- 5 hours ago
Refinery29 entertainment writer Sesali Bowen has been cultivating her voice as an authority on pop culture through the unique lens of being a self-described fat black queer woman and trap feminist. Born and raised in Chicago and a previous campus organizer for Planned Parenthood, Sesali never thought it was possible to turn her writing hobby into a career path, but not only has she done just that, she's helping to shape a powerful new view of the young feminist voice.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:01Welcome to Unstyled. I'm your host, Christine Barbrick, co-founder and global editor-in-chief
00:06of Refinery29. Each week, I invite a notable person to come in and talk with us as we explore
00:12the funny, inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking tales of life, work, and love, as told through
00:19the things that we wear.
00:47Welcome to Unstyled.
00:50She's redefining what it is to build a career and blaze a trail with your voice, sometimes
00:56simply by translating subjects like The Bachelor and Chris Brown into larger discussions of
01:01more complex issues like race, body image, and misogyny in our everyday lives.
01:06A self-described fat black queer woman and trap feminist, Cecily is just as willing to dissect
01:12our often messy cultural relationship with beauty standards as she is the latest episode
01:16of Insecure, or her own personal style, which by the way totally inspires me.
01:22Cecily didn't start out thinking she would or could be a writer. In her early 20s, while
01:27working as a national campus organizer for Planned Parenthood, she began to spend more and more
01:31free time honing her point of view on the screen. But it wasn't until she was brought on as a
01:35columnist at Feministing.com that she started to seriously consider a bona fide path as a writer.
01:41And that was just the beginning, with later gigs at Metro, Oxygen, and now Refinery29.
01:47Cecily's devotion to her personal mission has remained constant. In her own words,
01:52she says she likes to keep it simple, writing like a black girl for black girls.
01:56And whether that's about race, politics, or her own unique slant on feminism,
02:01Cecily never shies away from the questions other people might be wary to ask,
02:05or the answers that might be easier to ignore. In fact, that's what makes this particular writer
02:10such a special one, and why it's important to remember that every creative destiny starts the
02:16same way, when someone finds the courage to speak up.
02:26Hi, Cecily.
02:27Hi, I'm so happy to be here.
02:29Thank you so much for being a guest on Unstyled. You are one of our staff writers at Refinery29.
02:35I am. I am an entertainment writer. I talk about all things lit.
02:39I love. Yes, literally. I would love to kick it off by talking about your sort of beginnings and
02:48your origin story. And I think you told me early on that you talked before you walked.
02:54Yes, I did. I don't remember that. But that is the story that my family loves to repeat. So I
03:01guess
03:01in that way, you know, words were always just kind of really good friends of mine. One of my earliest
03:06memories as well as being three. And I remember my granny, who is an educator, she was an elementary
03:11school teacher. She bought me the Hooked on Phonics program, which was like all the rage then.
03:18And I remember sitting down like with these materials, trying to teach myself how to read
03:22before I started. I think it was either preschool. I'm pretty sure it was preschool because that's
03:27when I actually learned how to read. But I remember trying to teach myself and being so frustrated
03:31that I could not read yet. Like I wanted to do it so bad.
03:36And then just growing up, journaling was just so important to me. I remember like I would
03:42be at school and I would daydream about being able to get home and opening up my journal
03:48and just being able to just let it flow. But I come from a family that is very Black middle
03:55class in terms of their values and was raised to always have practical, safe kind of career
04:02aspirations. So I just thought that I was going to be a doctor. Another interest of
04:06mine very early on was like women's health, women's sexuality. So I was always really
04:10interested in like women's health, like way before it was cool. And I was like, yeah, I'm
04:16going to be a gynecologist and that's what I'm going to do. And then I got to college and
04:19I was like failing all these science classes miserably. Like I failed out of college basically.
04:23I was right there with you.
04:25And that was the moment that I think I really took to gender studies courses, African American
04:30studies, and really those kind of discussion based classes where I was participating in
04:36kind of the flow of ideas. I wasn't just being lectured to. I didn't have to take a lot of
04:40exams. I had to write papers and I just started to shine. Like suddenly I was a good student.
04:46My trajectory in college and kind of the detours that I had to take are a testament to the way
04:51writing has always just suited me. But I think even still, even after I graduated college,
04:58I never thought that I would be a writer for a living. I moved to D.C. to like work
05:03in advocacy,
05:04which is what I worked at the United States Student Association. I was their training director
05:08and then I was the national campus organizer at Planned Parenthood. And I hated it. I was so
05:13miserable. So I was just miserable and depressed. And why were you miserable and depressed?
