time to complete my transition, but I didn't want to wait. I wanted to be in the world.
I can say with confidence that my trans/transfeminine identity emerges as the most heavily problematized aspect of my lived experience. My transness is not a problem on its own but problematized by a society that reviles it, hates it, fails to understand it - or does not wish to.
I feel that women and men should free themselves up. It took me a while to get over my dysphoria about shopping in the men's section, trying on men's clothes, but when I was thinking about my life and the kind of woman I wanted to be, it was never just this by-the-book feminine thing.
To see a trans body in this ideal space - on a cover, in an ad - these are spaces that have immense cultural power to dictate what is beautiful, what is glamorous, what is aspirational, what is sexy, what is clean. That can be very powerful and helpful in the de-stigmatization of trans bodies.
Fragrance is important to me because of its emotional dimension. I feel like fragrances are able to transport, stir emotion, and bring up memories. You can wear makeup, you can dress yourself up, but fragrance gives a powerful aspect to how you can present yourself that you can't necessarily get any other way.
I had family who exposed me to all sorts of different media involving actors - films, theatrical productions touring through Boston. My grandparents, particularly my mother's parents, were huge fans of all the arts, and they took me to these shows and exhibits at a very young age, so I was just immersed in it.
Fashion gave me the platform that has made this transition from fashion to Hollywood, from East Coast to West Coast. Fashion gave me the platform that has made this easier than it is for a lot of other people. And I will always count fashion as the industry that was first to welcome me and embrace what I could do.
My experience with 'Transparent' has completely spoiled me because it was the safest, most transpositive set ever. I didn't have to worry about all the usual things - like when people have a vision of your transness that you're not comfortable with. When they don't know the correct gender pronouns by which to refer to you.
I feel like so much of mainstream feminism springs from the second wave, which was essentially a discourse spearheaded by white, cisgender, upper middle class women. I feel - especially as I'm trying to negotiate this new female space with the feminism that's available to me - there are a lot of places where I'm disenfranchised.
I majored in drama and theater arts at Columbia and was always in acting studio, but that was a liberal arts degree, not a bachelor of arts degree, so I didn't have a traditional conservatory training. There was a lot of reading and a lot of writing involved, and only about 30 percent of my classes were directly theater-related.
I don't feel comfortable with the idea that my only gateway into doing what I love to do is auditioning for other people to give me the green light and say that I'm allowed to do it, or that I'm allowed to play this role, or that I'm allowed to be in this movie. I would feel much more comfortable making those opportunities for myself.
I see a Reiki healer from time to time. She sits on my bed, and I lie in her lap. She puts her hands on me for about 45 minutes, and she reads my energy. Whenever I'm having a hard time, I call her. I also go to weekly therapy, and that has been invaluable. Also, getting on medication for my 'neural atypicalities,' I guess we might call them.