I'm Shonda Rhymes and we're bringing the Dominant Stories created by SHAWNA. Land Audio in partnership with the Dove Self Steam Project. We live in a world in which we tout phrases like body positivity and the people who are like, how dare you fat? Chained me? And I'm really proud of my side. But the reality of the situation is is in all of those conversations, you're still focused on someone's body and we rarely do it with men. Hey, I'm Jess Wiener and this is Dominant Stories, the podcast that helps us reclaim and rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about our bodies, our beauty, our creativity, and our identities. You know, I've mentioned this before, but when I was a little girl, I was completely obsessed with TV. And because I was a kid who grew up in the eighties, we literally only had four networks to watch, and so I also consumed every single show. I mean, anything on TV was magic and power to me. And of course, now we know that the images that we consume on a regular basis can help shape our view of ourselves and shape our identity. And I actually feel like that was true for me because when I was watching all of that media as a kid, I paid attention to whose stories were being told, who was considered beautiful and worthy, and as such, how are they treated by the world around them. I sort of searched all of those programs for faces that looked like me, or looked like my friends, or looked like my family, because we know that when you don't see yourself reflected in the media that you consume, you can feel invisible, unworthy, not beautiful. So today's conversation is with somebody who has absolutely changed and evolved the rules of TV. She has created characters that we see ourselves in because they are a reflection of the world around us, their sisters, friends, lovers, and mothers who are complex and naughty and flawed and searching, and they stay with us well after the episode ends. My guest today has no doubt rewritten our concept of beauty. I am so incredibly excited to be joined by the indomitable Shonda Rhymes. She is our prolific writer and executive producer and creator of the record breaking series Gray's Anatomy, oh and Scandal and bridgertain and the upcoming series Inventing Anna, which will premiere on Netflix on February eleven, And of course I'm here even doing this podcast in part because of the wonderful partnership with Shonda ly and Audio. So I cannot wait for you to hear this convo. And as always, if you're loving the podcast, let me know what you think by subscribing and writing a review wherever you're listing. Are you ready, let's dig it? So, Shanda, I just reread Year of Yes, and I found so much more in this reading, as we can often do, about the stories that you share around the year that you decided to say yes to the things that scared you. And one of the things that you're very generous about talking about little Shanda and how much you lived in your head and in the pantry, the kitchen pantry, telling stories and letting your imagination sort of lay out these worlds that you lived in for hours. And so I'm curious in those worlds that you created when you were a little girl, who were the heroes of your stories that you were making up, and what kind of recurring themes were happening in those stories. You know, I honestly, I'm not sure that I could tell you because I was such an introvert and telling stories was just who I was, and so the stories were always changing. Being in the pantry was a trill place to be for me. It was like a comfortable, like little haven, cozy space. And it's funny now because my kids like climbing little closets to read all the time now and I and I get it. I love that and the rich imagination that you talk about as a child, I know you were also a voracious reader. What kind of books were you drawn to? Was there a genre that you particularly loved. My parents had a rule which was that I could read anything. There wasn't a off limits or this is too old for you, or this is not appropriate kind of reading book for me. So I was the kid who walked to the park for a South library in Illinois and would clear off the shelf of new books, much to the librarian's dismay, and take them home on a weekly basis. You know, I remember reading like the French Lieutenants woman when I was eight. To ask me my mother some very some very saucy questions, and she would just point to the dictionary and say the dictionaries over there, go look, get up, and I would and the books had very different meanings for me when I was, you know, six seven and eight that they were when I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, But I still read them. And because nothing was off limits to me, I felt like I could read anything in the world was completely open. So there wasn't a kind of book I loved the most, although years later I realized and I don't know if this is a function of the kinds of books people right for children when you think about Disney movies, or if it's just what I was drawn to. I read so many books about children with no parents. I think it's just how stories are told. I mean everything from Harry Potter too. I remember that there was this book called Adopted Jane. When I was little. There were just all of these books about children with no parents that were classics that everybody read. You're so right, that's definitely a trope of kids books and stories. In some ways, it's like our worst fears when we're kids, right, is that we're going to lose a parent, or that we kind of have to find a new family. I was very similar interesting my mom. So my mom was a big romance novel reader, and so I remember like tons of books that were certainly probably inappropriate for me in the house, but those were some of the books that I would read at a very early age too. And I loved unusual female protagonist. Like I was always looking for the girls that the world didn't think we're beautiful, or they were finding their voice, or they were fighting back against people being cruel to them. And obviously, now I look back at that, and I think a large part of that was I was looking for stories where girls were embracing and finding their own beauty because I was struggling with that myself when it came to that kind of relationship to beauty and appearance. For you, did did you have a sense of what your beauty was as a little girl or even as a you know, a young teen, Like, how was beauty even talked about or approached in your family life? I mean, we were raised I'm the youngest of six. We were raised by two very intellectual people who being pretty was not a thing that was talked about in my household. And it was certainly not for better or for worse. You know, for some people, being pretty was not a compliment interesting. It was not a word that was used in a complimentary way. In my house, you were smart, you were powerful, you were interesting, you were intelligent, you were witty. My sister was really musical. You were musical, you were athletic, you were strong. But being pretty was