Hey, Sis: featuring Kimberly Drew
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Hey, listeners, before we dive in today, we are so excited to share that this episode is part of a special series called Hey Sis, and it's brought to you by Ulta Beauty. Ulta Beauty is celebrating black-owned and founded brands this month and every month. Head to your local Ulta Beauty store or visit ulta.com to shop your favorite black-owned and founded brands. From skin and body care to hair care and makeup, they've got it all.

Let's celebrate beauty, creativity, joy, and Black excellence together. Hello, ladies. Hello, hello. Hello. I'm Sam Sanders. I'm Saeed Jones. And I'm Zach Stafford, and you're listening to Vibe Check.

Listeners, welcome to another installment of Hey Sis, a Vibe Check series where we are highlighting some amazing black women for Black History Month and Women's History Month. And today, I am so, so excited to share my first conversation. And it's with somebody who is so near and dear to me that it's the only person I let sleep in my house when I'm out of town. Yeah, just fun fact. Her name is Kimberly Drew. Kimberly Drew is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black woman who is a black

Kimberly Drew, you may also know as Museum Mammy on Instagram and all social media. She's an author of books like Black Futures with Jay Wortham, who's been on the show before. She's also an art critic, and she's a social media superstar, beginning her career at The Met by really helping blaze trails on how the museums do social media, but also have a reckoning about what they collect. And

And today I'm excited to bring her onto the show because, fun fact, Saeed Jones and I have a different group chat outside of the Vibe Check. And it is with Kimberly Drew. Surprise, Sam Sanders. Why didn't y'all tell me this till now? Now, come on. Because I ain't no snitch. First of all. Now wait one goddamn minute. Because this episode begins with that T, which everyone will enjoy.

If I'm texting right now, added. I will share a little something from that group text. From that group text? With Kimberly. Okay.

The Paul Mooney poem in my book, Alive at the End of the World, I actually, and I don't do this often with friends, but Kimberly, we were up very early one morning. This was like summer of 2021. Zach was dead asleep. So it's like we're in the group text, but it's just me and Kimberly texting back and forth for an entire morning as she gave me feedback and helped me revise the

this poem and really took what was like an okay interesting idea to something that is much more challenging and i just remember being so excited to get to do that and then i was like and zach is going to wake up in a few hours to like 75 oh yeah it's a lot story of my life with y'all story of my life with y'all that's true what is y'all's little group chat named oh what's it called right now saeed is it still called wanda vision

It began as WandaVision. Now it's LokiVision. LokiVision. LokiVision. Okay. Okay. So if I watch the right shows, I can get in this? If I watch WandaVision and LokiVision? I mean, maybe.

You know. But I mean, to that point, this group chat started because of our shared love of WandaVision on Disney+, which then became about Loki and all these things. So it's a really fun place where we do talk a lot about art and talking to each other. And it's a safe space for a side night. But Kimberly is such a force of a person that we had to have our own group chat with her.

But the thing that I do love and what we do talk about in our conversation, which was really healing to me, you know, I spoke to her literally the morning after she left my house and I came home because when she comes to LA, she'll stay here a lot. And when I arrived that morning, she told me that she changed all the sheets on my house and made everything really clean because she wanted me to land softly. And that's the purpose of our chat is about soft living and why we all need softness in our life. And Kimberly's just one of these people that has done so well.

much with her life and accomplished so much, but has this commitment to softness and the politics of softness and taking care of yourself that I thought our listeners would love to hear more about it. So that's our chat today, which I'm excited to share with y'all. I love that.

All right. Well, with that, everyone, I want to give you Kimberly Drew and give you some insights into why she, Saeed, and I have a group chat together. Enjoy. And why Sam is not in it. I guess I'm not landing softly enough for that group chat. God damn. Leave it in, Chantel. Crash landing. Wow. Crash landing. Wow.

All right. This is the day I've been waiting for. This feels like the episode where Saeed wasn't there and then Sam was singing. And it's just actually just us. This is the same. It's me just hijacking Vibe Check.

For one week. Listen, this would be a dream of mine. I guess what I should say first, everyone, this is Kimberly Drew, a dear friend, a very good friend of mine, a lover of Vibe Check. But also, fun fact, is in a different universe, Vibe Check is actually hosted by Kimberly Drew, Zach Zephyr, and Saeed Jones. Because we have an even more ancient group chat together than the Vibe Check group chat. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Loki vision. Can you tell people before we get into all this? Because I think people are going to realize as we talk that we know each other very well and our lives are so connected in different ways. For instance, I arrived at my home today as you left last night because you were staying here. So we're like –

We're just so together in so many ways. But for people to know, talk about our group chat with Saeed. Yes. You know what's so funny? I mean, I just have such a deep, deep, deep love and respect for both of your brains. And we were separately, you and me, were in our car ride home from seeing Ava DuVernay's fantastic origin film. And one of the things I was saying about the consortium of the three of you is that you have such unique and deep love

rooted senses of self. And it plays so well as a listener and as a person who has really high expectations for y'all and for anything that I intake. And so it is always a pleasure to tune in literally every week because I never know what I'm going to get into. I never know who I'm going to agree with or disagree with, which is a long way of saying that, yes, me, you and Saeed have this incredible group chat that started out called

WandaVision and then became LokiVision because we had to pivot alongside the good sissies at Marvel/Disney. And it's been a really beautiful space to do this kind of like cultural work. You know, it's the funny thing about like what makes our creative class so annoying is that we are constantly in critical dialogue about these things. You know, it's not just what the listeners get. It's not just what our books are putting out. This is our breakfast, lunch and dinner.

and one of the greatest privileges of my life, you know, to be able to work through these things, especially to be able to think through these things in relative private. And so I want to encourage everyone to take their hot takes to the group chat. If there's one thing you take away from hearing my voice. Yes, like workshop them with people. That's what the group chat is for. Also, I'm so glad you said that because the reason why we created Vibe Check and then the reason why we're doing interviews and conversations with people like yourself, who, by the way, everyone should know

Remember, we only really do these conversations when there are friends. There are people that we actually have a real relationship to because we want to really show folks when you have a space of love with someone, you can be daring and you can try things out and work things through with each other. And we do that very publicly and we're going to do it now together, me and Kimberly. But Vibe Check is so much about, you know...

know, what would we be talking about the group chat? What are the things that are really like hitting for me that aren't making sense? And where do I have space to figure it out? And, you know, that's what a group chat is for everybody. So to Kimberly's point, find your group chat, figure it out. Find your group chat, find your dinner party. I was coalition building, for lack of better phrasing, last night with a group of friends and we were all just going through, you

you know, the complications of the world. Like working in creative field is so ashy right now, for lack of better phrasing. And it's like just this constant ish and you don't know what to do and there needs to be this bomb. And I think that that bomb is found in these moments that help us better understand how to participate in the world at large.

I think we do ourselves a disservice when we expect ourselves to be saviors or to be right all the time. Actually, we really are in a time that requires so much humility, especially as there are these infrastructural changes around conversations of diversity or thinking about whose voice really matters. That also means for us internally, we need to figure out

what the heck we want to say. