I Like Myself, America and You Can't Stop Me. | Quinta Brunson | TEDxUCSD

so our presentation is I like myself America and you cannot stop me America that's it I just wanted to say America um so I'm Quinta Brunson that's a picture of me exhausting my mother at the young tender age of five don't be fooled by her face she's exhausted underneath of that um that yeah I was five years old then and that's around the time that I started being an entertainer my mom had already put me in dance classes my brothers and sisters had me reciting lines from SNL and in living color so that's what I wanted to do with my life the summer of that year was the first time I remember meeting someone outside of my own race I was at a religious convention with my family and I met a little girl named Emily and she was Filipino and white and that was the first time I had seen someone who did not really look like me at five years old we sat together under a tent and we colored and our families were amazed by the fact that we were sharing a coloring book and just having the time of our lives didn't come from the same backgrounds and well he was filthy stinking rich I was not but we were coloring and we liked it and that was the moment I decided that I wanted to make content for people that are not only like me but people across the globe yeah so my parents were great they really fueled me up with a lot of love they gave me a ton of love a lot of self-love they really made me feel like a great person until I didn't anymore liking myself the hardest fight I didn't know I was fighting so who here has ever turned 18 anyone cool guys congratulations around the age of 18 is when I realized I didn't really like myself anymore why not because of my parents because of consumerism commercialism and advertising they get to you after a while you see things that tell you you're not cute enough or not Kirsten Dunst e-enough bring it on was out when I was about that age though I want to be like her you're not disney channel enough you know you see these kids and they're living in boats and whatnot what the hell like how did you how are you living on a boat in a hotel I live in a row home in Philadelphia that's not what I look like that's not what my life is like see life is okay we got it um uh the moment I really knew was when I looked in the mirror and saw a few things that really disturbed me my hair wasn't mine I had already started using like weaves right I started putting makeup one I even looked like myself anymore and I have fake eyelashes 18 years old I didn't like that I didn't like that at all so I went through a hard process of relearning myself liking myself the way I came out which was difficult here in this country it's hard if you're not white to do that okay it's hard if you're not tall to do that it's hard if you don't have big boobs it's hard if you have not been injured and engineered by a man of America the perfect body type is actually no one in America according to men they drafted it up last year in a magazine and it's no one it's none of the women here so that's hard how am I supposed to live up to that there's tough way for me to so I had to really examine myself and say if I want to be a creator who shares content with people all over the world I really have to hone in and make sure I like myself I have to like the person I am I wanted to create from an honest perspective I wanted to create in a way that can make others feel good try to feel good myself and here comes the biggest fight of your life advertising and you so I'm gonna rip apart this narrow ad doesn't look innocent doesn't look like it's not that bad it's terrible okay focus for a second if you will so who in this room raise your hand if you look like this girl right here I've named her Monica who looks like who looks like Monica anyone no hands no one looks like Monica okay already the advertisement has punched you in the face this isn't you okay Monica is wiping the hair the hair that grew out of her god-given body off of her face with this little roller contraption all right so look at Monica taking a hair off and then it says down there close up confidence okay I'm just gonna break those words down for you close up confidence use there if you don't you're an ugly peasant okay you don't deserve to be confident if you have hair on your face sure and then at the bottom here let me see if I can read it up here for totally touchable skin NER touch your skin for me right now is it touchable did you just touch your own skin okay all right there take a chill pill but these things they affect you I know it doesn't seem like they do but they do you know what I mean I didn't really pay much attention to stuff like this you know I would flip through magazines when I was getting my hair done in a salon or whatever and I would just flip through and get to my favorite stories but these images were in my head it was sending a silent message but really clear that you're not what America wants you know what I mean and if you're creating things and you want to create things that are true to your perspective I think it's really important that you decide you like yourself helps you create from a very good place so yeah ignorance is bliss but someone's got to do the dirty work so the problem with deciding to like yourself is you smarten up now you're aware you guys are no longer ignorant about that narrow edge you know what it is right so now you're smart you know you have to beat commercialism and advertising and all of these things consumerism so that opens you up now you're kind of a single person you're not with the