not a compliment because it didn't require anything of you other than I guess an accident of genetic So that was not part of the conversation. And I'm wondering what that feels like. Then, as you grow up and go out into the world in which pretty is an attribute and an aspiration that is put upon for women to aspire to in a lot of ways, did you feel or experience a rub of that awareness that this was not how you were cultivated at home to think about beauty. But then there is this world at large that does put a premium on women's appearances. I remember being confused by it in a lot of ways. You know. I had these friends who growing up as we hit puberty, who were very invested in how they looked to boys and how boys thought of them, and how how their appearance mattered in ways large and small. And it was like over my head. I mean, my mother sold all of our clothes. We weren't, you know, fashion wasn't a thing. We weren't allowed to wear makeup. I wore my hair into gorn rose down the sides of my head for most of my childhood life up until I was in high school and didn't care. I lived my life in my head a lot, and I feel in a lot of ways, I feel fortunate about that because it allowed me to be a much freer person. I think my value never came to me based on what somebody else thought about how I looked. That is a huge gift when I think about the amount of time I spent or my friends spent obsessing about looks or being distracted by searching too, you know, to be approved of by other folks. Like, there's a tremendous amount of labor and time that goes into that distraction. I think that's a really makes a ton of sense, the freedom that you get from not searching for that or chasing that in that way, and this rich world that you were able to create for yourself. But even more powerfully, like I think about this a lot. If you are a girl, from the moment you are born, you are generally raised to behave in a way that is in relation to how a man will want you. Yes, you know, I always say that that game there's a dirty word in there, but Mary blank kill um that game. That game is not a game. So you can either be the kind of girl someone wants to marry. You can be kind of a Marilyn Monroe kind of girl, or you can be somebody who is useless to a man and therefore fall into the kill category. And I think that we are taught to behave in ways that you know you will be quiet, be nice, be sweet, don't be too loud, don't be too awful, don't be too dangerous, be polite, let him talk. All of these things that women are told. I grew up in a house where we just weren't told those things, and my father thought we were all fantastic. I mean, I have a dad who when I got ready to go off to college, before he wrote my tuition check, was like, don't become a housewife, Like that's not a thing. I was really raised in a way that now I look at it, it's unapologetically feminist, but at the time it really wasn't. It was really just parents of color making sure that their child had everything she needed to succeed in the world. I wrote this thing for Papa Pope to say in Scandal, where he says, um, I spent my life shining other people's shoes, so you could do nothing but see your reflection. And I think I was raised my parents who worked very hard to make sure that I did nothing but see my reflection in the world. And so we are these very strong, very unapologetic women who never felt like we were required to behave in a way that made other people more comfortable with our presence. And you think about all of those stories dominant stories too, that women have in your right in relationship to mail gaze and mail approval. Tom like a kid from late seventies and eighties, and absorbing the content of that time is also very unique. There were like four networks available at that time. You had to watch everything. You had no chance to skip commercials. So like, I devoured every single thing on television because everything coming out of TV was magic for me and powerful for me. And I was always looking for characters that reflected or represented or sounded like my my people. What characters did you relate to in the media that you consumed growing up. Were there characters that really stood out for you that were important there were I mean, at a certain point in time, television really shifted and you could start to see people who were like you. But there were four channels. That was it. But because there were four channels, when you watch television, you sat on the floor and your parents sat behind you. My mother was always, you know, she sat behind me on the sofa. She was doing something else. She was maybe reading a book, she was knitting, or she was going to college for a while, so she was studying, and she would give a running commentary telling me like that's girls not gonna come to any good. Or that was really stupid, or I can't believe that happened, or you know, want to end up like that? Or she married him like she married that one, like all of that. Those stories were in my head while I was watching television. So I never watched television just through the lens of whatever man wrote the show. And then I find myself doing that now to my kids, whether they like it or not, yes, because I have this thing where I'm like, you can't go off and just staret and I've had in a corner because I don't know what you're watching. So these kids will be watching something and I'm like, well, she's not going to come to any good because I mean, she's really not getting an education, and they're just like, what are they annoyed by that? Or do they like it? I think they're just startled by it. I mean, I'm the mom who says things like, why don't we like princesses, and my kids are like, because princesses don't have jobs, and I'm like, exactly, princesses don't have jobs. But in a larger sense, that really influenced how I looked at characters, and I don't think it was until and I know, you know, we all have our Cosby show the feeling that that has been tainted. But I will forever love Claire Huxtable and feel like she was America's mom because she both reminded me of my mother but also showed me what a working woman was like who to become. You saw an example of somebody out there in the world who spoke her truth and was herself, so it was exciting to see. And then then Oprah was on television, and then you know, there are different women on television at different times. That suddenly seemed like it was expanding the definition of who could be on television. Will Be Goldberg was on Broadway on HBO. It was exciting to watch. You're making me remember something. I don't think I've ever actually like spoken about this out loud, but like, because my mom was a big romance buff, we watched soap operas. That was our bonding time in the afternoons after I got home from school. And much like your mom and the running commentary, I watched him all the ABC shows, so it was General Hospital and all my children in One Life to live my mom and that was how she grew up with soap operas with her