Writer Keah Brown created the #DisabledAndCute movement to celebrate how people with disabilities love their bodies. She talks about the ways disability shows up online and off.
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This episode is dedicated to the memory of my friend Michael Brooks, a brilliant podcaster and even better friend, rest and power. There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production of I Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm bridget Todd and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Sighting of the Americans with Disabilities at and even though the World Bank estimates that the world experiences some form of disability, sometimes it can feel like our world is built for able bodied people alone. But even in a world that isn't always accessible or inclusive, people with disabilities still love themselves, love their bodies, and are worthy of desire, love and joy. And when that kind of self love isn't represented in the media, they change the game to make sure it's included. Anyway. My ringing was very typical Black girl upbringing. My mom was very much a person who was like I'm raising you Kia, like I would raise your twin sister Leo or your older brother Eric. There was never anything where it was like if they got scooters or bikes or roller blades or whatever, we would figure out away for me to get that too, and we'd figure out away for me to be able to do those things as well. She was very keen on making sure that I knew that I may have had to work a little harder, but I was going to be able to do what they were doing, because she wasn't gonna take me using um disability as an excuse for anything. In writer Kia Brown created a movement on social media because how I write, the fact that having a disability doesn't mean you have to hate your body. Her debut book, The Pretty One, chronicles all the things she loves in life, Hollywood, football and being born with cerebral palsy and learning to love herself and her body. But she didn't always feel this way. In your book, you write about yearning to be what you call normal and yearning for refuge from a steady stream of hate society strengthened inside of you. How did society make you feel that way? Um? Really through the messaging with you know, advertising and like representation in media, and the only time that I would see someone who looked sort of likely never liked me completely because you know, I've never heard that. But whenever I would see someone it was because of those UM you know, like very exploited telethons, and people were always staring when I would enter public spaces. And even before I realized exactly what disability meant, I knew that the stairs that I would get from people who didn't know me, didn't care to know you, didn't love me. We're always negative, you know. They always looked at me with a sort of like pity or with this like inherent disgust. And even as a child, I picked up on that very easily. This lack of representation really impacted Kia. If people who look like me aren't getting shown love, she thought, then I must not be worthy of it at all. The people that were getting the happily ever afters, you know, the people that were getting the love or the attention or the excitement in their lives, where people who didn't look like me. So I really did aid in my own self hatred because I was like, I must not be worthy enough if I'm not being represented. Do you ever have that little voice in your head that says mean things about yourself. You're worthless, you're ugly, you're lazy, you don't deserve love, you don't deserve good things. It can really get a stuck in a loop of negative self talk where we start to really believe and internalize those things. To get to the other side, Kia had to unstrain her brain out of negative self talk to go from self hate to self love. She started out each day by saying four nice things about herself. Breaking the cycle of negativity took a lot of work. So how did you get to the other side of that to feel like someone who was worthy of love and desire and all those good things. Yeah, I mean I always say too that it's a constant effort. You know, It's like every single day I have to still do that work. And for me, I mean it took a lot of crying and a lot of promising myself that like there was something worthy on the other side of it, and it just took this sort of like exhaustion with beating myself up. And so for me, it was like every single day I would say the four things that I liked about myself, of course in the mirror, but I would also um actively stop actively try to stop a negative thought in my brain. So my brain would be like, oh, you're worthless, and I would counteract that with examples of when I wasn't quote unquote worthless or when someone needed me, um and when they cared about me or did something just because they wanted to. So I really had to actively train my brain to reroute itself from my inherent negative thoughts about myself. And I mean it's not easy work. Like I said, I'm still doing it every single day, And it wasn't necessarily as simple as saying four things in the mirror. But those four things in the mirror were catalysts to me allowing myself to then work to retrain my brain to stop itself from saying things like oh, you're not worthy of love. Here this you're that to send. You are worthy of love just as you are. You are worthy of care and kindness and joy as much as anyone else. Um. And so yeah, it's been a it's been a journey because I think with the hashtag disabled and you, a lot of people were like, oh, well, you know you're you fixed yourself, you know you're happy now. But I mean, it isn't every single day constant battle to remind myself, especially now in these current political times, to remind myself that all this work that I've put in is worthy work and that work just means that even though I have to keep doing it every day, that just means that that makes it that much more important, because it's necessary to work at so that I can wake up every day and be the best version of myself, not only for myself, but for the world at large, for people who don't see people like me every single day, and I'm their