I will be the first to admit that my experience in the industry has been super privileged. I was lucky to find a gig that works for me and hasn’t created in me a serious hatred towards the world in general for being kind of terrible and fucked up around race and sexuality. Having said that, I do recognize ugliness when I see it, and this industry is, in some ways, extremely racist, as are some of the people who participate in it. I often struggle to put that into words, because sometimes it’s as simple as someone thinking my body, because it is not white, is not worth as much as a woman whose body is white, and sometimes it’s as complicated as a client going all the way around the race issue (in his mind) but saying things that are clearly race specific and kind of awkward and weird (like “I love the things you people do with your hair.” because he didn’t want to say “Black Women” even though “you people” is so much worse and actually made me recoil in disgust and say, without thinking, “If you’re going to fetishize me you should figure out a way to do it that doesn’t make you sound like a troglodyte, ugh.”)