Laura Du Vè

There’s nothing more inspiring to me than meeting someone who is living their authentic truth—especially someone whom I have adored through the screen of my phone for quite some time now. Beauty, flair, vulnerability and strength of character are just some of the traits that stand out to me about Laura Du Vè. And from the moment we met, sitting beside each other on green velour couches in a gorgeous cafe in the heart of Fitzroy—sun beaming in through the windows, greenery hanging from everywhere—I couldn’t help but feel utterly content, and motivated to want to do and be more. Read our chat below.

You’re a photographer. You do make-up, you do modelling…what else do you do?!

Wait. That sounds so bad! That’s a lot, you do a lot…

I talk a lot on the internet, I’m a creative. I guess I started off doing this all through Tumblr, and I was posting a lot of photos of myself just wearing Hopeless Lingerie because I loved the brand and I actually went to high school with the sister of the person who started Hopeless Lingerie. I’d known of the brand for a long time, and I asked if she would make my size, and she did!  So I tried them on and posted them on Tumblr and [the photos] got reblogged…I don’t even remember how many times, but clearly it was revolutionary to see a fat person wearing lingerie that showed off her belly and she wasn’t shying away or hiding herself. That was pretty revolutionary for me, just because I’d been seeing a whole other bunch of body positive bloggers online- this is back in 2013-2014!  It was kinda the forefront of when body positivity went a bit more mainstream. The movement had of course been around since the 60s, started by fat activists who were sick of being overlooked and disrespected. [These bloggers] were posting amazing photos of themselves, and it was the first time I’d seen anyone with a body like mine being stylish, and actually being interested in being fashion forward and maybe avant-garde or a little bit different, and just playing with style. So, I just started doing it as well and it just took off from there. Then Instagram got really big, and I transferred from Tumblr to Instagram. And it just went from there, I got a bit of attention, and it’s now a thing! 

How do you find the attention? 

It’s sweet, it’s super sweet. I’m very grateful that I have a platform at this point. It’s still a smaller platform in the bigger scheme of things, but I haven’t seen anyone in the Australian context talk about the things that I talk about, in the way that I talk about them. And I’ve had so many people DM me or message me or see me out who have just said how grateful they are that I’m just saying the things that I’m saying. I’m just like okay, clearly I’m doing something that’s affecting people in a positive way…I think it’s quite nice. I’m still quite taken aback when people know who I am, but it’s also super endearing. It takes courage to come up to someone who you think is kinda cool, so I’m always grateful when people do. I went to a queer night [recently] and I had four people come up to me at once and was like this is the biggest mob that I’ve had in real life! It was bizarre but very sweet and encouraging. Considering it was queer people as well. That’s one of the communities that I tend to focus on. They’re my people! So it was uplifting.

I grew up in a very slut-shaming, very homophobic all girls school. Around a lot of conservatism.  I think it’s just generally white Australia—the way that it shouldn’t be, but the way that it is at the moment. I remember that the worst thing that you could be was a fat dyke and to realise I was that was fucking terrifying. To come out of that—I’ve been out for ten years now—it’s so fascinating to see how intrigued people are by me. How people are drawn to me, and I suppose it’s because of my difference. It’s because of my uniqueness, and it’s because they’re craving that difference. [It’s funny how life] swings and roundabouts, y’know. It’s just like, we’re told one thing, yet we craving individuality and difference constantly. It’s like, why aren’t we uplifting that difference always?

I think one thing that really stands out to me about you and about your posts is that you don’t shy away from things. And even something that you posted the other day about your facial hair, and you also posted something about how—with body positivity—we’re living in this current world we’re people are accepting the notion of body positivity, but there are these skinnier girls who are showing their rolls or their love handles to show their followers, I’m just like you…

—And I’m like, great! That’s awesome! I’m excited for you! However, let’s not ignore the fact that  thinner women have a certain amount of privilege because of their thinness and, because of that, they are given more access to certain things in life. You are accepted more easily, you are talked to at a bar by someone rather than completely ignored, you are given more job prospects, you are taken more seriously because of your proximity to thinness and whiteness. It happened the other night to me and has happened to me throughout my life. You’re automatically seen as less important because of how fat you are. You’re only seen as worthy as how little space you take up as a woman. This doesn’t happen to me all that often now, because I either shut off that negative part of my brain that’s self-deprecating, or I push through those feeling because I now know my worth. I’m also not trying to impress anyone other than myself. I think that’s something that needs to be recognised by a lot of smaller-bodied people. To just recognise that it’s not a bad thing to have privilege. In fact, it’s actually pretty good! But, just accept that you do have it and that you will be treated better because of it. 

