Latest / Your Body Knows / More Pleasure, Less Performance: A Conversation with Kayla Greaves

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More Pleasure, Less Performance: A Conversation with Kayla Greaves · Your Body Knows

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Your Body Knows, a podcast for women ready to return to their bodies and reclaim their power, their truth, and their way forward.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Shanetta McDonald, a somatic life coach and writer.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Each episode will explore the messy, beautiful work of healing, self-trust, and learning to feel at home in your own skin.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're in a season of transition or simply longing to feel more like yourself, this space is for you.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's listen in.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Today's guest is a beauty expert award-winning journalist, model, speaker host, and brand consultant who has spent more than a decade shaping conversations around beauty, identity, and culture.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Kayla Greaves is the former executive beauty editor at In Style magazine with bylines in vogue, El Allure, and many more, I'm sure, and has appeared as a beauty expert on various bodies of works, including HBO's The Beauty of Blackness and Netflix's The Black Beauty Effect, which I loved.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: She's also worked with some of the biggest names in beauty and created her own award-winning beauty product.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're going to talk about what the beauty industry teaches women about their bodies, how being a black woman has shaped Kayla's relationship to beauty and visibility, what happens when you stop chasing achievement for achievement's sake, and why pleasure might be one of the most radical ways to reconnect with yourself.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome, Kayla.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yay, welcome.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so excited that we're talking finally.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: We tried to do this last week, everyone, and it was like a weird Mercury retrograde thing.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: It just didn't happen.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm glad we've made it work.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: The audio was hating on us, but we figured it out.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: So it's fine.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: It was meant to happen today.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't meant to happen last week.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I like to ask all of my guests, um, what season of life are you in?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: Season of surrender, I would say.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: I am a Virgo, as we know we're Virgo, we're almost Virgo twins.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes, yes.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm also uh a Capricorn moon in Sag Rising, which means I'm very like I'm not an expert with astrology, but it means I'm very like, you know.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I've always been a huge planner and I try to control what I can control, and I've also tried to control things I can't control or have the desire to control things I can't control.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: And now I'm in a place where I'm just like, God, you got it.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just learning to trust God through all the seasons, even in the seasons where I'm like, I don't understand what you're doing, but something is going on.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm really just in a season of surrender and letting God lead and taking the backseat, which is very difficult for me to do as a person, um, but just trusting the seasons of my life and that it's supposed to happen that way.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: I every year, or at least for the past few years, I give myself a word of the year.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: And last year, my my I think it was last year, maybe 2024, Sabur.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it was surrender, my word.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: My word of the year was surrender.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I when I tell you everything, it was like, you need to surrender, you need to surrender.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, I I totally know what that season feels like.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, ironically, my word of the year is serendipity.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, is it?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: So has it been serendipitous this year?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: I guess.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it is I mean, I guess serendipity and like and surrender are kind of a little bit synonymous, right?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: In the sense of just like when you surrender, you leave room for serendipity.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's so true.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we'll we'll talk about, we can't talk about essence best right now, I guess.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: That was serendipitous.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: At least for me, it was very serendipitous.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: So everyone I connected with Kayla, it had to be 2022 because I had a new baby who uh was just sleeping all the time at that point.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: She was only maybe four or five months old, and I wrote a story for InStyle about postpottum hair loss because at the time no one told me about it, and I don't think there was a lot of conversations around it.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, people know that your hair grows when you get pregnant, but they don't tell you that it falls out afterwards.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so now, four years later, there's a lot of conversations about it.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: But I pitched the story and Kayla was the editor.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and you had very little edits for my story, so I was really happy.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh, I'm a good writer.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: It was a great story.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: It was a great story.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so we stayed connected via social media, and then Essence Fest and the Target partnership came up, and I was one of the randomly uh chosen winners.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I was just like, maybe she chose me because she like kind of knows me, but she doesn't really know me.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: And she's like, no, I chose you out of a bag of names.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, literally.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure that there's like little randomizers and things that you can use online to figure that out.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm so analog.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: I literally wrote everyone's names down.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: If you were paid subscribed to my stack, you got two extra entries.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think that was the rules.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I cut it up on a piece of paper, I put it in a bowl, I picked the names out of a hat.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: I love the bowl.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you might as well have picked them out of a hat.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that's a great segue into actually your work.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you started in journalism a long time ago.