05:17I wasn't making that much money. So I was like struggling financially and then also just had
05:23a lot of personal things. I was really, really, really struggling with the eating disorder at
05:27that time. It was just a lot of, I think that it was just a bad time for my emotional
05:31and mental
05:31health. So I was like, I got to get out of here. And I ran away to Atlanta and grad
05:36school.
05:37You have a unique feminist sensibility that you approach your writing with,
05:41trap feminism. What is trap feminism to you?
05:44Trap feminism to me was, is this really kind of messy feminism that I think goes beyond even
05:51the expansiveness of hip hop feminism, which was a theory of feminism that was started by
05:56Joan Morgan, who wrote, When Chicken Heads Come Home to Roost. Basically what trap culture is for
06:01anyone who doesn't know is, it's kind of like gritty, like hood culture, but it specifically came
06:08from listening to trap music. I was listening to trap music and I was listening to some of these
06:12songs and hip hop and trap music in particular is always critiqued for being very anti-feminist,
06:18anti-woman and misogynist. But I would hear these songs, definitely not all of them for sure,
06:24but I would hear some songs and I would hear the way that women were being talked about. And I
06:29was like,
06:30there is agency here for women. And I think that people don't know to, to look for it or how
06:35to
06:35look for it because they don't, they're not able to identify with the experience of being a woman
06:43who is like from the trap, you know, like I am from Chicago. I've lived in housing projects in
06:50Chicago. I'm a hood girl, you know, essentially. And that's not anything that I'm ashamed of,
06:55but I definitely think that it's a part of myself that I'm not allowed to bring with me into most
07:00of
07:00the spaces that I exist in currently as, as an adult and as a young professional, as a college
07:07graduate, as someone who has a master's, you know, and all these different spaces, that's not a part
07:11of myself that I'm allowed to carry with me. But that is a part of myself that allows me to
07:16listen
07:16to a genre like trap and be able to not just call it like misogynist trash.
07:22And when you say that, do you mean that when you listen to it, you feel a sense of kinship
07:26or a
07:26sense of just like, you know, there's something that feels familiar or at least something like that
07:31you can relate to?
07:31There's definitely a sense of kinship, but also the way specifically in which women are being talked
07:36about is not necessarily in a way that is harmful to them and in the way that critics of that,
07:43that
07:43genre of music and by extension, the culture like to portray it as. So for example, in a song where
07:50somebody might be talking about going to the strip club to make it rain, right? I think
07:54that a classic cliche critique of something like that would be that like this person only
08:00sees women as sexual objects that they get to go and see and view in a sexual way and throw
08:07money at. And, you know, that's that. But what does that say about women who choose to partake
08:14in like that particular realm of sex work, right? To be a stripper that you think that their client
08:20is someone who is objectifying them? Like what work has been done to understand the kinds of agency
08:28that women bring into a decision like that to do that specific kind of labor that involves a lot of
08:35emotional work, right? Of connecting with people, creating intimate desire between you and the
08:43stranger that you've never met in order to like essentially get your bills paid. And what does
08:50it look like for the narrative? What if the song actually said this woman went to work and was so
08:57good at her job that this man left feeling more desired than he was when he went in and she
09:04was also
09:04able to pay her rent as a result of it. I think a part of the problem, right, with people
09:09who do
09:09critique trap music is that a lot of the critiques come from people who've never lived in the trap and
09:13who've never been to the trap. So it's really easy to just... To be shocked by it and to actually
09:20have
09:20that reaction. Exactly, exactly. And I think that that's kind of an approach that I take to my writing
09:24about entertainment in general is that I don't ever want to fall into whatever the easy analysis is.
09:42One of the pieces that you wrote, the Chris Brown documentary piece that you did, what I love again
09:48about your perspective, we were talking about that earlier, is that you kind of really get into
09:52the nitty gritty of a story and really sort of find your place in it and find a way to
09:58shed light
09:59on a part of it that maybe people aren't really seeing, that they're not going to see in the
10:03mainstream media. Tell us a little bit about that experience of going to that screening.
10:08So we knew that this documentary was coming out and I was like, oh, I'm sure that this is...
10:15We know that Chris Brown, despite the way people feel about him, he is a very hot button topic.
