Don't Change A Thing

In a world that is quick to judge and fear the other, Lebanese filmmaker Pam Nasr doesn’t want to overlook the many ways we can communicate and seek bonds without words, whether it be through the food we share or how we dress. When she walks down the street in bold colors or flaunting her strong legs, Pam’s style screams, “I love life” and “I want to connect.” Growing up in Dubai with a dad who gave her the space to push boundaries and wear mini-skirts in a country that is more conservative due to its tradition has given Pam the grit needed to take risks. After her initial soiree studying fashion in London, Pam followed her gut and moved without barely a moment of hesitance into filmmaking in New York to produce her first feature short, Clams Casino. Addressing the complexities of finding connection and expressing love, whether on social media or in real life, Clams Casino explores the tensions between a mother and daughter (mirroring her own personal story with her mom) through the lens of Mukbang, a phenomenon in South Korea where people seek intimacy though eating on the internet. “I love to be loud in the clothes I wear. I love that if I'm wearing a jacket you could see it across the room or across the street because, hopefully, it creates an interaction with someone...when you're not pushing people away you are in this world together that automatically means that you love the world, you love your life if you love people, because we don't live alone in this world.” This episode is brought to you by Olie Biologique. Olie delivers the nutrients your skin craves fast. Save 20% with the code STYLELIKEU20 at https://www.amazon.com/oliebiologique. stylelikeu + instagram + youtubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“When is it enough?” Amy Yeung has been asking herself this since becoming a mom 18 years ago. Now 55, Amy feels like she is a “naked baby chasing butterflies…every day is so much fun.” Amy already knew how to build success the consumerist way, with a big-brand career designing fast fashion destined for landfills. But following a breakthrough moment in the Moroccan desert, she turned her back on being a designer of disposable fashion in favor of creating success with a conscience. Her company, Orenda Tribe, upcycles old textiles and reimagines vintage. Creating her own smaller, sustainable business has given Amy the wings needed to pursue her greatest calling, using any excess funds made from her sales to give back to the grave and underexposed inequities of her Navajo community. And by way of her giving back, re-integrating with her indigenous origins and family has set Amy onto a path of possibly her greatest healing, one of decolonizing herself and re-connecting to her roots that were once lost when she was adopted as a baby. “Part of my brain operates on success and trying to push ahead and make things bigger. I meditate every day on how to keep it small because enough is enough. We don't need to have these huge houses and these huge lives. If anything, I'm trying to make my life smaller and smaller and more meaningful as I get towards the end and think if I have less stuff I can give more of myself.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From her grade-school role of “goth weirdo” among a sea of blond hair and floral dresses to playing a myriad of stereotypical Asian-best-friend parts in Hollywood, Korean-American actress and performance artist Vivien Bang has struggled to be seen and heard for who she is. It wasn’t until Vivien began to listen to her inner voice, which included a deep dive into her roots, that she came to realize that she could be the hero of her own story. This super power has guided her to release traditional binds of security and redefine success on her own terms. Now secure in the insecure, Vivian has had the courage to make the choices that scare her the most, walking away from the man she loved because she didn’t want children, instead manifesting White Rabbit, the movie she made about her life, which debuted at Sundance in 2018. “For so long I've been trying to take up space and to be heard, you know? I mean, it's funny because like, I think in the beginning my struggle was like, to figure out what I wanted to be, like what I wanted to say. And then so much of my time was like, "How can I be heard? How can I be seen?" And right now I'm in this like, weird phase of, I just want to kind of listen, you know, like, have a deeper sort of listening of what, I don't know, the universe wants to tell me what I'm trying to tell myself.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

23-year-old cultural activist Kamil Oshundara invites you to judge her by her cover. An open book when it comes to expressing herself, Kamil’s body is her altar and she is continually designing it as a means of altering perceptions and making it clear that she is her own person and not anyone’s product. With a rage that is love, Kamil’s authentic tattoos, markings, jewelry, and piercings, honor the richness of indigeneity, her Yoruba religion, her ancestry, gender fluidity and a “don’tmess” confrontation with Western beauty standards. A spoken wordsmith, queer curator, and cultural exec at Monkeypaw Productions (‘Get Out’ and ‘Blackkklansman’), Kamil’s life is her art. Likening herself to a tree with her emerald green hair as the canopy, her brown skin as the bark, her feet planted on the ground as her roots, and her strong branches that cannot break, Kamil knows who she is. “A lot of people say, ‘don't judge a book by its cover.’ It’s a very popular saying but I always say that I design my cover to be read very intentionally. I want you to be able to get a pretty good sense of me. I'm very comfortable with writing on my walls and revealing myself. Showing is radical. I'm never trying to hide. You can't unsee me. I’m here.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Often while riding her Harley Davidson and always driven by her immense love for this planet and the cultures that inhabit it, there is almost no wild and untouched place on this planet to which Betsy Huelskamp has not traveled. Despite having practically no time to train, and facing life-threatening hostility from the men around her, she reached over 27,000 feet on Mount Everest. In this episode, Betsy talks to us about the Death Zone on Everest, the life-changing empowerment of riding a motorbike, the devastating losses of loved ones she’s experienced along the way, and how her faith keeps her tirelessly pushing boundaries. For Betsy, getting older means growing into her freedom, even if it comes with a price. “People see me as being this wild easy going free spirit. But "free" has a price and you can't be free, truly free if you're trapped in your own body's prison. You can't be free if you're addicted to something that controls you, like drugs. You can't be free if you're in a marriage that is somehow turning into your jail. So for me, I'm always focusing on keeping my little girl free.