This is all not to say that I’m not about thin people loving on their bodies, owning their bodies or going through their own eating disorders, trauma and general life, those things are legit—but in social situations, in situations where you’re going to work, or a date or whatever, you will be received better and it’s going to be easier for you. Similar goes for, as white people, if we were to go for a job interview, we’re going to be considered more seriously than say another counterpart that, say, has a non-anglo name. It’s not the same at all, but I guess it’s similar in that sort of sense where privilege is there, and it’s important to recognise it. 

With regard to that idea of white privilege and racism, particularly in Australia—I’m speaking very broadly here, but we do consider ourselves to be a very inclusive and multicultural people. But there is no denying, there are underlying race issues that are prevalent in our country, and I know that you have been quite open or vocal about them…

Well, yeah. I guess because we have so much media that white-washes everything that happens that aids in this culture we are in. Australian racism is very deeply ingrained and is very subtle and nuanced. You just need to look back at Australian history and its treatment of indigenous people (they weren’t considered citizens until the 1967 referendum) and the White Australia policy.

I read this tweet earlier this morning…it was basically saying that Australia sees itself as this really laidback, easygoing place but, in reality, it’s actually pretty fucked up—unless you’re white and you haven’t seen that. Just talk to anyone that isn’t white here, and they’ll tell you a very different story of their experience. I’ve had friends of mine come over from the States and they’re like are you joking? We have work to do—a lot of work to do—in regards to race, and repairing outdated, hurtful and discriminative laws. Including the treatment of Aboriginal kids in detention and giving land back to its rightful owners amongst a lot of work around anti-blackness in Melbourne more specifically.  These topics are important for me to discuss because I think that white Australia is at a point where a lot of white people won’t listen to anyone but people in their echo chambers, and if I can use my privilege to get other white people to sit down and listen is a small way I can give back. Just because someone is telling you something and they aren’t of the white experience, doesn’t mean that they’re not telling the truth.

I want to cultivate a space online that allows the voices of other minority groups to be heard, seeing as I was lucky enough to be seen and heard by my own following. I’m also lucky to have close friendships with indigenous, and black women of colour who have taught me so much. Rather than talk for them or over them, I want to highlight their voices. That’s what I want to do with the [upcoming] podcast (which has been pushed back a bit!) with my friend Abbey. Abbey herself has been doing some amazing work of her own—she’s been working with the Arts Centre,  doing decolonising workshops and starting her own event called Sudo Girls, highlighting poets and music from people of south Sudanese descent. You can find them on Facebook. 

The world is changing. We can see it. But change is of course a slow journey. The art institutes are really taking note and listening to minority voices at the moment and I think that’s a beautiful little baby step—we’ve got a lot of work to do, but it’s a step in the right direction and that feels really good.

In the news at the moment, there’s a lot of attention surrounding Sudanese gangs and violence, and putting this horrible white-wash over these people; almost instilling a sense of fear—I suppose—into the viewing audience, into the public. Do you mind me asking what your opinion is on this?

I think it’s all complete bullshit. It is entirely a fear-mongering tactic because we have an election coming up. It’s entirely fear-based, it’s not factual at all. If you were to look at statistics, you would see that the most crimes committed in Australia are by white Australian and New Zealand men. 

About 1% of alleged criminal offenders in Victoria in the year ending September 2017 were Sudanese-born, quoting the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) while the Sudanese and South Sudanese communities together make up just 0.14% of Victoria’s total population! The over representation of crime is entirely a misconception and misconstruction. People born in Sudan made up 6% of all recorded offenders, compared with 71.5% born in Australia and 5.2% born in New Zealand. I got all these stats from The Guardian newspaper. In fact the overall crime rate in Victoria fell in 2017, according to the most recent CSA release. 

