I was born outraged. I was born without, knowing my people were not counted, not included, not centered. I struggled through low-resourced schools, communities, and housing projects. Janet Mock Read Quote
I was a mixed black girl existing in a westernized Hawaiian culture where petite Asian women were the ideal, in a white culture where black women were furthest from the standard of beauty, in an American culture where trans women of color were invisible. Janet Mock Read Quote
Once, when I was 5 years old, a little girl who lived next door to my grandmother dared me to put on a muumuu and run across a nearby parking lot. So I did. I threw it on, hiked it up in one hand, and ran like hell. It felt amazing to be in a dress. But suddenly my grandmother appeared, a look of horror on her face. Janet Mock Read Quote
By the time I was a sophomore in high school, it had become routine for me to be sent home for wearing dresses. My mere presence in a skirt became an act of protest that would get me called out of class and into the vice principal’s office. Janet Mock Read Quote
I think millennials are the most woke generation because they understand that differences are just in the fabric of who we are. Janet Mock Read Quote
Media gatekeepers – editors, publishers, film studios and the like – need to begin investing in talent behind the scenes, developing and resourcing marginalized voices to tell their own stories. At the end of the day, it’s about the story and what will enable the audience to truly see, understand, and know the life and times of the subject. Janet Mock Read Quote
If I’m watching ‘The Real Housewives of Atlanta,’ there’s a part of that that’s just escapism. I’m not watching it with a political lens, but there is a part of me that certain things trigger and pull up, where I’m like, ‘Oh, that was really problematic.’ Janet Mock Read Quote
Popular culture is most powerful when it offers us a vision of how our society should look – or at least reproduces our reality. Janet Mock Read Quote