group think of oh I'm not cute enough or blonde enough or tall enough or whatever you're like no I like what I am but that leaves you singular in this world but now you're open to make whatever you want and if you're a content creator this is like the biggest tool you can have to be really into yourself and like your work and like what's coming out and share it with many I really wanted to my work to share so I took to our social media platforms Instagram YouTube vine all of these places my major success initially was on Instagram I released a series called the girl who's never been on a nice date by that time my perspective was very much this I think reality TV sucks I think materialism sucks and you could put that in a box and that was my perspective I didn't like how much money people were spending to look like a certain person I didn't like reality TV I thought the Kardashians was trash I thought love and hip-hop all of that crap trash and it's like what we're taking in so I wanted to make something to kind of fight that the birth of a perspective right next slide okay so the girl who's never been on a nice date so this is my first experiment in trying to test my perspective on social platforms tell you some skittles some dips and a lot of popcorn a large money he got money get it all four very simple little thing now at the time I'm not gonna lie and say I knew exactly what I was doing I didn't all I know is I wanted to make that I tested out the Comedy Store in LA and then someone recommended I put it online and I was like okay that's a good idea I did and it shared all over the place and it was amazing the comments under people's sharings of this whether it was on YouTube Instagram or whatever was like hahahahahaha that was me at the movies with my boyfriend or people being like ha ha ha ha ha ha she's so silly he doesn't have a lot of money all he did was buy a large popcorn but I kind of wanted to fight the notion that someone can just buy you a popcorn and that's very nice instead of buying you a Benz or world's Royce which is what Kylie Jenner was setting up for us I'm really happy with the Jolly Rancher if anyone wants to give me a Jolly Rancher at the end of this I'm really good with that I'll go home with you not in that way I'm saying we can be friends and we can have a good time all right you know what I mean keep clean minds here people so that was the first experiment in sharing my perspective with the rest of the world so after that I still realized that was very nice share it share it all over but assured I'm on among a certain community right the community I was talking about talking to the ones that watch reality TV the ones that grew up seeing materialism consumerism and advertising in their faces so then one day I see BuzzFeed calm my friend Justin invited me in to do a taste test and has anyone here seen BuzzFeed videos I would hope ok great awesome thank you for watching our content so my friend just invited me into being a taste test and I walk in and I see all of these young people creating videos non-stop making them based off of their perspective if the first person ever I was a Filipino person who was making Filipino taste tests they wanted to see what it was like if Americans would taste Filipino food and it was amazing sharing like crazy 7 million shares in a week and I was like sorry yep yeah nope 7 million views in a week on YouTube amazing stuff I was like I want to make stuff here I want to figure out how to get my content to share all over the world and so I started working at BuzzFeed I did a residency for 3 months and then I decided to stay and I've been they're ever since and I was able to create things like hey corn sir can I bury stapler no you can't borrow my stapler do you think this is this is my house honey welcome to the good meeting these are some graphs that I made a PowerPoint Chris your number hey can I go before you I just had a meeting sure all right Thank You Justine so nice for you a little thing thank you so much alright see you later enjoy that water who cuts someone at a water cooler like Washington thinks she can just walk up and say my walk he wasn't rabid hey did you forward me that email why would you ask me if I forwarded you to email why would you do that you know me to me for you know me I'm in the street did you forward me the email okay that's what I thought people don't know to struggle to the head when I have to send emails Alison Asia yo just better not say my name is Justin oh no did yo did oh oh I told you to keep my name out to dirty mouth why'd you say my name you talking about me don't hold me back hey I know his mom didn't teach em you got to teaching them yo I say we go teach this a lesson went I just wanted to sit you down and apologize Africa oh come on girl I love you that's nothing I have something I need to say to both of you your behavior today has been deplorable you're fired he's leaving your fault stop okay there it is all right I'm gonna leave it at that so I really like that video that was around the that was the first video I made when I got to BuzzFeed full-time and I loved it everyone shared it and that was important to me that wasn't like a narcissistic thing I wanted to see how far a perspective could share something that's important about the place I'm at now BuzzFeed which will be important for you guys because you're about to graduate soon and stuff like that so try to find places like this I had a community that supported me everyone may not have agreed with my perspective but we had respectable conversations about each other's perspectives and it's