There were 391,153 recorded criminal incidents in the 12 months to September 2017, coming down from a peak in 2016. That’s a decrease of 4.8% over the past 12 months but an increase of 16.3% over the past five years.

The proportion of crimes committed by young people—defined by CSA as people aged under 25—has actually fallen in the past decade from 52% of all recorded offences in 2007-2008 to 40% in 2015-2016. The stats put out by Channel 7 and Channel 9 were incorrect and It just doesn’t add up. It’s pure racism at its finest. Especially recently when Laa Chol was murdered, and for Malcolm Turnbull to use her as a political pawn to dehumanise her and hurt her community further just shows how far we have to go with our politicians pushing the Liberal “white” agenda.  

You just have to look at what our government is doing to refugees to know that Australia is an incredibly racist country. Also, in regards to racism, I think it’s important to recognise that to be called “racist” isn’t the worst thing in the world. It’s important us white people don’t immediately get upset and defensive—that’s your key moment to listen and to learn. That’s your moment to be like fuck, okay, what have I done?! and reflect. Because every white person is racist. We all are. We grew up in a society that teaches us that from birth! I think that in itself is important to really listen to the people around you who are calling you out rather than being like nah, I have so many friends who are different races! Cool, you can still have friends who are different races and be racist. We all grew up in a society that teaches us that, institutionally and systemically. That’s where white privilege comes into it—systemically, if you look at it, white people have a more progressive life than that of someone else from a different race. 

I want to talk to you about racism in treatment of death, with particular regard to Eurydice Dixon—the way that her death was treated, in comparison to Laa Chol and the way that her death was treated. We talk about how hard it can be to be a female in this time in general—we always have to have our wits about us, we always have to be aware of our surroundings just in case. So there’s that female factor. But in regards to the way that both of these females deaths were treated, that racism factor comes in to play.

The race factor definitely comes into that. You see how outraged everyone was [over Eurydice’s death], the whole vigil that happened. I’m not saying that she doesn’t deserve that—she does deserve that because that was a horrendous thing to happen to her, and it literally happened up the road from where I live. It was very fucking close to home. But at the same time, what makes her death more devastating than Laa Chol’s? Or any other woman of colour who has been murdered this year? Where were their vigils? 

Further to that, did Eurydice’s death get more coverage because it ties into this idea that rapists and murderers are people who don’t know you? The scary boogieman in the dark? Because that’s why I think it got so much media attention. Because when it is someone that you know that assaults you or murders you or rapes you, people don’t want to have that conversation because it’s too hard. Whereas, if it’s a stranger, it’s like well they didn’t know, so we can just blame her for walking out alone at night. It’s like no, no, no—that’s not correct. We need to be treating these the same, with regards to the #MeToo Movement, majority of assaults happen within family or friends. It’s always someone you know, it’s not [always] a dark stranger in an alleyway…that’s why it got so much footage, because it was that. 

There was another woman who was east Asian, Qi Yu, and she passed away in Sydney literally a few days after Eurydice, and her death was nowhere near on the media’s watch at all, and it was because her housemate killed her. It’s just like, how are we not talking about how men treat women? How are we not talking about how we can teach the men in our lives to be better? Side note: why is the onus on women to fix men and not men to be more self-reflective? Why are we not teaching young boys to respect when a girl says no? Why are we just saying “boys will be boys”? Why are we continuing [to teach] them to think that women owe them their bodies, their jobs, their time?

It’s even along that same idea of how guys behave when you’re out—inviting you home with them…

Or even touching your hips as they walk pass you! What gives them the sign that I have consented to them touching me?

It’s funny, when I was younger I didn’t even think twice about these sorts of situations. I was ignorant to this whole idea. And it’s even like when the first excuse to come to our minds is I’ve got a boyfriend to try and shut them down—it’s as if they’ll accept us rejecting them because we’re another man’s property. But if we individually reject them, there’s no backing down. Why should we have to make those excuses?

Totally. I’ll say that in an Uber on my way somewhere…

It’s bizarre that this behaviour has been ingrained in us—insinuating, you know, that I’ve got a boyfriend and I’m on my way to his house. We shouldn’t have to do that, but we do it. It’s that instinctual mechanism that we use to handle the situation. We need to be able to get to that stage where we can safely say no, I’m not interested and cut it off.