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I also love to see some of the thoughts you have that you share on Threads around, gosh, the state of journalism right now and how things have just shifted and changed so much.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us a little bit about what your personal journey has been in your career, um, what you're excited for these days, and what you're just like, oh, I wish we could bring uh maybe some traditional forms back.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: If that's what you think.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I think when I started in journalism, it was very traditional journalism, right?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like you weren't the story, you were the one telling the story.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: So, like the subjects or whoever you were talking to or whatever the topic was, like that was a story, and you were kind of in the background.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: I never wanted to be super front-facing.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I think back then, um, you know, people appreciated subject matter experts and they were really the only ones who got platforms or went on television or had whatever.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then when social media really started to take off, like I think in the pandemic, we saw a huge switch with social media and how dependent we became on it.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um I think before it like it existed and it was important, but it wasn't vital in the way that it's vital now.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so now it's like everybody is pretending to be of some sort of like faux expert, and everybody has an opinion, and everybody is just like kind of talking um or becoming like talking heads, and everything is kind of switched to being about expertise to just being about um quantity.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: So if you have a large following, somehow you are more legitimate than somebody who actually is doing the work in real life, but may not have a large following because they don't have the time to be building a social media audience or hiring somebody who does that.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: So things have changed.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I will say that while I was working in, you know, corporate journalism at a magazine, I saw the shift happening and I saw it happen before COVID.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember telling them, this must have been about seven years ago at this point.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: I remember telling them, like, listen, you guys need to be using your editors as front-facing digital talent, like something, like this is what people are paying attention to.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: And they were very like squirmish about how even we showed up on social media, right?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like they didn't want us to do too much or like build, they were figuring, like, oh, we're just gonna build a following and then like leave to go be an influencer type of thing.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, well, nobody's gonna leave a job with a study check and health insurance and whatever, but like you also have to adapt and leave room for people to grow.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: And like this is how things are changing.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: Not to say we can't still write stories, but like there also needs to be some sort of social component to it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: Anyways, that was that.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um everybody thought I was crazy, okay.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like a lot of these traditional media companies are very archaic.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, I don't know that like what I suggested was like the solution to fix everything, but I think if they were quicker to adapt to what's happening, because I see them now trying to like play catch up, but I think if they were quicker to adapt to what was happening before it happened, then things would be a lot different than they are now.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um that being said, um, you know, I never really wanted to be a content creator, whatever.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like if people want to do that and like that's their jam, that's it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: But at the end of the day, I wanted to be a journalist.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: I never wanted to be like a talking head on social media.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like I wanted to be a traditional journalist, and I just didn't like it just wasn't my thing to do that.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, obviously things have changed and it it just is what it is.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: So I've had to kind of, you know, when you're a journalist, your your brain is trained to think in one way, and everything you do has to be based on facts, and you do it in a certain way, and it's fact-checked, and it's copy edited, and it's you know, it goes through so many different channels before it even reaches the public.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: And now it's like people are just sharing information without things even being verified.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, people are just straight up making things up, lying, saying anything, putting anything, putting literally saying anything, putting bold text on top of a picture and people believe that it's news.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I think too, because we've all been trained to think that people who are behind a screen somehow have some sort of like intellectual authority, because we grew up watching subject matter experts on television, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: And you would see them on TV.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like if you see somebody on a screen and they're speaking with enough conviction, people will believe them.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: And because, you know, people's critical thinking skills have diminished, um, their reading and reading comprehension skills have diminished, yeah, it's just a totally different ballgame now where it's like it's literally like the wild west out here.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's just people believe anything.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, people can say anything and people will just blindly believe it.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so things have just really shifted and changed.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I've had to just be like, listen, as much as I don't care to be on social media like that, yeah, I've had to adapt and be like, okay, how do I tell stories through these platforms?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I've I started to do that.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: So, well, I mean, I saw it started, but like I've I have been doing that, right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's I I understand people's frustration with it and and resistance to it because it feels like, okay, you know, like I put 15 years into my career and I've paid my dues, I've done all the things, I've had the jobs, I've done all the interviews, I've done everything, like to the point now where it's like when I'm doing reporting, I'm literally citing my own work.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's really come full circle.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like after you, girl, I like that.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm citing myself at this point.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's why.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, when you get to that point in your career, it's like you want to feel some sort of ease come from that, right?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I've put in the years, I've done the work, I've I've done it.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I should be at the point now where I'm feeling a little bit like I can exhale, things are in flow for me, all that type of stuff.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's fair to want that.