been really important in helping our business grow to what it is now so that's been awesome everyone in that video was okay with me filming around that office yelling having been able to throw chairs around in order to create that product now I don't recommend that you go into your science facilities and throw chairs around and you know like film it don't do that but I'm saying for whatever it is you need to do make sure you have a supportive community around you first war then tea so I just love those memes they crack me up um so we all know a little bit about Marvel if you haven't seen silverware yet that's okay but basically there are these two very strong parties Captain America and Iron Man with these strong different opinions clearly they respect each other clearly they like each other they're friends but they have to go to war I'm not until you then the movie okay go see the movie but what I'm saying is sometimes war is necessary when you have two strong perspectives in a room do not be afraid of that if your perspective your perspective is strong and it is solid and you believe in it then you have every right to back it up you have to go in a conversation with other people who don't always believe in what you believe in but if you want to get to a better ending make sure you're able to have these conversations they're important okay you know what's more effective than a perspective a positive one may give you two very extreme examples and go with me here here's a negative perspective gone awry Hitler a positive perspective going well MLK two people very talented very intelligent have a lot of manpower but we saw a bad example of that in history and we've seen good examples of that the reason why I think it's important to have a positive perspective is because if you're truly an intelligent person and you're educated and people believe in you and you believe in what you're saying when you rather affect the world for the better than the worse that's pretty much it for that slide that's what I believe in and I'm sticking to it new and honest perspectives are what build the future one of my favorite quotes is that diversity is what builds businesses I had a very interesting conversation with the woman from Google her name is Susan and she's now the CEO of YouTube and she really focuses on bringing new talent into YouTube that is diverse not for the skin color not for the type of person that they are not for their sex but because of their perspectives because of their opinions those opinions and perspectives helped make their videos videos that we all watch videos that we all share and it's building a better world we've seen video as a perfect example of this was today the Chewbacca lady have you guys seen this woman fantastic bought me so much joy her video is now up to when I watched it this morning on the train 210 million views on Facebook it's pretty fantastic now that was just a video where this woman is happy she puts on this mask it's making her crack up and we all loved it it made us all happy that wasn't exactly a crazy crazy perspective but in a way it is it brought me joy that woman properly let someone who didn't know what true Baca was wherever that person is now they know what Chewbacca is now they know about Star Wars now they know about this woman who's a very nice lady in the middle of who knows where and now they can talk about this and share this with their friends and their family did it help build the future maybe maybe not there's no way of knowing but another example of this is some of our videos at BuzzFeed we're able to make these taste tests and we get these responses that are amazing thank you for making that thank you for showing my culture in that way in this very positive light we also made a video this year about someone jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge who tried to commit suicide it was unsuccessful that story alone got us about 1,000 emails from people who decided not to commit suicide that year it's really important you never know how these perspectives that are strong and amazing will change the world and shape the future other great examples of this is just Ted Ted is a great thing that brings all these perspectives together you're going to take these ideas and form your own new ideas and I find that to be amazing go change the world this is a great quote no matter what anybody tells you words and ideas can change the world without having these conversations and talking to the people around you no action can be formed we have to have these conversations we have to talk with each other your perspective has to be strong and it has to be bold this is going to be a testy question but I want to ask it how many people in here are not a white man cool I'm pretty sure I have not heard your perspective yet and it's most honest light and that's not just in your storytelling it's in your work you come from a different background you come from somewhere that is deaf that is our main export right now in America your perspective and your thoughts and your beliefs are important in your work they are necessary to help build a better future and um guys that's it for me thank you for listening to me talk I appreciate that all right thank you I just come off to you guys thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 417,234

Rating: 4.9257331 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Entertainment, Advertising, Beauty, Behavior, Creativity, Digital, Future, Identity, Inequality, Media

Id: dKuAB3JqnAs

Length: 17min 39sec (1059 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2016