It’s a safety precaution…and more importantly, for [males] to respect no. Men only respect other mens property and women are mens possessions, right? It sucks that that’s one of the only safe ways that we know that’s the end of the conversation. 

I can see a change, it’s happening, however it’s definitely slower here. #MeToo has been around for a year now but not that much has changed in the Australian climate. I feel like [in Australia], it’s socially ten years behind the States in a lot of ways. We are a younger country, but we are stubborn as a culture—the white Australian culture is stubborn as fuck. Unless a man over 50 is telling you what is what, you’re not going to really listen. 

I can see change within media since I was a kid. The more media representation we have—of women of colour and men of colour on screen, I think that’s brilliant and a step in the right direction. But wow, we still have a long way to go.

Do you think that when our generation comes into power things are going to be completely different?

Don’t know, honestly. I would love to think so, but I also live in a beautiful, little lefty bubble that is safe and good for me as a queer woman. Especially with Malcolm Turnbull being our [former] Prime Minister—not that Scott Morrison is any better—and Trump being in power, and a lot of alt-right groups popping up through social media, honestly I don’t know. With the internet as well, I hear all the time of these weird Reddit groups of men talking shit and saying awful things. 

I don’t know! I want to think the best, but shit’s going to get worse before it gets better. Especially when social media has a habit of reflecting back what we want to see so we’re just talking to our echo chambers rather than to each other as a larger group with different views. I think those spaces are important for queer, trans and people of colour to protect ourselves, however it also creates this ‘us vs them’ dichotomy which isn’t good for larger society. You can see that that’s currently happening with our government and the US government. I think shit’s going to have to get real fucking bad for it to be switched. 

You were talking before about how you went to an all-girls high school and how that was a difficult thing for you. The confidence that you have now, is that something you’ve always had?

Pff, no! Fuck no! I thought I was a potato until I was 23. I had terrible self-esteem as a teen. I was not into fashion—mostly because I didn’t think that anything fit me, so didn’t have any sense of style. I was hanging out with the self-identified freaks and emos [who were] really punk. I was pretty punk. We were all jokingly called by everyone else “the lesbians” and they were always like “except for you, Laura. You’re not!” Because I looked really femme. It’s was like “ha ha—jokes on you, I’m the gayest one in this group!” But I think I came into my own after high school. It was purely my online relationships, my communities online that truly held who I really was. I was still coming into my queerness, I didn’t have a lot of queer friends like me in Melbourne. My only gay friends were in the UK who I met through forums. This was back around 2006-2011. I was deeply on MySpace and LiveJournal and Facebook but didn’t have any sense of community in real life.

Through…meeting other queer women, it was when I was kinda like oh my god, you’re all into fashion. You’re all into looking really cool and having all these cool club looks that are really interesting and bright and colourful and you’re not shying away from colour. Just high femininity, accepting that femininity. For so long, I had been internalising a lot of misogyny and a lot of not wanting to show my femininity, because that was seen as lesser—seen as weakness. And then I was like actually, that’s really fucked up. I really like being feminine. And also being a queer woman as well, I was around a lot more masculine women and non-binary people, and I always felt overdressed or out of place because of my femininity. Seeing other women who loved their femininity, who loved pink, who loved reclaiming all these colours and all these things we were told are [Barbie-like], it was really strengthening for me when i first came into the queer scene.

It was through all these connections with other women, and them teaching me about feminism and teaching me about reclaiming my own power, is how I came into myself. That, and seeing other women on Tumblr posting their outfits and I would [think] these girls are so stylish, and majority of them were actually fat, black women in the US who I was following because they had similar body shapes to me—they had the uneven belly, or the butt that’s like a butt-shelf; all that sort of stuff that you were just shying away from, they were openly talking about it. Also dating some really incredible women in my life who really brought me out of my shell—who saw me in my true power and who really brought [it out of me]. It was actually really amazing, someone who I dated six or seven years ago, I remember when we broke up, she told me you’re still really beautiful, regardless of whether we date or not—you’re beautiful, and smart and stunning, and I think you’re a phenomenal person. For the first time in my life, at the time I was 22, I believed it. Even if we weren’t dating, I still believed it. That was revolutionary for me. Since then, I think I’m cute. 