• 11:36
  unknown: Yeah.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think a lot of seasoned journalists feel that way.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, now we're in a place where it's like people don't care about authentic journalism or skills or knowing how to have a conversation or knowing how to listen, because knowing how to conduct a conversation with somebody is a skill, right?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: And you see it out in the world.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like people don't know how to hold a conversation just in a regular setting.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like imagine now being on a stage, being in front of a crowd, being in front of whatever and whomever, or being in front of somebody with like immense star power.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_03: You don't know how to conduct a conversation, right?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: So then you see these flood of podcasts, or you see these panels, and you see whatever, and it's crap because these people don't have these skills, but because they have a certain follower count, then they're put in positions to do something that they're not qualified to do.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: And we see this on like major red carpets for big outlets and all these types of stuff, to the point where like somebody told Delroy Lindo, oh, you're a newcomer in this industry.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: Brooklyn came out in 1994, if I believe.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: And Delroy Lindo, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: And that was not, you know, his first video.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like he's a seasoned professional actor, and you don't even know that.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: But you're on this red carpet talking to this man, and you're so lucky that he's gracious enough to correct you, right?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, in a civil manner when like he doesn't have to, because like that's crazy that you would say that, right?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, okay, what do you do?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like, as a person who actually has the skills, who knows how to do these things, who sees into their career, who's a subject matter expert, you know, talk to all the dermatologists, talk to all the people, talk to all the whomever, like been there, done that to the point where you're not full circle and you're citing yourself at this point.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: Do you either sit around and complain about things changing that you can't control?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: Or are you like, okay, let me go invest in a camera, let me go learn how to edit, let me go learn how to do X, Y, Z, blah, blah, blah.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: Which some of it I already knew because, you know, journalism is a constant.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's just like spinning wheel, just everything new is coming at you at every different moment.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, let me just learn how to do this because I already know how to do it.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's just the editing, the video editing, and all that kind of stuff I wasn't aware of, but I learned how to do it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so now it's like, you know, it feels like a bit of an unpaid internship because it is a labor of love to have to grow a social media following.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not 22 and I don't live in my parents' house, and I do have bills and all of these things to pay.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I have to prioritize the work that pays me, obviously.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: But at the same time, I need to have a social presence because that's where people's attention is.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like people are not, people barely even want to have conversations in real life.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: Everything is connected to social media now.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: My mind doesn't work like that, but that's how the masses operate.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I had to get over kind of those mental gymnastics and be like, okay, Kayla, you already know how to do this stuff.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, just do it.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: So, like, I can get on and I'll make some notes and you know, I'll do some reading beforehand and verify information and do what I need to do and do my research as I always would.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: When it comes to actually recording a video, it takes me like five minutes to do a video.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then maybe an hour or two to edit it, put everything together, get photos, video clips, whatever, whatever, post it up, and then I just post it and I leave it be.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I never I never wanted to be front-facing in the way that I have to be now, but at the same time, it's like I have to adapt, you know, and I do know how to do things and I do know how to have these skills, and there's no reason why there are people who are incompetent who are being paid, you know, handsomely to do well, to do a worse job at what I do than they.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like just get in front of the camera and just do it.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: Like, even if you don't want to do it, even if the video is a flop, even if, you know, whatever.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's just people are still seeing it at the end of the day and they're seeing your skills, and that's just how you have to operate now.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: Now, in terms of um, you know, the way that I wish things were or whatever, I wish that people still had critical thinking skills.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: I wish that people could verify information before sharing it or believing it.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: I wish that people would check people's credentials before just blindly, you know, believing the things that people say.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's just like somebody can come online and be like, so Queen Elizabeth was actually my aunt.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: And there was a secret black member of the family that they kept hidden.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: And people would believe it if I soak with enough conviction, which is insane.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, but it's just like I wish that that was still there.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: I wish that subject matter experts were still in high regard in the way that they used to be, because I think that we do ourselves such a disservice when we put people in positions that they're not prepared to be in, right?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't mean you can't get there, it doesn't mean you can't work, but like disrespecting talent on the Oscars red carpet is not the place.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like just the Oscar's red carpet or the golden globes and any other, like that's not the place to get your training done as somebody who wants to interview people or whatever it is that you want to do, right?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like people say interviewer now instead of like journalists.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's crazy.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I think a big part of what I heard in you sharing this is that for you, and I hope for many people, um, this the willingness, or sometimes I would say fearlessness uh to be visible comes from experience.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like, or we would hope that it does.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: I did a subsec on visibility at the beginning of this year, and I got more comments and feedback than I had on any other post because so many of us struggle with it.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it comes from many different places because number one, we feel like we have to be visible.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, even if we don't have anything to share, or even if we're not promoting a business or entrepreneurs, we just feel like we have to be because that's the nature of society now.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then for those of us who do have our art to share, our perspective, um it feels crippling.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like it feels like we have to do it perfectly or we have to do it in a certain way.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of times it's because we're focused on the outcome of that, right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think what I'm reminded of, and what I was reminded of when I saw you in action at Essence Fest is that the your, what I see is your confidence comes from like you've been doing it.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like this isn't new.