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Superstar fashion stylist turned apothecary healer, Lysa Cooper, reminds us of the authentic New York of yesteryear, a time when phones were at home and ‘living in the moment’ was the only place to be. A time when style had less to do with shopping than enhancing our experience of ourselves and those around us. She talks candidly about leaving home at 14 for the Big Apple in the 90’s, the pitfalls of our modern celebrity-and-phone-addicted culture, and starting a whole new chapter in her 50s. “I've already been at the best party. I've already had the best lovers. I've done it all and the only thing that now impresses me is the new, the invigorating, the enlightened, and the light itself. So, in relationship to me also starting a new career, I'm looking for a new perspective in community and love and even in a partner.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ilma gore is an Australian-American artist and activist whose work is such a true expression of who she is that she is willing to be banned from the internet and beaten up for her beliefs when it comes to her art. The loss of her parents, a home and any sense of stability at a young age is what she attributes to her ability to be so liberated in her life from fear. “Life and death are the same to me,” Illma states. Some of her political-centered work hones in on the obsessive significance placed on our sense of self-worth based on our body parts. Well known for her highly provocative portrait of President Trump with a small penis, Illma explains that it is not about degrading Trump, but exploring the enormous significance placed on the size of his, or anyone’s, genitals, as a sign of power and status. “I think that we put a lot of pressure on what we look like...there's so much tied to it, especially with women and the oppression of women and skin color. Everything has to do with stereotyping and the way we look and these pieces of my art are supposed to be a direct recreation of that exact reaction.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ty Defoe is an Ojibwe and Oneida grammy award-winning performance artist, activist, and writer who identifies as Two-Spirit. In Native American cultures, not only is it acknowledged that gender is more fluid than our patriarchal binary society allows, but Two-Spirit individuals are also highly revered for their spiritual gifts. In this episode, Ty talks to us about the difficulty of being accepted as Two-Spirit, even within his own culture, as a result of colonialistic and religious brainwashing, whilst recalling the tender way his mother observed his body change with testosterone hormone therapy. Ty challenges the assumptions about classic literature (who is Shakespeare a classic for, anyway?), asks why hair should be an indicator of gender, and inspires us all to look more closely at the way we label ourselves and those around us. “People build fences and boxes and walls to keep the truth out.” “Examining self and examining what you're taught always stirs the pot a little bit...But I think that's what people who are making art, people who are two-spirit, who are queer, who are on the margins, are on the fray, I kind of feel like, that's the role, to make this revolution happen.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dana Falsetti, speaker, writer, yoga teacher of larger bodies, and body positive insta-warrior visionary on a mission to make the world a more accessible place, talks about how her yoga practice was born out of a need to prove herself but quickly grew into something much bigger than that, even steering her away from the legal profession path she was on. We discuss the double-edged sword of social media commodification and why Dana felt the need to take a break from Instagram, and how perilous fat-phobia is in the medical world where people are told to “just lose weight” as a cure-all rather than looking beyond the body to find an accurate diagnosis. Dana also reveals to us how her teenage body was both shamed and desired:  “My body changed very quickly when I was young. So by the time I was 12, I literally looked like I was 19 or 20, and I had a very adult kind of curvy body. I had full breasts and hips and everything. And while I'm getting fat-shamed by every person in my life, the only people giving me attention were men. So it just very quickly became the path for like, "Oh, you see me, so I'm going to you." But all the while, still insecure about the body, still feeling that same shame but seeking that route. Of course, it never filled me in any way and actually, I'd feel worse after every single time. But I never saw that I was in that pattern until I started my [yoga] practice and had that mirror and I was like, "Wait a minute, what am I doing?" And I just stopped. I was like, "No more of this until I understand why I'm having sex with people at all. Like, why am I doing this?" And that's the question for everything that I do now, is just the WHY.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From being a fashion director for W Magazine to studying yoga and opening her own studio, to growing pot in Northern California, to making a spontaneous move to the magical, middle of nowhere in Uruguay, Heidi Lender has lived many lives. After years of following the dreams and wishes of the men in her life, in the last seven years, Heidi has had a slow and uncomfortable awakening to the fact that over time she had developed a pattern of dimming her own light in exchange for pleasing her partners. Now, at 50, she is, at last, giving birth to her calling and coming to terms with the fact that she isn’t going to fulfill her princess motherhood fantasy. Happier than ever, Heidi is single and breaking her fear of success by creating Campo, a new, global creative hub in South America. “I really fell hard and quietly and I never do things quietly but I really kept it to myself. I didn't necessarily want to be a mother but...there was a moment when I thought, ‘Oh my God. Well, then, what am I, as a woman? Who am I? What am I going to be? If I'm not going to be a mom?’ And I really just fell hard and sad and I had no idea. It was so traumatic because I didn't know that I had this princess mother thing inside of me...The Universe was like, ‘Here Heidi, you better just take a deep look at who you are because you've got however many years left and you can't go on like this, being asleep.’ I was asleep. Ironically, I actually thought I was awake. I was studying yoga and I was super self-aware and I really thought, ‘Wow, I’m such a smarty-pants,’ but I really was asleep.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.