Do you mind me asking when you came out and how that experience was for you?

I was 19. I came out as bi when I was 17—but I wasn’t, it was just a fun stepping stone that [made it] a bit easier for me to come out…that’s not everyone’s story, and bi-sexuality is a legitimate identity. But yeah, I came out at 19 [when] I started dating my first girlfriend. She was over at my house days at a time and my parents were like why is this girl over all the time? I was like no reason. We dated for two years, it was really great…it was really hard. My folks weren’t okay with it. My dad was pretty fine, but my dad was like oh, your mum’s not going to like that too much. My mum had a little more internalised homophobia than I think she intended. She loves gay culture—she loves drag, she loves gay men—but gay women, I think there was a lot of internalised misogyny, homophobia, and just wanting the best life for me. [She was] scared of the hardship that I was going to face. I can understand that, but I needed her in that moment to say I love and accept you, and she didn’t say any of those things. She was very anglo and just pushed everything down, and we didn’t talk about it for a few years.

It wasn’t until I sat her down at coffee and said: hey, I can still have the white picket fence and the family if I want to. I don’t know if I want that, but I’m not going to say that to her right now. But I [told her that] I can still have all these things. Then when the marriage equality debate came up, that was rough—it was so fucked up—in the sense that I was seeing so many of my friends get yelled at [by strangers]; I myself was yelled abuse at on the street. For my mum to actually be like we’re voting yes, and her messaging my brothers to [tell them to] make sure [they] get their vote in—that was a really nice moment for me. It’s a baby step, but it’s something.

What you were saying before, about you and your friends being abused in the street. What was that like, experiencing that kind of attack on your character?

It’s awful of course. It was conflicting for me personally because as a very feminine person, I get read as straight sometimes, so it’s a very different experience for me than it is for other friends of mine who are more visibly queer or who are more visibly trans. I know a lot of my friends who are women both queer and trans, were getting most of the abuse.

I genuinely want to cry right now. That’s fucked.

This is what queer and trans people face in Australia in 2017-2018. It’s heartbreaking but it’s important to talk about it. I’ve been verbally attacked several times. It’s happened to me twice during that particular plebiscite period; one time I was with my friend, we were going to a queer night—I was all dressed up, I had my hair up, I looked really cute, I was feeling myself. I walked down Nicholson Street and some guy just yelled VOTE NO at me, and I was just like…I mean, you could clearly see—I had my undercut out, I looked a bit more visibly queer. He knew that [comment] was going to hurt me and he still said it.

The other time it happened was someone just yelled “you fucking dyke” as I was sitting at a tram stop, minding my own business. It hurts, but it’s also this weird thing where, because I get read as straight so often, part of me was like thank you for seeing me in my truth! 

I like how you see the positive in that comment!

I mean, I kind of had to. It’s like fuck you but also thank you. You have to laugh through the pain sometimes. 

But still, that’s really fucked up that shit like this happens. 

It’s really fucked up, but I guess it’s just part of the queer experience. It doesn’t mean that it’s okay and it just means that straight people have a lot of work to do. I think it comes down to our straight allies to really make those conversations happen, to really be present and to say something when you hear someone use homophobic or transphobic language. 

You were saying that you started on Tumblr, and then made the transition to Instagram. Having used these public platforms, do you receive a lot of bad or negative comments and, if so, how do you deal with them?

I used to, and now I don’t really. I think because the majority of my following is like 75% women, so the men who comment are pretty quickly gone. It’s a beautiful space and I feel really lucky to have cultivated a space where it’s majority women or queer people who follow me. Mostly, it’s just supportive and it’s really beautiful. I mean, a few years ago when I first started doing it, I was getting a lot of hate and that was really hard. But I’m also a white woman who has an hourglass figure so I think that I have a lot of privilege that way. I’m not going to have the same experience as someone else who has a different body shape to me, who has a different skin colour—all those sort of things come into play. My experience has been pretty easygoing, whereas I hear so many stories of another friend of mine who just gets hate all the time. [These comments] hurt but, in the bigger scheme of things, it’s manageable—I can block these people. 