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like you've been doing the work.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: This is another layer of it.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but also like the fearlessness of I think I heard you say this at one point.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, I don't give a fuck, I have to do this, so whatever.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, I don't give a fuck, who cares?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is just a part of it.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I just have to do it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I think too, you know, I think it's normal.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like people always like, oh, you you can't be afraid to fail in public.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's not a normal thing to do.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's perfectly normal to want to keep things to yourself and then not share it with the world immediately.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's okay.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't know.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: We have this like mentality now that everything has to be public information.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, I'm sorry, but I don't need strangers knowing about the inner workings of my personal life.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I just don't want that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't know who's watching, it's just no thanks.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I it's just not for me.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to do that, knock yourself out, it's just not for me.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's okay for people to not want to be seen trying all the time, right?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's a very personal and intimate thing.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes you just want to try on your own before you do it publicly.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what if you try something and you know you don't like it?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: But like then you now have still a need to like explain yourself to whomever who's now asking about it, right?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Also, you know, people have always had their opinions about everything that people do, but now it's like those opinions are made public.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: If somebody makes a mistake or does something wrong, you could easily go viral.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you're like humiliated, you get embarrassed, you get harassed on the internet, you say something wrong, it's taken out of context.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like there, the consequences are much bigger for making a mistake now than before.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: Where it's like you could make a mistake and figure it out privately, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you made a mistake, okay, fine, but like I can work through that making that mistake and learning in a private manner versus making a mistake that wasn't like an honest mistake where there was no myth in you know intention, no malice, whatever.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: And now I have to deal with everybody on the internet judging me, potentially losing my job, people have their pitch forced out and they want to do a witch hunt.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's a very different situation now.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: But at the same time, you do get to a point where it's like, okay, I've never done this in this way before, but I know what I'm doing.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not just gonna say a bunch of whatever.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: I know that I need to verify.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'm stating things as facts, I'm not putting my personal opinion into it, I'm not dragging anybody, I'm not putting anybody down, I'm just stating facts.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'm analyzing whatever I'm seeing based off of like my expert perspective, and I'm just stating facts.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: And if somebody comes on to my videos, like I've said this before, like you were not happy with the Vogue September issue.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: Fine.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I don't, yeah.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: But like I made a video about and I was like, listen, you guys want 90s level editorials and you don't even read or subscribe to these magazines.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: So like you just want to see pretty pictures, but you're not reading, you're not subscribing.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason why a lot of magazines don't have these budgets from the 90s is because advertisers have moved on to something else.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying that, you know, obviously you can always do a better job.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: You can always be more creative, you can always be more whatever, but I'm not gonna sit here and drag people because I don't know what they're dealing with right now.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: As editors, because this this industry has collapsed on itself.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: So you can't sit here and complain about whatever when you don't even read the magazine.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I my book September issue is literally on my table over there because I'm a subscriber.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: But you don't like you don't subscribe.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: People are like, oh, I Miss when magazines used to have perfume ads in them.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: They still exist.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: There's a Misty or ad.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: Still there.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: It didn't go anywhere, but like you don't want to read, right?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um stardom is also different these days too, with Tosh.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's budget, there's money, but there is like the I felt like back in the 90s, duress even early 2000s, like the the issues were so profound because also you didn't see that fucking celebrity on the cover everywhere else all the time.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's like, oh, like, yep, I saw you on social media.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen you so many times.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like it's just there was like mystique and explicitity to it.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I think now because you know, we see celebrities everywhere and we know everything that they do, and they like take a dump and when they eat a sandwich and then they do this, that there's like there's less of an interest in it because they're so accessible, like everything is way too accessible.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: So there are still interesting stories in magazines, right?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like I described Arc Digest, and um I love ArcDigest.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's a it's Arc Digest is so good, it's like delicious.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: And okay, there are some interior designers, because I love interiors too, and there are some interior designers that I found through ArcDigest, and they don't have the biggest following, but I read ArcDigest and I'm like, oh, I really like so-and-so's work.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: This person is really, really dope.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: I like how they did this or they styled that or whatever.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I think also because I think print magazines are also very refreshing now.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because I think now we've gotten so used to everybody just talking at us and like telling us what we should do and what we should think and what we should whatever.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: And what's nice about print is that it's just you and the paper.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: And the words, like, and it's being presented objectively because obviously it's coming from a journalist perspective.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's not somebody telling you what you should think or what you should, whatever.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's just you and the words and the paper.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: And even with the ads, right?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: The ads are so, they're not screaming at you.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's not somebody telling you that you need to buy something or else the world is gonna come to an end.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's literally just you and your imagination wanting it to be whatever you want it to be.