mom, and they also had kind of a running commentary. But I remember being a very like I was young. I was probably eight, nine, ten, and through my middle school years where my mom used the soap operas that we were watching to teach me things that like nobody was talking about with my friends. I knew what infidelity was, I knew what an affair was. I you know, sometimes when those people would kiss and then like fall down the door, I'd be like, what are they doing? Like where are they going? And she, you know, and she would talk about they're making love, like and she would give me all the proper terms around that. I had very good sex education as a kid in middle school because we watched soap operas. And I just put that all together. As you're talking about your mom's running commentary, I'm like, God, I did that every day at three o'clock after school. You had that time. Yeah, we had that time. It's an interesting thing. And like television used to be a family time where values were imparted. Yes, it was, in fact equivalent of sitting around a camp fire. There is no longer that thing happening. Now your kid goes in one room and watches one thing on their iPad, and the other one goes in the other room and gets on Discord, and somebody else goes and gets on Minecraft, and then somebody's watching the Disney Channel, and you're in your room watching you know, something on Netflix, and none of you were watching the same thing. And it's no longer a generalized camp fire, and no wisdom is getting passed down or the wisard that's getting passed down, and stuff that you aren't totally aware of. Yeah, and parents most definitely are not in the know about all the things their kids are looking at these days. Um, I want to return to the respite of your imagination and the power of the stories that you're telling. And I want to fast forward a little bit to college, Shonda, which I found myself thinking about a lot in year of yes and you were student at Dartmouth. You were engaged in the Black Underground Theater Association, and you were directing and performing student productions and writing fiction. And I'm at that point in your life, Shanda, like, what was coming alive inside of you? What were you discovering about your voice as a storyteller, specifically as a college student. I think more than anything during that time in college, I was learning that I could be a leader. It was the first time I had done anything in a leadership capacity. You know, I was in plays and therefore speaking in front of audiences, but then I was the director and therefore choosing plays, casting plays, teaching other people how to act, making all the decisions about design and set and all those things. I was discovering how to be a leader and how to lead people, and how hard it was and how important it was, and what morale meant, and how really didn't matter if I was tired. You know, you still have a show to put on. All of those things were vital to me really understanding you know, what I was called the business of show. It was really profound and powerful because I gained so much confidence in myself. You know, you believe in yourself and you have these ideas about what you're capable of. But that as an intro, that was the opposite of anything I'd ever believed that I was capable of doing. And what was the hardest leadership skill for you to learn in that space? Do you remember a stumble over or struggle over a certain part of that journey? For you? I think at the very beginning, it was this idea that when you're when you're in a pantry making up stories, all the stories are your own, and all the characters say what you want them to say and do what you want them to do. It is the idea that a good idea can come from anywhere, and that every person truly is the star of their own story. So whatever is going on with somebody that day is vital to how you should be relating to them. So to me, that was part of what I was learning, and to see things in in shades of gray and not to just assume that people were one way or people were another. I met so many people I never would have met, and related to them in ways I never would have related to them, and learned so much about observing people and how they are in their vulnerable moments and in their angry moments and in their strong moments. Things that really served me well as a writer. Later, I bet you know, my activism side came alive in college. I was also a founder of a theater company at Penn State that was focused on activist issues and talking about sexual assault and discrimination and eating disorders. And that experience as a founder and as a playwright at that time changed the whole trajectory of my life. I think, discovering how to create and marry the meaning with the work that you know I had been kind of struggling with in my earlier life, that was just a big aha moment for me. But I loved that whole world. But I think one of the reasons that in my career that I didn't continue to pursue performing as an actor was the thought that somewhere somebody would decide whether I was beautiful enough to be on stage or on screen, you know. I think, unfortunately for me, I did have some experiences with manipulative male directors who made sure that every woman working with them knew that they were only as good as their looks were desirable. This made me think about in your trajectory before you were Shonda Rhymes, in the way that you are now as you're beginning to work professionally in the industry, was that kind of judgment present, Like, I think a lot of people are afraid, and you know, I've had a lot of conversations that that's a barrier of entry to this industry a lot of times, is the fact that appearances could be a non starter for a lot of folks. That's a powerful, powerful statement and a powerful question that you're asking. I think that there are two pieces to this. I think that you are as welcome in a room as you allow yourself to be welcome in a room one, but two, sometimes you have no control over the attitude that are going to come at you when you enter a room and people make assumptions about you. Um. And I've talked about this before. I had sort of a number two male writer who worked with me on Scandal. Now keep in mind we're talking about Scandal at this point. I've already made Grey's Anatomy, a huge hit show. I would enter a room and people would only talk to him because he was a tall white man, and he would be very uncomfortable and unsure, like not even sure where to look, because like they're not they're ignoring his boss. What I learned from it was in the beginning, when I would enter a room and people would underestimate who I was, I would use that to my advantage. I always felt like, this is great, Like I'm a stealth warrior, like standing in their midst because people look right past you, they look over you, they look through you, they don't see you. I always used to call it sort of the the bounties of casual racism that I was going to reap later, in the sense of like ignore me at your peril, Like