window in. When Kia first tweeted a few selfies, He's gonna hashtag disabled and cute, she wasn't expecting to start a movement it would be a call for people with disabilities all over the globe to celebrate their bodies. She was just looking at selfies of herself and thinking, damn, I look good. Walk me through how you were feeling on febye right twelve when you first tweeted a selfie using the hashtag disabled and cues. I felt like a bad bleep. I really felt so good that I felt so good that day. And I was looking at those pictures, and there were pictures that I had taken before the twelve, you know, but I was looking at them with this like excitement and this renewed sense of self worth. You know. I was like, Oh, you didn't even know it. But first of all, Kia, that outfit that you have standing up by the door in one of the pictures slaps you look fantastic. Your skin looks clear, like all these things that I didn't see when the pictures were taken. I just woke up that morning and I was like, we still feel so good about ourselves. It's time to celebrate now. If you know anything about me, I'm very online, and so I was like, I'm going to celebrate on Twitter, and um, I'm gonna do so with the idea that I'm both disabled and cute. So I was like, oh, I like the way that sounds disabled and cute, not either, or so I picked the pictures that I thought I looked my cute tasting, and then I posted it, thinking like a couple of my friends would retweet it because they loved me, and like I wanted other people to use it, and I'm pretty sure in the threat, I was like, I hope that people use this. And then by the end of that week we had went viral. And then the end of next week it went global and I people were like, were you expecting that? I was like, no, literally, I was expecting five people to retweet it and be like, girl, you look so cute, and I would be like, love you, thank you, and that would be the end of it. So it is interesting the way that like it sounds so cliche to say, but I wasn't expecting to go viral, and maybe that's why it happened. After the hashtag went viral. Kis has magazines that she previously didn't feel pretty enough to ever see herself. Then we're calling to interview her. But more importantly than that, other people with disabilities were able to share their stories online and feel connected. The internet helped her have that thing. We're all looking for a sense of community and belonging and a chance to feel seen. If not for social media, that might not have happened. I think without it it wouldn't have been possible. Like I just think that we live in a world where if I didn't have the Internet, I wouldn't have the career that I have. For the opportunities that I have had, and it's like I've worked hard for them. Let me be clear, no one's handed me anything, but the reach that comes with social media um is not to be discounted, you know, And so much of the work that I've done has been so much about me sharing my personality along with the work, and so people will be like, oh, I want to work with Kia because I think she's funny and she's talented, or like, I want to work with Kida because this tweet made me and like I didn't know she wanted to talk about this, and now I'm going to give her the opportunity to talk about it. Like it's just it's very interesting the way that um social media works because I tweet and instagram as though nobody is actually looking at them, and then you find out that they are, and they're like, hey, I want to help in anyway I can. Like there's that that sense of community, that that feeling of belonging in a way that I never had before. You have one of my favorite quotes of all time. Twitter is like a trash can on fire, but it has all the things you love inside the trash can. Can you tell me more about that? But that's it's really what it's like. It's like, yes, this place is a mess. You know, there's so many things wrong with it, and like some days you're just like this is the worst place. Why am I still here? But you stay because first of all, you have people that you go about. You know, you can talk freely about so many things. You know, I can jump from talking about a TV show too, a movie to talking about how attractive like Keiki Lane and and eat just Elba are, or to talk about like politics or disability issues. And so for everything that's bad about social media or places like Twitter, there's a hundred things that are good about it, you know, the fostering of community for me, meeting people who have become such inherent press of my life through social media first, you know, and through Twitter first, and now these people I talked to every single day, these people I trust with so much of my life. And so Twitter is a dumpster fire, but there are so many good things about it. And so even when it's, you know, on fire, you can go to a corner of the Internet that's not and you can find solace there. And so it's it's special in that way because like all things, nothing is perfect. But so much of what I find keeps me going and back to Twitter is the relationships that I've made there and the things and the ability to be able to say what I want to say and not apologize for the space that I take up on the internet, you know, and to not apologize for having an opinion, you know, because I think a lot of black women um particularly to like black disabled women, we don't have offline spaces where we're as heard or as seen as the Internet makes us or allows us to be. Let's take a quick break and we're back. It's funny hell on the time of COVID, workplaces and events and activities are all making it so they can be done remotely. But disability activists have been calling for the world to be more accessible for a long time, and it seems like everyone else is just now catching up. This is a huge problem. When spaces aren't accessible, voices get shut out. Kia says that's one reason why the Internet can be such an important space for people with disabilities in an I r L world that isn't always built with them in mind. Online folks can build their own little corner of the web to find community and connection. A lot of places are inaccessible, you know, and so when we talk about the