The way that I dealt with it, I would just bite back. Mostly it was men who would comment and say a bunch of disgusting things, or it would be women who were significantly thinner than me…if it’s women commenting, I’m usually like okay, you’ve clearly got some internalised stuff—you’re working through it, you’re on your own journey. We get it. Maybe just don’t say this shit on my profile? And I’ll DM them usually, like cool—clearly you have some body image issues that you’re trying to work through yourself so that’s your journey. I’m not going to have a go at you for that. But maybe just don’t say shit to other people on the internet when you know it’s really going to hurt their feelings. I recently had someone write me an email faining faux concern for my body because I apparently looked like a fridge to her. I emailed her back and told her to seriously reflect on what she was wanting to get out of sending this to me and she emailed back to say that her mental health was shot, and the things her ex-boyfriend had said to her were the things she had sent to me as a way to maybe make herself feel better. She had a similar body shape to mine and was envious of me appearing happy online. It hurt but I knew where she was coming from; I knew immediately that she was projecting her own experience onto me. I told her regardless of what kind of mad mental health place you’re in, it could have been incredibly dangerous to send that kind of message to someone with less understanding. For someone younger and naive to read those kind of comments could instil another eating disorder, or possibly suicide. It’s moments like that you’ve gotta think this is a learning moment for someone. I initially was really angry, but processing it through humour on my Instagram story made it feel a lot easier to not take on these comments as fact.

Especially if you don’t know them…not that I’m saying that it’s cool to say things like that to someone you do know, but I think it makes it for a different conversation when you’re purposely writing mean and hurtful things about someone, their body, when they just blatantly didn’t ask you.

Totally. But that’s the way that I just handle it…The funniest thing I find is when men comment on my [posts] with advice—like I’ve asked for this advice. I posted a photo a few weeks ago of me in my mirror, and the lighting was slightly dark, and this one dude—this stallion on a horse—came through, like here is the one piece of advice you’ve always wanted in your life. I know you’ve been waiting for this moment! And he was like yeah, I reckon if you just move the light a little bit and you just like lit it a bit better and maybe brightened the image. And I was like oh my god, thank you so much—that’s amazing, thank you for taking the time out of your day to help me, a poor helpless woman who wouldn’t have been able to light my own selfie image on my own Instagram. God bless you. So usually I’ll just respond like sorry, did I ask for any of this advice? Clearly he just wanted to help this poor woman.

A true god of a man.

I think one of the things that I respect most about you is that you’re extremely vulnerable online, and there have been a couple of posts where you have made it clear that you’re not feeling your best at that given time. But you still put yourself out there. 

On the days that I’m feeling myself—like today, I did my make-up real good and I was like daaaaamn girl—I’m happy to post. I feel good, I look good. And obviously I don’t have the same following as you by any stretch of the imagination. But the days that I’m not feeling myself, I shy away from posting. I shy away from even looking at social media. But you don’t, and I love that. How do you still find that, I suppose, energy to post?

Constantly, I constantly feel like that. Any time I post, usually the next day I’m like oh, was that a good thing to post? But I’ve seen so many of my other friends be super vulnerable, like my Instagram friends—who we’ve all become friends being influencers or whatever—and I’ll have really long FaceTime conversations with them, and just talk about vulnerability and the strength it takes to be online. I know that it’s worth it even though it is really scary.

I’m not feeling it all the time. At the moment, I’m actually feeling really blergh about it. I’m like, what am I doing? I’m trying to up my game a bit, but I’m also [considering if] my captions are interesting enough. It’s really hard to continue to be engaging on a platform like that, and I think that’s why I’m sometimes like I’m just going to post whatever I’m feeling, I’m going to be real with people. I can’t keep an act up. It’s also important to make sure you look after yourself when you are being really vulnerable online. You are putting yourself out to a lot of people…who you don’t know, but they also come to you for advice and for your support. As women online, as well, we’re expected to give more of this emotional labour—which I’m happy to give, so in my case it’s not too much of an issue. But I know some women online do feel it and they’re tired, like [they’re] trying to take care of [their] own mental health. They’re trying to be vulnerable and open and real online, but then they have all these other people that are feeling this too and [asking for advice]. Sometimes it’s like, I understand you’re feeling that but I can’t hold space for you right now, I need to hold this space for myself and make sure that I’m able to get to my regular appointments and get out of bed. 