that's okay, you don't want to notice me right now, that's fine, but you will. And it was always there was always like a wonderfully surprising moment when they realized that they had been rude, or that they had been ignoring me, or that they had been dismissive, and that maybe I was the person who was going to be giving them a job. And it was always I felt like a very powerful lesson for them. But if I had been a person who would come into the room and had been treated that way, and instead of thinking ignore me at your peril, thought, oh my god, I don't belong here. They're treating me badly. I feel unseen. Maybe I'm not seen. I should go. Where would I be right now? Wow? And that is like a perfect embodiment of the stuff we've been talking about on this show around the dance with that voice and that dominant story of like, if you would have listened to that voice or believed in that voice, it changes the whole trajectory of your life. Hey, y'all, don't go anywhere. This conversation is getting so good. You know what I need? I need more of this epic conversation. Let's go. You know, as your building career in the beginning and as you're learning this industry, was there a moment in time that you look around and like there isn't representation around you, both as a writer and TV programming, Like, can you talk a little bit about what that realization felt like at that time and how you noticed the lack of diversity and representation in the world in which you're wanting to work in. I mean, I think you have to understand, and I don't mean this to sound dismissive of this. I pretty much always been one of the only black girls in the room, you know what I mean. I went to Catholic school. I went to Dartmouth College, which was like bless Its Heart, Fat Boy Heaven, which I loved once I was there, but you know, it was a very white male and had a conservative even reputation at the time. I was not surprised to discover that there was a lack of representation. I think the only people who are surprised to discover that there was a lack of representation are people who are represented. People who are used to seeing their faces are the only people who are ever surprised to discover that there's a lack of representation of other people's faces because they're not noticing, they're not looking. I was very used to the fact that I was going to be the only face in the room, and that my job was to make sure that there were other faces in the room that looked like me. That was not a bird. It was not a fear, it was not a pressure, it was not a pain. It was just a fact of life that is America. So if that is the case, and I am in this job where I have suddenly found that I am thriving and writing television like it's working, Like I'm writing TV shows and people are liking them and I'm enjoying them and I'm getting a little bit of power, then it's only natural that I am telling stories about people who look like me. That was the other thing that I found fascinating. People were like, how did you decide to do that? I was like, I was telling stories about people who looked like me, the same way you tell stories about people who look like you. I wanted to see my world represented on screen. There's no magic formula. It's not special, it's not different. It's just that you guys never thought of it before, is what I always wanted to say to TV executives, Like, for some reason, you thought that there only needed to be one person of color character on every show, and that person could only talk about being a person of color, correct, which is not how the world works. And so when I was writing, I wanted to write people who were people that I knew, who felt like people that I knew, who were interesting to me in ways that people that I knew were interesting, Right, What about when you began to cast your own shows? And in the beginning, were there elements in the in casting as an example of like dominant stories of like this person has to be thinner or taller or lighter skinned, or look like a model or younger, Like did you hear those come up? And and how did you navigate those if you did? Well? No, because you know, you have to remember the very first television show I wrote was Gray's Anatomy. That was my first job writing TV, so I had never worked in TV before. I didn't know how it worked, which was a huge blessing in that naivete and ignorance of not knowing how it worked. Casting was very simple. I knew that I wasn't attributing any any attributes at all to any of the characters except for Dr Bailey, who I said was going to be a short, blonde hair, blue eyed woman for some reason because I was calling her the Nazi and somehow that made sense to me. But everybody else I was like, can be cast by anybody. So I remember saying, that's my casting director, like, we're going to see anybody, and she kept saying anybody, And I said anybody. And because she was Linda Lowe and as brilliant as she is, she didn't say that's not how it's done, or nobody does this. She was like, okay. Agents would send slew of people who all the same and she would send them back and she would say, you know, where is everybody else? And so we got this reputation very quickly at the very beginning of being this show that was looking for actors of all kinds, and really of all kinds. Nobody told me anybody had to be prettier or thinner, or whiter or lighter or anything, and that was fantastic to me. I will say, I don't know that they expected the show to be the success that it was. I think they thought they were making themselves a nice little pilot and felt really good about about the diversity they were showing. But it also made clear and very early on, that that is it was a financially viable model. And that's the thing I'm most proud of is not just that we wrote a show that people liked and wanted to watch. We made clear that it was much more financially profitable to make a show where you showed people who looked like the world than it was to show a bunch of homogeneous people who didn't look like very many people at all. It's interesting thinking about changing, changing the game, and changing the stories that we tell and how we tell them, both on screen and off in writer's rooms. You know, on Blow the line, hires like hair and makeup as an example, right, is something that we've talked a lot about still being a challenge on TV sets. Right. Still very few people of color in those roles, and those that are in those jobs aren't always prepared to do brown skin and black hair, which can send a message to talent into everybody else that brown skin and black hair aren't the norm. I'm thinking about all of the messages that get sent in and around a production, and I'm curious what your thoughts are and how we begin to challenge and change those dynamics. I think it's basic and very simple. If you are looking around at a crew and the crew all looks like the same cis gender, straight line producer, male line producer that's standing in front of you, and he is telling you he cannot find some anybody