Sexuality is who you want to be with. Gender identity is who you want to be in the world.
Hari Nef
I admire actresses who are willing to jettison the easy route toward exposure and commercial success as an actor in favor or a slow burn, choosing projects carefully, and building an artistic practice over time that feels specific to who they are as artists.
I had family who exposed me to all sorts of different media involving actors - films, theatrical productions touring through Boston. My grandparents, particularly my mother's parents, were huge fans of all the arts, and they took me to these shows and exhibits at a very young age, so I was just immersed in it.
Fashion gave me the platform that has made this transition from fashion to Hollywood, from East Coast to West Coast. Fashion gave me the platform that has made this easier than it is for a lot of other people. And I will always count fashion as the industry that was first to welcome me and embrace what I could do.
I live in a little studio apartment, so I try to keep the space super clean at all times.
Fashion has always captivated me because, like I said, it has the potential to create narratives about what's beautiful, aspirational, chic, masculine, feminine, glamorous, etc. Generally, this power is dispatched in useless ways.
I could have hidden in Boston and lived at home for three years, gone through my transition, taken voice lessons to make my voice more feminine, gotten gender reassignment surgery, and spent time to complete my transition, but I didn't want to wait. I wanted to be in the world.
When it comes to modeling, I always feel like my body is a myth or a story that is told by other people, and no one knows what my body really looks like.
I liked playing video games because I felt like I was inside of the story in a way that I didn't feel when I was just watching something. Any chance I could get to step into the shoes of another person, I would take. I couldn't get enough of stories.
There's something very noble about the bowling shoe. It has very little pretense, and it's kind of naughty. You have to share them with a bunch of other people, which is so kinky in a way that I like. What other shoes would you actively share with other people?
If I ever called myself an activist, I regret it, and I was cornered into it by an industry who couldn't justify me taking up space without saying that I had some kind of radical political agenda because they saw my participation as a radical political thing. Which it was not.
I see a Reiki healer from time to time. She sits on my bed, and I lie in her lap. She puts her hands on me for about 45 minutes, and she reads my energy. Whenever I'm having a hard time, I call her. I also go to weekly therapy, and that has been invaluable. Also, getting on medication for my 'neural atypicalities,' I guess we might call them.
I search my name on Tumblr more than I Google myself, and I Google myself every day.
In an ideal world, I wouldn't have to change my body. I wouldn't have to do all this stuff. I wouldn't have to be pretty or 'feminine,' and people would respect that.
I keep a very cold apartment - I tend to crank my AC just about as low as it can go. I sleep with a big, warm comforter, even during the summer, and just burrow underneath it.
My experience with 'Transparent' has completely spoiled me because it was the safest, most transpositive set ever. I didn't have to worry about all the usual things - like when people have a vision of your transness that you're not comfortable with. When they don't know the correct gender pronouns by which to refer to you.
When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I 'do things in front of people.' I don't know why I do what I do. I've tried working behind the scenes. I felt left out!
I was romantically socialized as a gay man, and now that I am, for most intents and purposes, a heterosexual woman, I have to learn how to talk to straight men, which is the scariest thing I've ever done.
I'm fun, ruthless, articulate, impatient, maybe a little cavalier. I'm a woman and a feminist. I'm transgender. I'm an actress, a reluctant writer, occasionally a potato-shaped model.
I got the Fire Stick as a gift at the Amazon Emmys after-party in 2015, and because I haven't lived in a house with cable television since I lived with my parents as a child, I've just streamed everything. I can afford cable. I have a television. But I only stream things.
Being a woman is an option, being trans is an option, and they're options that appeal to me. We need to listen to people - not labels, not semantics.
I've certainly been in situations where I've been rejected and endangered and had my humanity put in question - just as almost every woman on the planet has.
To see a trans body in this ideal space - on a cover, in an ad - these are spaces that have immense cultural power to dictate what is beautiful, what is glamorous, what is aspirational, what is sexy, what is clean. That can be very powerful and helpful in the de-stigmatization of trans bodies.
Fragrance is important to me because of its emotional dimension. I feel like fragrances are able to transport, stir emotion, and bring up memories. You can wear makeup, you can dress yourself up, but fragrance gives a powerful aspect to how you can present yourself that you can't necessarily get any other way.
If we didn't desensitize ourselves in some way, every day would feel like its own tragedy.
I think people get stuck in a cycle with social media sometimes and don't know how to make adjustments that are personal.
When I don't wear makeup, it's not because I'm lazy, but it's me making this radical bid for the feminization of my body and being confident in that.
I feel like the most fascinating parts of a trans life take place after the decision to transition. They take place when you're in this new body, in this new life, and you start realizing things.
I like to let my skin breathe, I don't like to stress it out. I don't like to put it through very much.
I think that often my work is obscured by my gender identity.
I prefer men who are queer. Not gay men, but queer men - guys with an open mind. Bisexual men, because they're able to understand the different elements of the body without judging that I don't conform to a certain ideal.
I think that it should be every woman's choice, depending on how she feels comfortable. I can't think of any objective reason why you should wear makeup unless it makes you feel good.
I'm teaching myself how to screenplay write.
When we say 'trans is beautiful' or 'being trans is the best,' that is a truth we created for ourselves that's clearly not true in every signal we get from the world around us.
I'm really into the way sound works in film, and I did a little bit of sound design for theater in college.
If I get too glam and polished and pretty, people are like, 'Hari, why aren't you speaking up about issues?' And if I start speaking up about issues, people are like, 'Why can't you just be an actress?'
When you're a teenager, everything is amplified because everything is a first. The first time you feel othered, the first time you feel rejected, the first time you fall in love... it's the first time, so it's so vivid, and everything feels like the whole world almost, because it is your whole world; your world is small when you're a teenager.
I get a facial maybe a couple of times a year.
I love 'Heathers.' I love 'Spring Breakers.'
I don't want the same trans story to be told over and over again. I don't want people to get stuck on this very western idea of what it means to be transgender.
I travel a lot, so I don't have a morning routine because where I wake up tends to be inconsistent. But I'm always really, really hungry when I wake up, so breakfast is important.
I can say with confidence that my trans/transfeminine identity emerges as the most heavily problematized aspect of my lived experience. My transness is not a problem on its own but problematized by a society that reviles it, hates it, fails to understand it - or does not wish to.
I think that you need to balance a critique of feminine, patriarchal beauty ideals while simultaneously understanding how they can make you safe, and they can make you feel safe, and they can open up certain doors for you that would have been closed.
Ariel is the most boring Disney princess.
There are no trans roles, and if there are, they go to Jared Leto or Eddie Redmayne or Elle Fanning... Will there ever come a point where I could play a woman in a realistic, naturalistic drama and have there not be the word 'trans' in the script?
I identify with anyone who logged online in elementary school and never logged off.
Leaving the house in a pair of flip-flops in Manhattan is disgusting to me, no shade.
Dysphoria will always be a painful place.
When I saw that Laverne Cox was on the cover of 'Time' magazine, I totally lost it. It was a coup for the girls!
I'm grateful to be in school developing my practice as an actor. In that process, it's difficult to say that you've definitively 'learned' something.