It’s hard. Especially because I’m someone who reads so much about what’s going on in the world, and to protect my own energy and to protect myself from feeling like I don’t want to get out of bed because the world is a fucked up place. I need to make sure that I have as much offline time as I am online, and I’m trying to work on that at the moment—lie in the park when the sun is out, make sure I don’t have much or any screens available, and to actually have a solid hour. I recently re-discovered The Sims. I played The Sims for five hours the other day, it was the most relaxing thing I’ve done in such a long time. I came out of it another person, like I don’t know who I am anymore! I felt like I was floating because I had made my dream house. But just finding ways that will keep you calm, and allow you to detach…just little things like, don’t scroll your phone first thing in the morning which I definitely did this morning, but I was planning on not doing that. 

It’s always going to be hard for you to focus on your own journey and what you are doing if you’re constantly seeing what everyone else is doing that’s more impressive than you. I’m actually thinking about putting a post up, talking about how your feed is cultivated and curated, and that people don’t put their full lives online. I think that’s an important conversation to have and to remember that people really do have shit days. Just because I’m not posting about that doesn’t mean that I have the best life, that I’m really happy and that life is perfect. It’s very important to remember that.

It’s funny you mention that, because I consider myself to be an intelligent person and I do follow some “influencers” on Instagram. I know in my heart of hearts that what they’re posting is staged, that it’s not reality. But one of these photos might catch me on a day we’re I’m not feeling my usual self, where I am feeling vulnerable and I start to think, well fuck, why don’t I look like that? Why isn’t this my life?

Totally. Like why am I not on a beach in Hawaii? It’s definitely a thing, and I’ve been seeing it a little bit more recently—people posting about it. Which is good, the conversation is happening. I want to be vulnerable on the internet, but I don’t want to be posting a photo of myself crying online. Which some of my friends do and I actually love. Every time they do it, I’m like fuck yeah, you’re so powerful.

There’s so much power in vulnerability—that’s what my therapist keeps telling me. But also, I believe it. As someone who cries at the drop of a hat. It’s something that’s been really hard to unravel. I think, as women, we’re told that we’re hysterical, that we’re over-emotional, we are too sensitive. I think that’s just not the case. I think sensitivity is what creates the most powerful change and I have to just keep reminding myself of that—sensitivity in women, and in men. Sensitivity in men is so fucking important. Let’s just banish this whole toxic masculinity thing! We don’t have time for that anymore!

What’s next on the cards for you?

I’m actually currently working on a bunch of exciting things!  I’m about to shoot my first queer wedding which is unbelievably exciting! I just finished my first music video that I shot and edited for a friend of mine that’s just released his first single. Look out for Val Flynn music. [I’m also] doing more video work and make-up artist work. I’m trying to document more queer culture in Melbourne. I’m trying to do more social media work and video work with brands here and in the States. Trying to do a little more social media video work for musicians. So, lots of documenting what’s happening in the Melbourne music community at the moment! The music scene in Melbourne is like nothing else. People don’t know how much talent there is in this city because we just overlook it because we constantly look to the States or the UK…but that’s what I’m trying to cultivate and focus on.

I just did a shoot with Kalindy Millions—I love working with her, and I’m in talks with Unlucky Lingerie to create some amazing content for them in the next few months. I’ve just finished doing some makeup on a music video with Loose Tooth who are an amazing rock-dog band. I have a make-up shoot which PUMA coming out. That was amazing! I’m working with Alice Ivy & Miss Blanks in the next few months too. Oh! there’s going to be a Meg Mac clip coming out some time soon which I worked on, which is absolutely gorgeous. Oh my god! Working with an all-women crew! Never in my life have I been on a film set where a woman was operating a steady cam, woman director, producer—everything! And I was like wow, this is so powerful. The song is about reclaiming your name. Look out for the new Meg Mac video, it’s phenomenal! [There will be a] podcast as well at some point. The more I talk about it, the more I have to do it. So stay tuned.