else, I can't find anybody, then you need a different line producer. That is how I've come to look at things because the there are so many talented people out there who are desperately looking for the opportunity to work, who are crazy talented, who have amazing skills to give, who have opportunities, and the assumptions that are made, like the how dare somebody suggests that they should have to have a special hair makeup person just because they have black hair? Well, how dare you suggest that the other people know what they're doing if they've never done it before. And you want a fuller world, I want a world in which everybody is given an opportunity. But I also feel like different voices bring different things, and I think that the challenges that come are a lot of them are the fault of the showrunners and the creators of the shows. A lot of them are the fault of the line producers who have been doing this for years and have their guys and their gang and their people who are they're working with. And I don't fault them in the way like I'm saying they're bad. But if you've been working with the same group of people forever, you call the same group of people every time you're hiring. You know, you're you're crewing up a show. So what you're asking people to do is to think differently and to let go of maybe hiring your buddies and hire a broader spot of people. You're asking people to maybe train people. You're asking people to create opportunities for people. You're asking people to think in a way that makes room for the idea that they don't get to hold all the cards and stand in all the spaces. And it's wonderful when it can happen. I mean, we haven't had much trouble with it, you know, especially in the past five to six years when we've really had the power to make it a priority. But in the beginning it was an uphill battle. And so I really understood how crewing up worked and that relationships are the currency of every business, and in this business in particular, that lack of access to those relationships or as you were saying, sort of a familiarity in the constant way that we're crewing up. It's an important conversation for us to have and I look at and map some of the progress that we're having across the board culturally, in representation and television and film and we've done incredible I mean, in such a huge part due to your work and work of incredible visionaries. And yet I look at this research that comes out right that talks about of black girls and women on film and TV have lighter, medium skin tones. And so when we start to look at progress and where we need to go from here, I'm curious your thoughts on the gate keeping that still exists, on how much of a wider array of beauty we're still seeing in media and how much further we have to go, because I bring that stat into some places where you know, I don't know that people are aware of the impact of colorism. Yeah, we just did an entire seminar for our company on colorism for this very reason. And people have biases and they don't even know that they have them. They're so deeply ingrained. And I don't think that people are inherently bad, or people are inherently racist or sexist or any of these things and are trying hard to be gatekeepers and keep people out. It's you know, the writer's room that says, well, we you know, we hired this writer of color and she just didn't fit in. And I'm like, well, yeah, because it's really hard to fit in. If you're the only person in the room and everybody else is, you know, a thirty year old white guy, it's really hard to feel like you're gonna just meld right in there, you know. And I've heard that from so many female writers who were like, I was a double, I was a lesbian and I was a woman, so they hired me, and then it was it. Those things are painful. It's a painful thing to be, to be like the token person. And then when it comes to two topics like size, you hear people say things like and they mean it in the most earnest way. They're like, you know, we really wanted somebody who was sexy, and and then there's like a pause and they're like, well, I mean we wanted somebody was sexy. And you're waiting for them to really for the penny to drop, your like pennies in the air. Let's wait for the penny to drop, because you hear what you're saying. What you're saying is is that there's only one size of woman who is sexy to you, Like are you hearing this? But they're not, like it doesn't compute to them, and you know, oh, we found this really beautiful woman of color, and you know, she looks just like Halle Berry. Now, halle Berry is a stunningly beautiful woman. Halle Berry would be annoyed to hear that everybody thinks that the standard of beauty is Halle Berry, do you know what I mean? Like, she's like, there's only one met so people should come in all shades and shapes and sizes, and that should be embraced in the most amazing way. A And it's what we are fighting, are these unconscious biases that people aren't even totally realizing that they have. And the more you can show people on screen who are different than these norms, and the more that stops being the word that we have to use, norms, the more we will figure out a way around this. You know. I mean, the more it stops being a thing when a singer loses a bunch of weight, the more it stops being a thing when there is a character who has a disability, an actor who has a disability on a show, and that's all what anybody talks about. We're in a hard place right now, and it's it's a difficult spot. But I think that we are moving forward. I do too. I call it the climb, and it's like the hard part of like pushing this up the hill is like, you know, unconscious bias. I also call it unexamined bias, because I think in some ways, you know, we kind of go okay with unconscious bias. We don't know what we don't know. And then I'm interested now and like, once you do know, what are you doing about it? Right? How are we having these conversations that are pushing us to go deeper? And that's what I love and I want to kind of talk about in the creation of Shonda Land and the world very real and very imagined place that you've made where your characters are not objects of somebody else's you know, story, their subjects of their own, and there they have agency and they're flawed and in a lot of times they're beautiful women who do some very ugly things. And I'm curious about that, Shanda, from an intentionality standpoint around writing, especially female characters, where their beauty is a part of them. Like oftentimes when you see women written and girls written, it's often their their beauty almost precedes them walking into a room, you know, it's almost like the first thing we're asked to be looking at as an audience versus being able to absorb this person hole. And I noticed that a lot in your characters. I'm curious if there's an intentionality around that. Well. I don't know how many scripts you've read, but the number of scripts where a woman is described as beautiful but she doesn't know