Don't Change A Thing

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.

Singer, dancer, and fashion designer, Wunmi, short for Ibiwunmi, meaning “a birth loved, a child loved, a life loved”, is a force of nature, but it took her a long time before she felt she could step into her name and really own it. Abandoned by her mother and sent to live with family in Nigeria by her father, Wunmi grew up fantasizing over and yearning for her mother’s love. Feeling deeply lost and invisible, clothing and dancing became a way for her to be seen, “I didn't want to dress like anybody else. I didn't want to dance like anybody else. I didn't want to sing like anybody else. I needed to find me because I felt so lost. I wasn't somebody that felt was wanted initially, so I need to be needed.” It was acting on this deep-rooted desire that got Wunmi noticed by Roy Ayers and led to her becoming the iconic dancing silhouette on Soul II Soul’s biggest hits in the late 80s (Back to Life, Keep on Moving). It was also Roy Ayers, her Fairy Godfather, who persuaded Wunmi she could sing, and it is through a continuation of all these expressions, singing, dancing, and style, that Wunmi was able to heal her wounded child and declare, “Wunmi Ibiwunmi is finally grown.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We interviewed Naomi Shimada three years ago for the What’s Underneath Project video series. She inspired us then and continues to inspire us daily on social media with her singular embrace of herself, which includes her voluptuous curves, her boldly colorful style, her overall joie de vivre and its inextricable link to her darker side. In 2015, when we asked Naomi what her favorite body part was, she said it was her mouth because everything she loves most in life comes from the lips, “Kissing, eating...I feel like so much of what makes me happy goes back to my mouth.” During her 15-year modeling career, Naomi was a pioneer for bravely breaking from the confines of being a “straight-sized” model and letting her body be what it was supposed to be. Now, despite its challenges, she stands outside of any category in the fashion industry, even that of “plus-sized” model, in order to stay fiercely true to herself. Find out why Naomi has blossomed through being single, how dancing helps her get through depression, the complexities of being a model in the age of Instagram, and why, for her, getting dressed is an act of resistance. “Clothes and color are my coping mechanisms and I laugh because I have to to get through life. I really want to demystify the fact that someone is always happy and always ‘on’. I love life. I find beauty in so many things...The most powerful things are the smallest things that happened to you in the day.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We are super excited to be with the youngest of the three Kirke Sisters, Lola Kirke. We have already featured both Jemima and Domino on our What’s Underneath video series, and Domino was also with us in episode 6 of this podcast, so now we are thrilled to be able to dig deep into what’s underneath the equally radical and truthful younger sister. Lola talks candidly about growing up in a bohemian family of artists, the struggle to be heard in a room of men, how sexual rejection fueled a song on her debut album, ‘Heart Head West’, and why self-doubt has been a major source of inspiration. “I’m curious if I would be as prolific without that creeping sense of self-doubt at all times,” explains Lola. We love Lola’s gangster moves in bucking the body-negative trends of celebrity culture by not shaving her armpits for the Golden Globes, and refusing to chase the Size-Zero formula. “There's that wheat-paste that's around my neighborhood right now that says, ‘In a culture that profits from your low self-esteem, liking yourself is a radical act.’ And I do think that there is a systemic way in which we are all taught that we are not good enough, and this world goes around on the dollars that we spend trying to make ourselves feel better.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We sit down this week with the incredibly multi-talented artist, director, and musician, Terence Nance, to get inside his head about things like his HBO series, Random Acts of Flyness, that airs out, in almost a stream-of-consciousness, many of today’s most salient issues like systemic racism, white privilege, gender, and masculinity. Not knowing it all is especially important to Terence’s work, “I think of making stuff as conversation; why would you get into a conversation if you knew where it was going to go? Why would it be interesting to talk to somebody if you knew exactly what they were going to say back to you?”. He also explains why honesty within his family and close relationships is what makes him feel the most vulnerable, but he goes there anyway so as to set an example to his nieces and nephews, and why he sees beauty as a scale of disarming people and emitting ease, rather than as an aesthetic quality. But most fascinating to us is how Terence unpacks attributes that we give to words such as unapologetic. “People have been using the word unapologetic a lot and I don't know that I have a relationship to that word because that means that I would have had some sort of expectation that I am to apologize for something...I've never felt any kind of dialogue with an audience or anybody making the show that made me feel like there was anything that would offend or necessitate an apology or a caveat of any kind.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.