specific, the specificity or specific or whatever, the specific sactifical character to work septicity of you know, things like disability places are inaccessible. There's no places to sit. Elevators don't work, railings you're broken. Um, there's just no place to rest. Whereas like if I'm on the internet, I can be on the Internet from my bed or from a chair in my house, or you know, I can show up and be like this is who I Yeah, I mean, this is what you're gonna get. And I'm not apologizing because it feels like that, um, that that meme of uh Shara being like who's gonna check me? Boo? Because like you, like, you have trolls and people who say negative things, but at the end of the day, like who's gonna check me? Like who we were? What? What are you gonna do that? I like me living out loud and being happy and and sharing my stories and you know, manifesting things and like talking about my experiences, Like what are you gonna do about it? You can't be like, oh no, you can't do that on your platform because I'm gonna be who I am regardless and in places where I feel like, um, black women in particular are shut out by white voices, whether that's male or female. We can go on the internet into our own profiles or whatever, and we can say the things that we've wanted to say in those spaces where we're often shut out or just ignored or we never get the chance to speak. There's no one going before us in our own spaces that that you know, might take up too much time or we just ran out of time to hear from you. On the Internet, there's never someone running out of time to hear from you. You get to be your opener and the main act. You don't have to be like, oh, well, you know, I'm just waiting my turn, just biding my time. No, you just get to be able to be your full self whatever you want to share with the world, and no one's gonna be like, oh, um, let me speak for you, which I think makes the Internet that much more special because like they can't be like, oh no, you're talking too much. I mean people do, don't get me wrong. They'll be like, you're talking too much about disability, you're talking too much about queerness, you're talking too much about blackness. Um, but I can also be like black black black, and black of the black black. And so it's nice because you are really able to share your full self without having to be like I don't have to tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etcetera, etcetera on my page in this community that I've created, and there's nothing you can do about it. Like you can be mad, but you can't stop me from trying to create disgrace where the people that I care about, my people and myself feel comfortable like all of us. Kia is a multifaceted person with a wide variety of interests, things she's good at and things she likes talking about. On Twitter, you can find her talking about disability rights in one moment and lipstick in the next. This shouldn't come as a surprise to you. We're literally all like this, but there's an underlying assumption for folks web disabilities that that's the one thing that defines them. Do you ever feel that people you know expect you to only write about disability and disability activism online as if that's like the only thing about you. Yes, they do, they absolutely do. They're like um, like the A D A is the A D thirty The anniversary is coming up, and I've gotten so many articles like will you write about it? Will you do this? Will you do that? And these same people, some of them you know, I'm like, peck, yeah, I'll write about it, Like what do you mean? I care about this thing? But so many other people would not have reached out to me to write about it, for write about anything else for the publication, just the disability stuff. And I think for a while that really bothered me because I was like, why can't you see that I have other interests? Um? Why can't you see that I am a fully realized human being that isn't just always your disability, uh, your disability, let as liaison and um. And then then I got to a point where I was like, I'll tell these stories, but remember, Kia, you can also say no, And saying no for me is really hard. I'm like a inherent professional people please, but like just like professionally, Like I can say no personally, but I never can say no professionally. It teams and so I'm working on that. But also it's just like if somebody gives me the opportunity and they're like, hey, I want you to touch on disability, what they don't understand is they're going to get a trojan horse. I'll touch on disability because you want me to, Like, I'm gonna do the requirements of the job. But I'm also going to talk about other things, because I've decided that, you know, especially in writing The Pretty One, so many of those essays were me talking about things that I was never going to get the opportunity to in freelance pieces, and me talking about religion and talking about music and and talking about pop culture on a deeper level. That was my trojan horse. I was like, I'll talk about disability, We'll talk about the hashtag, we'll talk about what it means to be disabled, we'll talk about CP and exploit of teletons. But I'm also going to talk to you about paramore and generally bad up. And I'm gonna talk to you about cheesecake and the wild thorn berries, and I'm going to talk to you about clothes and these other things that I never ever ever get the opportunity to talk about in this book. And then it took the book being published for people to be like, oh, so you do like clothes, and you do like um um TV, and you do like this thing that me, this person who's not disabled also enjoys. I said, Wow, isn't that isn't that something the way that happens how we all have you know things that we enjoy whether we're disabled or not, that disabled people are actually people and not just their disability magic. Um. So it's it's been interesting now because I feel like I'm I'm in a better place where, um, I can say no to things, but also I can assert the fact that there are certain things that I want to talk about and then I'm going to talk about. And it's like, you know, you come on that ride with me, or you get left in the dust. So how do we get to