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I even found some like um cupboard knobs, like in an arc digest.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, oh, I've never seen that before.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I looked at the QR code, or like they have QR codes now, and you scan it with your phone and you look at it, and they were expensive as hell.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: But I was like, I don't care, I'm adding to my Pinterest board.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: I love that because I've never seen patent knobs like that before.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: But it's like that gives you a chance to use your imagination and your critical thinking skills, which no one has anymore, to be like, this is how I would imagine this in my dream home, or this is how I would do this in my whatever.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: So like I appreciate it for what it is.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: But I think people now just it's like they just want to find something to complain about.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: And then they make it into a whole, you know, thing.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_03: But all that to be said, I understand how human nature is at this certain point in our nation's history.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I present things very factually, I present them objectively.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: I will give an analysis based upon my expertise.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: But I literally put in the caption of that video like, if you get fresh, you get blocked.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: And that's just how I'm not I'm not arguing with anybody because I'm not saying anything that's offensive.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to take what I say out of context and start having psych like a psychosis over it, that's your business.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: But like you're getting blocked.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like, don't bring that crazy over here.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care who you are.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: Don't come in my comments saying anything nuts.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't say anything nuts to you.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm always respectful in my reporting and what I say and what I do.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: If you come at me crazy, I'm blocking you.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I think more people need to get comfortable with protecting their peace online.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: Even when I post things on threads and people even just say something snarky or rude, I'm blocking you because why are you here?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you here?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't go to school for journalism.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: I went to school for communications, but I have been an avid reader since I was a child.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm working on a book, which you know probably.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I've been an avid reader and writer since I could remember.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I, I guess, and you are still some of the few people who do enjoy magazines.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: I I literally, when I I subscribe to Elle, Harper's Bazaar, um, Essence, Adding.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: Harper Bazar works so good with Froming Beyond.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's so good.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's so good.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I can feel myself transported when I get my new issue in the mail and like just like the feeling the pages of it.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like there was always this very cinematic experience that I had with like reading a magazine and even books.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: I probably read, I had a coach last year who got me back into reading a lot more.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Before I would read like four books a year, maybe.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I had a Kindle for a while.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: I still have my Kindle, but I got back into reading physical, hard copies of books.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Unless I'm traveling, it makes such a difference.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: Unless I'm traveling and I can't carry a bunch of books with me or it's too bulky.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I always have a physical book and I read so much, and it's like my way to wind down, and I'm a part of like a book group, and um just the act of reading and sitting down to read something that's not on a screen is just completely different.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I just it's completely different.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's completely different, and I just wish that for more of us.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: Too.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I actually was like debating in Kindle because one of my biggest frustrations is like when I can't fit a book into my purse.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, oh, you know, it's like the worst.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm also just like, I don't want to read off a screen.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like I just I'm tired of screens.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I live in New York City, so when I'm on the train and stuff like that, my phone is in my bag.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: You don't get service on the phone on the train anyway.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: So it's just like, whatever.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: Whoever needs to talk to me, like I'll answer you later.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I just sit there and I'll read my book.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't really care what's going on around me.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not paying attention.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care if it's a long commute.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: If I'm on the train for an hour, I'm just like, whatever.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: At least I can get like, I can read a couple chapters of my book.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm reading Kennedy Ryan actually right now, score.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's my first Kennedy Ryan book.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody loves her.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I don't really read a ton of romance, but I'm just reading her because the last book I read was like heavy black trauma.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Oh, okay.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: Told me a break.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: We'll have to swap swap recommendations at the end.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I needed to, yeah, I needed to read something a little.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: It was a good book for what it was.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's just I personally can't read about that much black trauma.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: It was just much.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so um I'm reading Kennedy Ryan right now, and I was like, okay, I'm able to like read this novel on the train, and I actually get a lot of reading done because when I'm at home, I'm like always doing something or I'm working or whatever.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: But it's like my compute is my time to really like put in a couple hours a day to read.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: I get it.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: You've spent so long in the beauty industry.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to learn more about Heri.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: I want to hear more about how your personal relationship with beauty has changed as we've gotten older.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we've gotten older.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we all have gotten older, but it's specifically as you've gotten older.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: How has your relationship with beauty evolved?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think beauty is something that's always been important to me.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm very big, I mean, baseline, I'm a very big like hygiene person.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, like you gotta take very ergo, you know.