it, and that's her total character descriptions. He is one of my favorite things ever, Like, what does that have to do with anything? How is that a character trait? But that is a a male gaze view of what a woman is supposed to be. I've just never been interested in that. You know. Yeah, I'm gonna put a lot of amazing capes on Olivia Pope and let her come stomping into a room, and yeah, the women of Britain are going to wear some amazing gowns and killer wigs. But it's not going to be about I've never once thought to myself like is this woman pretty? And once again it goes back to the way I was raised. It's just never It literally has never occurred to me. I thought, God striking, their interesting, they're witty, they're funny, they're such good actors. But I'm not thinking like pretty is their character. When you do have a character for whom pretty is the attribute that you're dealing with, I usually only have it there because it's the burden that they carry. It's the albatross that's been placed around their neck that they've been forced to handle because that is the only way they've learned how to value themselves. And let's examine that. But to me, I don't know any women who spend all of their time thinking about the size of their butt and what their lipstick looks like and if a boy thinks they're cute. So since that's not a thing for me, I'm much more interested in how we're relating to the world, and we're relating to one another, and we're relating to the other women in our lives and the men in our lives and running things and taking care of things, and who we are as three dimensional people. Yes, because that's who women are, period, Yes, period, full stop. There's a quote that you have in your of Yes that I wrote out and have it on a post it by my by my computer in my office. You said, you know that you do a lot of talking in your writer's rooms about how images matter. The images you see on TV matter. They tell you about the world, They tell you about who you are and what the world is like, and they shape you. And I was thinking about your incredible formidable characters. I'm wondering if when you see your characters after you've created them, they've come to life, whether it's Christina Yang or Miranda Bailey or Olivia Pope or Antalie's Keating, do you ever think to yourself, Shonda, that this representation, this person, I'm a representation because they are this character person is single handedly shaping the trajectory of how another woman or girl or human will see themselves in the world. Does that gravity of that connection come through to you personally? I don't think I'm ever thinking that specifically. Um I think if I was, I'd probably be paralyzed and being able to do anything. But I do think that there is a power that I see in the women who portray them. And I really know that Sandra Oh and Carrie Washington and Viola Davis fully felt and understood the power and the implication of who they were representing, and Chandre Wilson of who they were representing and what that means out in the world because so for me, I'm at home in my pantry typing basically, But they go out into the world and they are wearing that character's face. Yeah, and so they get the full force and the full impact of what it means, all of the incredible talent and work that they bring to building that care after because it's not just the writing that is done, it is the acting that is done that builds the power of who those characters are. They're very aware of that people relate to them in a way that is very different, and they're very aware of what that kind of representation means, especially when a woman like Christina Yang has not been seen on television, or or you know, a woman like Olivia Pope is the first woman of color to being a leading role on a show, or a woman like Analyst Keating, those roles are rare, and they can feel the rare air that they're breathing, and I, you know, I can see it in them. They feel a weight to that. I was going to say, that seems like such an extraordinary burden as well as an extraordinary opportunity to embody that kind of meaning for people. Yeah, Hey, where are you going? There's so much more this juicy convo coming right up. Welcome to the other side of the ad break. Now let's get back to the show. I want to circle back to the girl in the pantry and then again the woman in the kitchen making Thanksgiving dinner with your sisters, and your oldest sister, Dolores tells you, Shanda, you never say yes to anything, and that one comment catapults a character arc for you in your life that is so compelling and inspiring to read in this book. And as I was thinking about the conversation we were going to have today, I was thinking that year of Yes, and even especially now that I read it a second time, is inherently too about you confronting some of your dominant stories that you had. Maybe you certainly didn't call them that, but the belief around like I'm too shy to attend things, or I'm afraid to speak in public, or I'm not fancy enough to accept these invitations, or the universal thing I think we all feel like I can't say no to people. I need to be nice all the time. But all of these stories that sort of end up running our lives if they don't get examined right and and if they don't get challenged and ultimately changed. What was a story that you had that you essentially changed and rewrote and what did that transform for you on the inside. Was it the Dartmouth commencement speech that was the real kickoff point for that or are there other stories that you've now noticed that you've been able to rewrite. I think my entire narrative has been rewritten. I mean the idea that you can truly rewrite the story of who you are is a fact. I mean that really truly happened for me with this book and this idea that there were all of these things that I could not do, and most of them came from the idea that honestly I wasn't interesting enough in my own head, Like my characters were very interesting. But like I remember thinking about that invitation I had to go to the Kennedy Center and sit in the presidential box. I thought, why would they want to talk to me? Like what am I going to have to say? Like the idea that I'm would fail socially somehow that I am yeah, and that the awkward, weird, strange, interesting creature that I am is not okay because, by the way, I'm still the exact same person, just as awkward, just as weird, just as strange, just as prone to say something that makes people go what. But somehow it still works. They still keep inviting me back places, So it's okay. And what I've learned is that it's okay to be that person, like that person is as interesting as the next person. And perhaps most people think to themselves, I can't believe I just said that. I can't believe I'm just doing this. I can't believe I'm feeling this way. Maybe they don't have that inner voice in their head but I do. Or maybe they do have the inner voice in their head, but they're still out there doing it. It's just the very act of