a place where the assumption is, of course, this person is a multifaceted, complex human being. How can we get to a place where that's the default? And that's something you have to kind of trick people into understanding. Yeah, I mean, what a question because may mean it's too big of a question. I mean it kind of is. But I think it really does take effort on their part. Two ensure that they're willing to learn, and they're willing to see people who don't look like them in some way as human beings inherently, Like you can't just be the job of disabled people or queer people or black people or other people of color. Two say hey, I'm human, Hey I'm a fully realized person just like you. Like that whole thing about reaching across the aisle exhausts me, because reaching across the aisle for somebody who's holding a gun to your head, like, but you know what I mean. I think that it's an inherent societal thing where it can't just be the marginalized people begging them oppressors to see our worth. It has to be a fully collective like willingness for the people in power, specifically for me in terms of representation on TV and in film, to show aspects of lib realities that aren't so steeped in trauma, so that the only time that you see someone who's different than you is so based in trauma and death and pain that you don't see them as real human beings. You see them as these sort of objects that take nothing but constant pain and trauma and torture. Like black people know joy, disabled people know joy, Creer people know joy, and some of us at those intersections of all three or four or five or six or whatever, we experience happiness. And so why is it that the only time we're valuable is when you can mind our pain for entertainment, you know? And so I think a lot of it will really start with representation. And I think that, of course, representation isn't the issue. It's not going to save the world, but it's a start. More after this quick break and we're back now from marginalized people. Representation isn't the end all be all, but it is something. And for as many Americans experience some kind of disability, disability representation is pretty dismal. In most movies and TV shows, Either a character with disability is shown hating their body and hating themselves, or maybe, if they're lucky, they experience a fleeting, temporary love before dying and finally being quote free of their disability. In a piece for teen Vogue, Kia wrote about the way that people depicted the late Stephen Hawking after his death as finally being free of his wheelchair in the afterlife. But here's the thing. As Kia points out on her piece, Hawking didn't really have a big problem with having a disability. In fact, he says, if anything, they helped him in a way by shielding him from lecturing and administrative work that he would have otherwise had to have been involved in. So why are people so quick to erase disability or assume that people that have disabilities hate their bodies and their disability. Kia wants to open us up to more nuanced and complex depictions of disability, even if it's something she has to create herself. I want to create things TV or film that showcase people like me in the lead. But let us go beyond the idea of like, oh, we ate ourselves, like life sucks. Why don't you just like let me done? How could you love me? This is what I'm missing out by being disabled. This is the life that I had before, because right now, this reality representation is so caught up in this idea that like people come with disability and they lose so much value or joy in their life. And it's like, but what about us who were born this way? You know, I've been disabled since nine ninety one, okay, and like I've never known anything else, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I feel like this is who I am, and I am allowed the full spectrum of human emotion. And it's about time that I see a movie where the disabled girl gets the love interest and she doesn't die. And sure I had to write it, but hopefully you know what I mean. But hopefully it'll get made. And I have all these ideas for this medium that I love so much, to be more inclusive and to be broader and um just more fun. I think that, like what I always say is we critique the things we love the most, right I'm very um much a person who critiques Hollywood because I love Hollywood. I love the idea of creating something that people can watch in a theater, creating something that they can watch from their computer on Netflix or Hulu or any sort of streaming service. And because I love it so much, I'm like, fine, if I have to be the person who creates the representation, great, because I know it will be good. I'll rewatch it, you know. You know, I have faith in whatever it is that I'm creating. But it's also that like it's hard because you get these moments where things happen and they're like, oh, we're looking for this. But I wanted to not be so much of a moment and more of a movement, to have it be a thing that propels forward and not just this one off thing where like, oh you get to be the one in the room just the you know, because nobody wants to be by themselves. I don't want to be the only one in the room, which is a podcast that I love, but I want to be among people that look like me, not just me being the person that's like, hey, I'm speaking for X, Y and Z delegation, right, Yeah, I mean it's it's so it's so easy for marginalized folks to be pigeon held or pigeonholed in that way where okay, we have we have the one who is going to check that box and now we can now we can say we've we've achieved diversity or something like that, like as opposed to really being interested in in building out an inclusive room or an inclusive space or an inclusive audience or what have you, right, And it's like it's it's just frustrating because it's like that onus is so often on us, you know, like it's so often on us to be the ones to be like let us then, you know. And I think Gabriel Union was the one that said, like, I don't want to see at your table. If I had to been to get in the room, I'm going to create my own table. And I think what has to happen is that like we are going to have to create