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I didn't realize that a lot of hygiene stuff was not common sense, but like I'll see people doing basic hygiene things on the internet and they're getting like lauded for like flossing, and I'm like, Yeah, yeah.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I've always been a very big hygiene person, very like, you know, you bathe and then you lotion and then you body oil and you spurts out a little perfume, and like like those things have always been important for me.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: But I think now as I've grown more and more like in love with myself, and I don't say that as like, you know, in an arrogant, cocky way, but I do think that everybody should look at themselves as the love of their life because at the end of the day, all you have is you.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like you are the love of your life.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_03: And the more I've fallen in love with myself, and the more that everybody should be falling in love with themselves if they get to know themselves better, the more I treat it as um self-adorment, and the more I treat it as a form of just self-respect.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: I know the term self-care is overused and overrun now, but it really is it's self-care and it's self-respect because I love myself so much that I would not let myself be dirty.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I know that people have different things, like if you're depressed, sometimes you don't want to shower, whatever.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's your personal thing.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: For me personally, so nobody cancels me over saying this.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: I personally, if I'm already feeling bad, being sweaty and dirty and clammy makes me feel worse than that.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's not gonna make me feel better.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: I feel better when I'm clean.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: I just do, right?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's me.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's those are things that I prioritize.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: I feel better if I put some sort of effort into how I look.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's just how I am, right?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I have I love having like a signature look or like a signature whatever for whatever period of time that I'm in in my life right now.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, you know, I'm loving my Bob.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: I blue dry it, but it's not pressed out yet.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: So so I have this going on.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: But like I love my Bob.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: And the way that I style it is like how I develop my styling technique, right?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes I'll do it a little bit differently, but like right now I'm in my Bob era, right?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: I always have on some sort of lip because my lip are my favorite features on my face, right?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: I make sure that like my eyebrows are put into place and they're penciled in and whatever, whatever I have on a mascara to like open up my eyes.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like these are just things that I do.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: I make sure that my skin is always soft.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: I make sure that I always smell good.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: So like these are things that are just baseline benchmark things for me to do right now.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I think, you know, like even at night, like I will put on perfume to go to bed.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: And it has nothing to do with doing it for somebody else.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I think a lot of people do like have beauty regimens or will like wear certain things for certain people.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: It has nothing to do with anybody else for me.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: It literally is just I like to do this for myself.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like I like to wake up and get a little hint of the perfume I sprayed on before bed on my sheets when I wake up.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: I just like it.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it's just how I show myself love and respect.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like, why would I not do that for myself?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so that's that's really how I look at it versus I think when I was younger, I did it more out of like the idea of like the male gay.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I would be like, oh, well, so-and-so likes when I wear, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: So like I would kind of do that versus now where it's like, I don't care what anybody's son likes or doesn't like.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not doing this for you.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm doing it because it's what I like and it's how I feel my best.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's how it's kind of shifted over the years.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: And how has your family of origin and the women in your family played a role in that?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: I know you have some deep Jamaican roots.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what was that experience like in shaping your relationship with beauty?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: My mother and my grandmother were very vain, but not in a vein of like, you know, they're like vapid and stupid and that's all they care about.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: They were vain in the sense that they cared about what they look like.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: So, like my grandmother put on powder before bed.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, they would wear 90s to bed.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, what a 90 looked like in the 1950s is very different to what it looks like now, but like they would wear like 90s to bed and stuff with like lace and frills and all that type of stuff.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, um my mother was very big into like she did her own hair, her own nails, whatever, whatever.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: And like I do that now just because it's my personal preference.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: So they were very into um self-adoration, and I think it's also just like a Caribbean thing.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's like it's so hot in the Caribbean that like you can't not take at least two showers a day or else you're gonna smell offensive, you know?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um girl.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: So it's just kind of something that I was I was up, I brought I was brought up that way.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: I saw it.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um and that's just kind of how it's been instilled in me to do those things, but it's it's less about other people.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: I think when I was like I said, when I was younger, it was more about other people and like trying to fit into like maybe the male gays or whomever gays or trends and all that type of stuff.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't really I'm not focused on other people anymore.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm really focused on what does Kayla want?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: What is Kayla like?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: And how has that played a role in more pleasure?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us about that.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: I think because I think well, first of all, I think when we think of pleasure, our mind automatically goes to sex.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: And sex is great, sex is cool, all those things.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_03: But pleasure is not just solely about getting an orgasm.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's about what makes you happy, what brings you pleasure in life and learning how to lead your life with that versus like I'm doing XYZ for everybody else, and then my needs come last, which I think a lot of women do because we're socialized to think about everybody but ourselves.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so I want to challenge people to or just give them a different perspective of like you don't have to only do things for other people.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like, let me uh give you this reminder that like you can put yourself first, your pleasure does come first, and by you prioritizing your pleasure and your happiness, everybody else around you benefits from that.