living and having these experiences, so many experiences that I never would have had. Had I not just decided to spend a year saying yes two things that terrified me, I wouldn't be doing a podcast right now. I was not a person who was going to speak in public. So no, you know, my answer to everything was no, and my excuse was I have too much work to do. And the reality of it is is it just kept me from both enjoying the magical amazing experience that writing these shows has given me, but also it just kept me from living my life to the fullest. You know, you had another one of the things that we read about we hear about in the book is after you're really digging through these limiting beliefs, one of the things that starts to happen for you is you have this physical transformation. And you wrote something Shonda that I had to literally stop, take a breath, underline it, dog ear it, and then like read it again. And you said, you can say it or you can eat it. Yeah, And of course, you know, you were talking about the tendency that some folks have to use food to cover up difficult emotions or uncomfortable situations, or feeling like we can't ask for what we need when we need it, and adding that food as a layer on top of that discomfort. And as you began to shed those stories, you also shed not without hard work and intentionality. You shed over a hundred pounds. And earlier this year we knew and I were chatting at the Virtual Dove Summit. You shared something that really did stick with me about what your experience was like after you had that physical transformation. So I just want to play a really short clip of that from what you shared. Okay, losing weight was like discovering that nobody had ever noticed me before, because people treat you in a completely different way when your body is different. And that was both really upsetting and really revelatory for me to discover, like how much I had been or can continue to be judged based on how you know, how my body shows up in the world. What do you think about when you hear that? Now? Do you still feel that way? I find it stunning that we live in a world in which we tout phrases like body positivity. The people who are like, how dare you fat? Shame me? I'm really proud of my size and both. But the reality of the situation is is in all of those conversations, you're still focused on someone's body, and we rarely do it with men. People spend a lot of time they're obsessively discussing the waistlines of women, the size of women, the value of women when they go from one size to another. It's ludicrous in a way that I find really sad, not sad for me, but sad for the fact that for most people like this is what you spend your time focusing on, like focusing on the size of someone's butt or the size of someone's waist, and that to you tells you their value. Because that was what was fascinating to me, was that people treated me as if I had more value because my body was a different size, which is just pathetic. I haven't spoken a lot about this publicly, but I also have, you know, released a significant amount of weight from my body, in large part due to facing my own limiting, dominant stories. And I had a friend who would also lost a lot of weight who said to me, oh, just you wait, people are going to even pay you differently. And I was like, now, that's not going to happen, and by got Shanda, it happened. Oh yeah, my value in market, I got paid differently. I have been treated differently. It is like getting access to a club that you knew existed to some degree. But I never really felt as as much as my appearance was a big driver in my life. As a young woman, I lived a very happy, blissful life in a larger size body that didn't prohibit me from having love and sex and success and all these other things. But when I released this amount of weight there was like I entered into another paradigm where I thought, oh my god, like am I knew here? Like what is happening? I genuinely felt ashamed for people with how they came at me, like the energy with which they came at me. I was like, I have won awards, I have raised children, I have made shows and broken records, but my but is a different size, and you are treating me as if I have won the Nobel Prize like it is shocking, Yes, shocking. So in all of this work and this rewriting your life's narrative as you talk about, and and the lessons that you learned in saying yes, do you ever still wrestle with a dominant story now and then? And curious if you do, what are the tools that you use to silence or to soften those voices? Now? You know, I always never really believed it, but people would always say to me, like, you know, like the real wisdom comes as you get older, like it really does, like you just stopped caring, you do. And I was like, I'm never going to be that person and driven, But what's happened to me? And maybe it was the pandemic the slowing down of that. You know that the pandemic brought along. But for me, the new dominant story for me is what makes me happy, Like that's the most important thing at this point. What makes me happy, what makes my family happy? How am I going to define the rest of my life? And it's not about what anybody else thinks, And it's not about what I think I'm supposed to be doing, or what I think I'm supposed to be saying, or what I think the definition of success is supposed to look like that no longer matters to me, so in a weird way, like I'll say, I should be calling it like the decative note, because also I know what the drop of the hat to something. Because I no longer feel like I'm supposed to do something or I'm obligated to be a certain way or act a certain way. I am very unapologetic about just being myself at this point, and I feel really proud of that. And the last chapter of Year of Yes is called Saying Yes Too Beautiful, and you talk about who you are after this period of changing your life by changing your stories, and you again said something that really stuck with me. You said the cruelty in which I treat did myself is no longer tolerated. The pantry door is open. I am out among the living. And I think so much of our beauty is bravery and adventure and our flaws and being open, isn't it? It is so much more than what we talk about in size, shape, or appearance. Well, yeah, I mean it's interesting. Somewhere during the pandemic, I stopped wearing makeup all together. I often stopped coming my hair altogether, but I stopped really caring about like what I was wearing in like a crazy serious way, and I stopped thinking that I had to be this way or that way, or do this thing or that thing, and and just started living at bought a cello, you know, like just things that I would never have done. And I have to say, I feel more beautiful than I ever have. And I don't mean in the pretty girl way. I mean just I feel like I have a light in me that feels more beautiful than I ever have. And that probably just comes from being happy and confident and comfortable in my own skin. And is that how you talk about the concept