10:21We knew that people would be searching and that we would get traffic on a story about this. So I
10:26was
10:26like, I need to see... I should go see this documentary. And I was also just kind of curious about
10:31it,
10:32given where he is in his career right now. Carucci, his ex-girlfriend Carucci had just filed for a
10:39restraining order against him because she said that he was stalking and harassing her and had made threats
10:45against her. A few months before that, late last year, he was accused of pointing a gun at a woman
10:52who was at his home. So he was definitely coming back into the spotlight. And I was just really
10:56interested to see what kind of angle he was going to take in the documentary. When I went,
11:02I was just very surprised. It was definitely a moment of me coming out of my own bubble where I
11:07have an
11:08opinion about Chris Brown. And I have made a decision on how I engage with Chris Brown. And I
11:13surround myself with people, for the most part, who feel the same way. And I remember just getting
11:18out of the cab that I took over there and seeing a line snaked around the block and people with
11:24Chris
11:24Brown t-shirts on. And I was like, literally just in another world. I was so fascinated by that.
11:30Because people, a lot of women coming out and not just being pro-Chris Brown, but really being huge
11:38fans and supporters and defenders of Chris Brown.
11:41Yes. I was very fascinated to see that there were so many women who looked like me who were there,
11:48like in support when I felt so the exact opposite. Even in the theater, those reactions just really
11:54were so much more impactful than anything that I saw on the screen. And I do think that it's
12:00interesting that you said that, you know, I found my place in the story because I do think that there
12:05is a different conversation to be had about Chris Brown amongst Black folks than is going to be the
12:11conversation that is had just by the broader public. And that is really something that I wanted to kind
12:17of bring out in the piece, which was specifically about the way that Black women are taught to support
12:25Black men under any circumstances, how we are taught to defend them before we defend ourselves.
12:31So many cases of sexual assault and intimate partner violence against Black women goes unreported
12:38because of the very like tortured history that Black people have with the police. So it becomes
12:42more important to protect this man from the justice system than it does to like protect ourselves from
12:48them, right? There's no denying how amazingly talented Chris Brown is. And even that becomes more
12:54important than holding him accountable for the way that he has treated, but also continues to treat women
13:01and just the string of bad decisions that he has made.
13:14What do you wish as a Black woman that white feminists would understand a little bit better?
13:19I think that I wished that white feminists didn't feel ownership over feminism in a way that leaves them
13:30immune to critique.
13:32Do you have an example?
13:33I've never, well, I just, so I think that for example, I think it was 54% of white women
13:39voters voted for
13:40Trump, right? And then immediately after that, we kind of had this women's march and Black women were like,
13:47well, 94% of our voters cast their vote the right way. And I think that this is a conversation
13:53starter
13:53about what an allegiance to whiteness looks like and how that is affecting our political landscape and
14:04the decisions that we're making on behalf of millions of people. And so many women I saw who
14:11identify as feminists thought that that was so divisive and took it so personally that other
14:18feminists wanted to have a conversation about the way whiteness was moving in feminist spaces.
14:24And I think that for me, it's that kind of defensiveness and that kind of ownership over
14:31feminism that leaves you immune to critique. That is just so heartbreaking to me. For example,
14:37I am a Black woman and I am a feminist and I'm cisgendered. And when my trans sisters have things
14:44to say about the ways that I fuck up and that I fail them, I shut up and I listen.
14:50And I'm able to hear
14:51that and figure out the conversation that I need to have with my cis sisters, not back to them. The
14:59conversation is not for me to have with trans women about what they are right and wrong about. No, I
15:05listen
15:05to them to tell me about their experience. And my job is to do the work amongst my people. And
15:12I think
15:12that that is something that I would like to hear more of from white feminists. I definitely just think
15:18that if we are not able to see our own weaknesses, we will never reach the full potential.
15:35You love style. I know you do. Tell me a little bit about like what your principles are around style.
15:41Like what is the role that that personal style plays in your life?
15:44I have a bittersweet relationship with style. I am a fat girl. That is a self-identifier that I use.
15:50And I think that a lot of my style gets defined for me because I am a person who has
15:56to wear plus
15:56size clothes. So I think that the places that I am able to go to get clothes, the places that
16:02I'm
16:02able to look to for inspiration as to the way certain things might look on my body, they're all
16:07very limited in that way. You mentioned to me, you had some hesitations when you were coming to
16:13a refinery because it is known as a kind of environment and a space where people express themselves in
16:19lots of different ways and they use fashion as a tool for that. But tell me a little bit about
16:23like, you know, what you felt like when you were coming to work at refinery.