• 35:48
  unknown: Yeah.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you can barely sort yourself out and you're running around, you haven't showered in two days, and your hair is crazy and your nails not done, and this, this, that, and you feel like crap, like how can you give anything else to anyone else?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: So you have to pour into yourself first.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: So to me, beauty is intrinsically linked with pleasure, right?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's about feeling good about yourself.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that you need to do that on your own terms, but you can't do that on your own terms if you don't know what pleasure looks like for you.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: So pleasure could be, you know, I like styling my own hair because I'm trying to learn my hair for myself.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to be able to do this for myself, you know?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's because you had a bad relationship with your hair growing up.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: So now it's like you want to change how you feel about your hair.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: So that's that's what's gonna bring you pleasure.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: Or it could be like, you know what?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: I've been doing my hair my whole life.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to do it.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: I want someone else to massage the scalp.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that means that you go to the salon and you do it, and that's like your, you know, pleasure principle for the week type of thing.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, whatever that may look like for you, but I think that that's how it's linked together because at the end of the day, all of these things, you know, I think with the social media and the TikTok of it all, it feels like beauty is this thing of like pressure, of like, I have to do XYZ and I have to take all these peptides and I have to do this, and I have to do so many things.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: I have to do it this way, and I have to have glass skin.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like it shouldn't feel stressful, it shouldn't feel exhausting, it shouldn't feel like your mind and your body and your bathroom, you know, are being cluttered with just shit.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: It should feel like I'm doing this to make myself feel good.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm doing this because this is what my skin likes and drinks up, and it makes my skin feel soft and good and whatever.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why I'm using this product.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: I like the scent of it, I like the whatever of it, I like the feel of it, I like how it makes my hair feel, like how it, whatever it is.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: But like you have to decide that for your own terms versus people telling you what to do and you feeling overwhelmed by it all.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was it's so funny.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: I was before you even said here, that's one thing that came to mind.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: I came into this year with the intention of just taking better care of my hair because it just wasn't something that was a priority for me.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: And the next episode of this podcast, um, it'll probably come out before yours, actually.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: I I interviewed a tricologist, Bridget Hill, who is lovely.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: She is just gorgeous in so many ways.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: And we talked about the care of hair and scalp and how it is so much bigger than that, you know.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it was I also had a conversation with your fair friend Kiwana about hair and how it's now evolved into this thing of pleasure for me.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's like dedicating the time to it.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's so many things that we have to do, but I like my hair.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: I want to keep my hair.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: So how about I switch the perspective into like I get to take care of my hair?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, I can outsource and pay someone else to do it, but if it's an in-between time where I'm giving my hair a break from a protective style, spend the time.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like, let's let's spend the time, like make this a couple of hours of wash a day to just pour into myself and to make it a little bit more pleasurable because it's pleasurable when my hair looks good and it's still in my scalp and it's taken care of.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, yeah.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: Is that serious?