of beauty and confidence with your girls? Is that kind of a framework for them to be thinking about this journey in their lives. I talked to them a lot about who you are is beautiful. How you are is beautiful, what you do is beautiful, how kind you are is beautiful. Like once again, pretty is not a compliment. Pretty isn't an attribute that you know. That's like saying you have toes, that's great toes, you're pretty, your hair, whatever. But being beautiful is how you treat other people. Being beautiful is how you treat yourself, the courage that you show. We talk a lot about courage in my house because I have, you know, these these little ones who you know, went through the pandemic and are re emerging into the world like little butterflies, And so you know, beauty is being courageous, I mean. And to me, they're always beautiful. There's never a moment when they're in any of their struggles or whatever that they're not the most beautiful people in the world. And as my nineteen year old will tell we'll tell you if she'll say, would you please stop saying that? But I think it's true, Shawanna. As you dream about the future of TV and film and the kinds of stories that we will share and the writers who will share them. What makes you hopeful about how we will continue to rewrite beauty and the concept of it on screen and off. You know, it's interesting. The people telling stories that are coming up now are so fascinating. They don't seem to carry a lot of the same baggage that our generation carried at all. They don't even seem to be interested in a lot of the same into that our generation was interested in. They seem I used to think that they were more fragile because they used to think, like, my god, their feelings get hurt so easily. But no, it's not that they're fearless. And because they feel things so strongly, they are like willing to confront those things that bother them more. And they've grown up in a less stable world than we did and have the ability to look at it and through very different eyes. I'm excited for them. I'm excited by the stories that they tell. And the one thing that I know that I feel really great about is is I have no idea what's coming like, I have no idea what kind of stories they're going to tell. I feel like I'm gonna be one of those people sitting there going like, oh my god, I can't believe somebody came up with that. That's exciting to me. Full originality is coming to us. I love that. I think so too. I think when I think about our future storytellers and all of the access they have to the materials to storytell now, and the way that they're out in the world and exposed. But I also think about the seeds that have been planted by you and by others that are shaping their world and their experience and giving, you know, giving permission. As you talked about these images, they shape us, and I think ultimately they change us. Shanda, I adore you. I cannot thank you enough for sharing your time with me, your imagination, and your beauty with us all. And I'm just really really grateful for this conversation. Oh I love talking to you. You know that this is so much fun. This has been great. Thank you, Thank you. Holy Hot. There are some beautiful jebs in this conversation that are going to stick with me for a while. Okay, one big takeaway I'm going to be thinking about is Shanda's description of her upbringing and being in a family that encouraged all of the kids to, you know, focus more on being smart and courageous and curious and kind versus putting beauty as an aspirational attribute. And for me it was a big aha, because I think I just grew up in a very different family environment. My parents did put a premium on appearance mattering, and so I think about all the labor and time and effort and energy that I've spent focused on pleasing somebody else about my appearance, and how much I could have been developing and doing for my own growth. I also from an industry perspective, when Shan had just laid it out that like, look, the people who are surprised of a lack of representation are usually the people who are most represented. That is a very good refresh for the fact that those of us who have often seen ourselves represented don't notice when others are not. And this is a really good call to action for us. Actually, regardless of what industry you're in, whether you work at entertainment or tech, or finance or retail, look around you. Look at who you're hiring. Are they looking like you? Are they there because they know you? I mean, I think really challenging and examining is a really important unlock for us to change who we see around us in the world and certainly in the entertainment industry on screen. We also talked about her dominant story is changing to be more about focusing on like, what's gonna make me happy? How am I going to define the rest of my life? I think Shonda and her stories that she shared in the book Year of Yes are really kind of a beautiful case study in how we can all rewrite the story of our lives no matter where we are in our lives at any time, we can focus more on what makes us happy and living a life we love on our own terms. Certainly, challenging and changing dominant stories most definitely changes our lives. And then, you know, lastly, I think something Shawnda said that really is tickling me and how we both shared this experience of watching TV with our mom and because of the time of which we grew up, that's how we were watching TV. But we had the benefit of the commentary of our parents and what their values are and the stuff that we're watching. And now media consumption has changed quite a bit. You know, families are often in different rooms on different devices, watching different things. But if you want to have a deeper conversation with a young person in your life about the impact of the images that they're seeing in the media, about social media, about media literacy. I think that we've got some tools that can help you do that. So if you're a parent, or an educator or a mentor, I want to encourage you to go to Dove dot com back slash the Selfie Talk. We've got great curriculum and content there that's designed to help you start this conversation with a young person in your life and to really talk about the impact of media and social media on building self esteem and confidence. So again, you can go to Dove dot com back slash the Selfie Talk. And if you're interested in learning more about dominant Stories and how you can change them, I teach workshops and courses that you can sign up for at j Weiner dot com. Um you can also follow me on Instagram and I'm Jess Weiner. And as always, if you want to tell me more, you can email me at podcast at Dominant Stories, or you can leave me a voicemail at two one three to five nine three oh three three. Don't worry if you didn't catch all that info I'll put it into the show notes. I remember, we are always learning, we are always growing. Dominant Stories with Jess Weiner is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.