our own tables. You know, we are going to be able to be the ones that um create our own tables and try our best to populate them with people that we think are worthy. Because I don't want to be the person that UM. I don't want to be the person that's like, oh, yes, you chose me, yea. I want to be the person that's like, here's here's me, yes, but also here's five other people, here's six other people. Here people that you should be listening to. It's funny that you mentioned Hollywood. There's this movie that I loved growing up, like loved in like college when I was sort of ARTSI artsy college kid, Emily. And there's a scene in the movie Have you seen the movie Emily? Yes? I have. So there's a scene in the movie Amily. So Emily is meant to be this like quirky, you know, sweet French girl. And there's a scene where there's a man who is blind and she takes him by the arm, and it's played as if it's this like very sweet thing that she does for this this man who is blind, where she takes him and she describes all the things that he can't see because he's blind. And looking back now as an adult, I realized how fucked up that is that and how it was played to be like, oh, like she's so she's so in touch with humanity that she does this, and how insulting it is that she swoops in and like, you know, runs this guy around town and it's sort of the audience is meant to think that it's a sweet gesture. You know. It's so clear to me that Hollywood needs voices like yours who can actually tell authentic stories about what it is like, what the experience of being a person with disabilities is actually like. And when I watched that movie, now I'm like, well, clearly they didn't have anybody in the room who could speak to that experience, right because I watched Well, so I watched it in this Um, I think it was a film and alters class and like, I argue this very point even befo. It's so funny that I that I did, because in college I wasn't as vocal about what was going wrong and in terms of representation as I am now. Um, but yeah, even back then, I was like, no, what is this why, Like why did Why are we supposed to think that this is so great? I mean, we had like sections and people were like, oh, it was such a sweet moment, and I'm like, no, it wasn't. She just like took this guy. He was minding his own business, and she was just like, let me show you all the things you can't see. Like it was just very um what I call inspiration born, And it was very steeped in this idea of her being this like savior and doing this good deed for the day. And I just was like, ill, it's disgusted because that's that's what people think we want, you know, people, and and and I think that that is a inherent part of representation being what it is is that people think that we want them to shave us, or we want them to show us what we're missing quote unquote or um love us, if only temporarily. And that's that's harmful. So if they're not familiar with what Kia is calling disability born, you've probably seen it all over social media, videos of kids with disabilities being asked to prom or a kid with a disability joining a sports team. Videos that may seem harmless enough but actually use a person with disabilities to make able bodied people feel better, but people with disabilities that don't exist to make able bodied folks feel good or to be our inspiration. Kia says, sometimes people who are otherwise thoughtful about marginalized voices sometimes share these videos with good intentions, and in some ways that's even worse where they do and mean, it's like it's even a little bit more frustrating because they get so many other things, you know, but when it comes to that, it's like they use it as you know, my life might be bad, but at least it's not that bad. Or wow, look what they can do. You should be able to do that too, random person I don't know on the internet, or like or like, hey, you know it's it's it's just so beautiful. It made me cry this morning because they love a good like for your Monday morning cry, or like this will be so sweet and like magical and just just ten minutes of this will make you feel so good. And it's like, who is it making feel good? Though? Like because it's certainly not the person that you're turning into a spectacle for likes and retweets on the internet. Um, and so yeah, it is it's harder, I think when it's like well meaning people who get so many other aspects of lived experience, but don't quite understand how they're being harmful, and then when you kindly say as much, they buck against it and they're upset that you would even infer that that's what they meant, because they know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who's disabled. So this podcast is about creating monuments to all the marginalized voices to ship the Internet. And when disabled and Cute, what's happening? I thought you really having to fight to make sure that you got credit for this creation. Did you feel like you had to be constantly reminding people that this was something that you started just to make sure your voice wouldn't be erased? Yes, so easy. Just last week somebody messaging me and was like, I had no idea that disabled and Cute with your hashtag, had no idea that you were the one who created it, because um, it took that much work for me to be like this is. I had to like ask people like, please like any sort of affluent person that I knew were a person with a platform, I was like, if you use the hashta please say that it's mine, because people were, um, you know, just using it and like talking about it in podcasts and never another knitting me, making T shirts, making enamel pens, all these other different things, and my name was never mentioned. And so it's funny because people will literally still message me to this day being like, I didn't know that it was yours. Like I saw somebody said they listened to a podcast that I did, and that was the first time they had heard that it was my hashtag that I created. And and I think that happens to a lot of black creators, not just me. It happens all the time when you create, um like Blackout Day is by oh my god, mars Mark Sebastian. Yeah she was. She was on the show just last