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: And like also you can make it into a nice thing.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: So I have these like waterproof um flameless candles in my shower that I will just turn on, turn off lights, put on music, whatever, and just make it into a moment.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like by the time I'm finished, I usually will wash my hair in the evening, and it's like once I finish that and blow drying it, it's like I'm so calmed down that I'm ready to just straight go into bed.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then I'll press up my hair the next day type of thing.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_03: But you can make it into a nice experience.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: Use products that you like the scent of, or like light a candle that you like the scent of, put on music that you want to listen to, you know, or just don't have anything going on and just let the water hit your body, hit your hair.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: You're doing a full refresh and just let your mind wander.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like let your mind wander and just, I don't think we spend enough time just in our own thoughts and not even in like an overthinking kind of way, just in a sense of like surrendering your thoughts.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not gonna think about anything specific, and I'm just gonna let my mind wander to whatever it wants, what it wants to wander to.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: More pleasure right now lives as a substack.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: So subscribe to that.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'll put a link to it in the show notes.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: Your birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, as it relates to work, um, alignment, life, personal ambitions, what do you hope for yourself for the next calendar year?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_04: Birthday calendar year.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think abundance and just definitely abundance, ready for that, and also just um being able to enjoy the fruits of my labor.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like I think I put in a lot of work, I've done a lot of work, I've done a lot of meaningful work, um, I've done a lot of impactful work.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um and sometimes it feels like you're kind of just screaming into the void after a while.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, why am I not seeing the fruits of my labor blossom yet?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so I really welcome that coming into my life.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's like I want to see I want opportunities to flow to me with ease.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um I don't want to have to continuously feel like I need to just prove myself, improve myself, improve myself, improve myself.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I'm at a point now where, you know, I'm kind of reaching like veteran status in terms of my career that I've been doing it, you know, closer, getting closer to 20 years now.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to be able to say, like, okay, things are starting to be in flow.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't mean I'm gonna not gonna work hard or not gonna whatever, or like just like throw in the towel and not care.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: But the hustle shouldn't look the same as it did a decade ago.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: Once you're so many years in, like the hustle needs to load, it needs to be a different type of hustle.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I welcome that into my life and I hope for that in my life.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um girl, just bigger checks, like let's give things like bigger projects, yeah, um, less work and more ease.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: Not less work, but like different work, like just work differently and more ease.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um that doesn't have to do with scamming people because I feel like a lot of people now they just scammers, girl.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not trying to scam buddy.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: I want to do honest work, I want to do good work, I want to do real work, but I want it to be um, I want it to be with ease, and I want it to be more abundant than you know, what I'm seeing.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'm grateful for what I have now.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm doing just fine, but like I mean, you want more.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you put it when you put in the work, girl, it's like you deserve to have the things that you put in the work to have, right?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: Speaking of ease, when do you feel most at home in your body these days?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: I would say every day.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm at that point now.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: I don't ever feel I mean, obviously we all have our days where we're like, ugh, you know, but generally speaking, I'm so comfortable in my skin.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I love my body not just for physically how it looks, but I love my body for taking care of me.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, keeping me literally like safe and grounded and okay.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like I found out that, you know, like most black women on this planet, like my iron and vitamin D was low.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why I was feeling so fatigued and drained and tired all the time.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, damn, like my body really pulled through.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because like I should have been like on the floor in the fetal position, but like my body kept me through all of those times.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like your body works hard for you.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so I have a lot of appreciation and love for my body beyond just like, you know, the physical stuff.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_03: But this is also why, you know, working out and adorning myself and taking care of myself are so important to me because I really do love and appreciate my body, and that's a part of how I reward myself, is like taking care of myself and taking care of myself well.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so all of those things are important to me.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: But I haven't always been able to say it, but I really do feel at home with myself every day, even when it comes to decisions I make, even when it comes to deciding who or what I'm gonna accept in my life, um, the treatment that I accept from certain people, like I'm never afraid to walk away or just be like, no, this isn't for me.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I also listen to my body a lot more.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like I, you know, literally, your body knows when something is not right.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: If I'm with somebody and I feel uneasy, no thanks.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: You should never feel uneasy around the people that you're supposed to be around.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: If you feel uneasy or you feel anxious, or you feel like something is wrong, something is wrong.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so I've really leaned into that natural kind of innate intuition.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: So I lean into my body both physically, spiritually, intuitively.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like I love and I trust myself.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm grateful for the vessel that I exist in.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: Love that.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: Kayla, where can people find you and connect with you?
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, on Instagram at Kayla A.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_03: Greaves.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_03: I don't have TikTok.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: I can't.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um also Substack, more pleasure.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm gonna get back to it.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_03: I literally was like trying to figure out my iron stores and all that kind of stuff.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna write a Substack about it.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: And um, so we're back, we're back on Substack.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: I took a little like three-week break or whatever.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but either on Instagram or Substack.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's all the social media that I'm really on.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'm not really oh on threads, but that's connected to Instagram.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um and yeah, you can keep up with my work there.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Kayla.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: It was a joy to have you on today.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.