16:26I was just nervous. I think that I didn't feel like I would fit in. And I think part of
16:33that is
16:33so also for what it's worth, I do think that I do pretty okay with the options that are available
16:38to
16:38me. I think that innovation is just something that comes with style.
16:43I look completely different every day. You know, I wear, I have a, I have sort of a uniform
16:48down. So I probably look like, wouldn't you say I sort of like, I wear kind of the same thing
16:53every
16:53day just with a different pattern, but you literally look different every single day.
16:58That is very true. Sometimes I'm dressed down and like just jeans and a t-shirt and the next day
17:02I'll come with like a full gown. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. You have, you have been known to wear a
17:09gown.
17:09It is true. Yes. Which I fully support.
17:12But I think that I just felt like I wouldn't be on brand for the company. I think that that
17:19was
17:19my fear. I will also say that some of that is unrealistic fear. I think that a lot of it
17:25is
17:25just kind of carried trauma from the way it is to live as, as a fat girl and to be
17:31treated as if
17:32you never quite fit in with what the rest of the women are doing. But, um. Oh, fuck that.
17:38Yeah, exactly. But it was definitely a fear that I had. It didn't last very long if that makes you
17:42feel any better. You self-define yourself as a fat girl. What do you think about like sort of the
17:47discussion around labels? I use the word fat because I think that that's what my body is and that's the
17:52way it looks. And I'm not offended, you know, by that terminology, despite the way people may
17:58intend to use it against me. But I don't think that everyone feels that way. And I think that
18:03this idea behind body positivity that you must love your body and that you need to feel good about it
18:11all the time is also something that we need to push back on a little bit. Because I think that
18:16if we
18:16start to focus too much on body positivity, what we lose sight of is the accountability that people
18:24need to have to just not treat fat people like shit. It's really easy to talk about body positivity
18:30if that means that we don't then have to talk about the very bad ways in which people who are
18:36overweight are treated in our society. And I think that that is another reason that when it comes to
18:42this particular issue, it's so hard to narrow down the right label. Because depending on which label
18:49we come down to, that means that some people are going to have to think about the ways in which
18:54they've been like treating and responding and reacting and portraying people of a certain size.
18:59And I think that that's not a conversation that a lot of people are ready to have. A lot of
19:05what's
19:05happening with body positivity right now is about its relation to thinness. And what we are
19:11essentially saying is that it's okay to not be thin. That is not the same thing as it's okay to
19:19be
19:19fat. Which is why, again, fat is still not the word that a lot of people, even people who are
19:25fat,
19:26are comfortable identifying with. Because that is still not something that we've given the stamp of
19:31approval. And I think that for me, I would love to see a body positivity movement that de-centers
19:36thinness as the standard. You know, when we put someone who wears a size 14 at the forefront of
19:44a plus size or body positivity movement, what we're essentially representing is literally an average
19:52sized person. Someone who wears a size 14 is an average sized person. And the truth is, is that when
20:00they go out into the world, they are not as likely to be ostracized for being overweight as someone who
20:09has a size out of Forever 21 is, or who's someone who does wear a size 26, or a size
20:1532, or someone who
20:17has to get their clothes custom made. Knowing that when I'm out in the world, that not everybody sees me
20:24as a human being. When someone feels okay to pull out their phone and like take a picture of me
20:29without my
20:29permission to either make some kind of joke or for, for whatever, for whatever reason, you know, that
20:36it is. And these are things that happen to me a lot. It's because you don't think that I'm as
20:40human as
20:40you are. It's because you don't think that I have a right to have a good day, like you are
20:46entitled to
20:46have. Because you couldn't possibly think that if you thought that it was okay to like, shame me for my
20:52body. I mean, I think the message that fat people are saying all the time is that we are not
20:56allowed to
20:57just be happy to exist. And that, that's way more hurtful than me not being able to find clothes,
21:03to be honest. It is, it's, it's, it's a lot, it's a lot worse than not being able to find
21:09clothes.
21:09And sometimes, honestly, sometimes we, we want to find clothes so bad just because our clothes are,
21:14it's the only thing we feel like we have. Like sometimes I just want to look cute because
21:18that's literally the only control that I feel like I can have over the way people view me.