week. Yes, yes, yes, So it happened to her and they celebrity attached themselves to it and they ran with it and she was completely erased from that narrative. And so it's very It's not surprising when it happens, but it does hurt because you put in all this work for this thing that you created that was yours and your ya and other people will jump on it and claim to be there. It's just because they found and thought that that, you know, nobody was behind the video and they never think to do the research of who is the person behind this hashtag that I met, that I happened to stumble upon, or this thing that I created. It happens all the time, specifically to black people, I think, on the Internet, much more so because there isn't that inherent quest to credit them, like there might be someone who has someone's peer and they don't want to seem like they're biting their idea. Mm hmm. Did you feel that when that happened to disabled and cute that the actual message was co opted or whitewashed as well? Yes, do we have the time? Yes, it really was because what I found was like people would write about, especially when it first happened. They would write about the hashtag, right, and my name would be there like key about ever a picture of me, but not but always pictures of um, white disabled people using it, Like they would put this is what would get me when I would see articles about it, and they would tell me, like we wrote about your hashtag, and the person on the cover of it would be a person who used it, but it was never me. And so I would see slides shows celebrating the hashtag, never any people of color ever, just completely all white, disabled people, and I'm like, and I and I started to call them out. I'm like, you, you said my name, you wrote it down, But when you have a picture of somebody else as the head image, you're giving them credit for something they didn't even create, they just used. And so I would like imployed that. I would like find the emails of the writers and and um say as much. Or when they would reach out to me to do an interview, I would say, Okay, I'll do the interview, but I want you to make sure it when you do a slideshow of the hashtag and the pictures there, it's diverse. The fact that you would even have to say that is so troubling, and I think really illustrates how deep the problem goes. Because you're you're not shy about being a black, queer person, right Like, that's a big part of how you show up online and show up to the world. And so the fact that they would kind of a race that part of of the creator of this thing they say they want to tough right about it just goes to show how deep, the problem goes yeah, and it's it's funny because they, like a couple of them pushed back, They're like, well, you know, I'm just I'm um, I'm only sharing, you know what I see. So I would go into the hashtag and send them pictures of disabled people of color to put into the articles because they couldn't see them from the hashtag, and some of them would be like at the very top. So I'm like, no, you just scrolled past them because you that's your inherent bias. And it's it was wild to me because I was like, I'm doing part of your job because you're uncomfortable with the idea of not only showing a picture of the person who created the hashtag, but showing pictures of people who look like the person who created the hashtag using it. I mean, yeah, it is how you put it in so accurate. Having to do their job. It's like, not only are you like, first of all, you're like talent, so really you should just be you know, they're writing about you, but having to also curate their photos so that they're inclusive, having to also educate them on why all of this unpaid labor that you're not really it's not really your job to do that, you're just expected to take on it's it's it's really sad, and I think a big part of this is I think that folks in the media need to be better and take a little responsibility of of the platforms that we're helping to create, because it's it's I don't know if it's laziness or not being able to see the full picture of what they're contributing to, but the standards just got to be high or we're gonna tell these stories, either they need to be told thoughtfully and fully, or we need to not be telling them right like. We have to do it. We have to do justice by these stories, and it's it's disheartening to hear the ways that folks in the media are just not prepared or not able or not willing to do that. I think it's really about not apologizing for for wanting proper representation or not being cast aside as its being some silly thing that doesn't really matter, because it matters because our culture is shaped by the things that we see, you know, how we view others. There that's our window into the world. And so if you're gonna do the work, do the work. Don't go fifty per cent on something that needs to at least be a hundred and twenty. If representation is the window to the world, then Kia's opening that window a little bit more. In the fall of she'll release her first picture book with a tree of books called Sam Supersedes about a little black girl with cerebral palsy going back to school, shopping with her mom and best friends so the next generation of little ones with disabilities can see themselves reflected in the ways she wished she had when she was a kid. He has learned that sometimes you have to write the books you want to read and create the world you want to see. And even a world full of people who can't see you can't see your joy or your dreams, you can always see yourself pretty much just trying to follow every single dream because it feels like now anything is possible in terms of like me making sure that I always say yes to myself because somebody's gonna say no, but I'm not going to be the one to do it. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tad. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss Creative Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tara Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Motto as our contributing producer. I'm your host bridget Pad. For more podcast for My Heart, check out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah,