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