21:25We talked a little bit when we came over here about my interest in fashion and kind of why I
21:29stepped away from that. I think that talking about this issue, I'm able to identify another
21:35reason why I had to step away from that. It's because honestly, Christine, I thought that if
21:39I had a Birkin bag, that someone would look at me and see this fat girl and they would be
21:44ready to
21:44judge me for being fat. And then they would say, you know what? She has a Birkin bag though. And
21:48she
21:48has somehow made it into this financial or earning level that I have not. And that that was
21:54somehow protect me from people treating me poorly. And the ways that we adorn ourselves
22:00can be protection in that way, I think.
22:15You identify as queer.
22:17Yeah.
22:17Tell me about what it was like accepting that label for yourself.
22:21You know, the funny thing is that I've always been queer. Even when I was straight, I was queer
22:26because I think that, because I think that sex with fat women has always been contextualized as
22:33so outwardly others. So I think the fact that I even had a sex life and I was sexually active
22:38very early. The fact that I even had a sex life was so mind blowing to some people when they
22:45would
22:45find out it was almost as if I had outed myself. It was outside of the realm of acceptable, like,
22:51heterosexual, like, sexuality, right? That someone would be attracted to a fat person, that fat people
22:57have desires, that I always felt very not straight, if that is a way to describe it. But I think
23:05that me
23:05dating...
23:06In the traditional definition, you mean?
23:08In the traditional definition of what straight looks like. Because I think that it's very important
23:12to remember that heterosexuality is definitely not just about gender. There's always, if you really
23:20look close, there are always some caveats, you know, about, like, what the relationship itself
23:24should look like. And it should be headed to marriage. And it should result in these things.
23:29And it should be practiced in this way with just one other person. You know, all of these ideas
23:34about heteronormativity are very much so nuanced. But I think that in terms of me actually dating
23:40people who were not just men, that felt easy. It just happened very naturally that I was just like,
23:47oh, yeah, and then this is the person that I'm dating now or that I've slept with. And that this
23:51is the person. And gender, their gender was just always very secondary. Because I think that
23:56I got so used to my body being treated as already outside of, like, normal sexuality.
24:03My social media handle, this is not a shameless plug, I promise it's related.
24:08Do it.
24:08But all of my social media handles are bad, fat black girl. And I think that there is something
24:14so powerful in saying all of those things together. Because if I asked the audience right now to
24:22close their eyes and just visualize the person that comes to mind when you think of a fat black girl,
24:29who is the person? And I don't think that it's ever a person that you would want to hang out
24:36with. I
24:36don't think it's ever a person that you would want to date. I don't think that it's ever a person
24:40who
24:40you see as some meaningful person in society. I think that just those words together, a fat black girl
24:46are always so just stuffed with like negative connotations.
24:52Yeah, very, very charged. So the bad in front of it, it kind of works in two ways. One of
24:58the
24:59meanings of having bad in front of all of that is like a play on like the term bad bitch,
25:04right? So
25:05like, okay, so like, I'm bad, right? But I'm also all these things. But also like that I do those
25:09things badly, that I don't exist in the world as someone who is not someone you would want to hang
25:16out with or date or have work at your place or be around that define what it means to be
25:23a
25:24stereotypical fat black girl.
25:26I think that's the name of your book.
25:27Say it. Say it back to me. This might be a moment, Christine.
25:30I think you should say it. I think you should say it.
25:34Okay.
25:34Say it out loud.
25:36Bad fat black girl.
25:37I mean, that sounds like a fucking bestseller to me.
25:41Cecily, it was such a pleasure to have you on.
25:43So much fun.
25:45It was really so much fun. And I'm just going to say, I can't wait to read your book.
25:48Thank you. I really needed to hear that. That gives me motivation to start writing.
25:53I did too.
26:00I hope you're inspired after hearing Cecily's story. For even more Unstyled extras, check out
26:06Refinery29 or my Instagram at Christine Barbrick. You can also join the conversation using the
26:12hashtag Unstyled across your social media. And of course, we'd be infinitely grateful if you'd
26:17please subscribe to Unstyled on Apple Podcasts and rate us while you're there. You can head to
26:22Refinery29.com to find this episode and more and make sure to sign up for our exclusive Unstyled
26:28newsletter delivered straight to your inbox every week. Our show today was executive produced by
26:33Sarah Bernard, associate produced by Rebecca Easley, and edited by Priscilla Mena. Copy support was
26:40provided by Elizabeth Kiefer. Our theme music today is by the artist Koff, and we recorded
26:45Unstyled with Paul Ruist at Argo Studios. We'll see you back here next Monday when I sit down with
26:51InStyle Magazine editor-in-chief Laura Brown on navigating the brave new world of women's media.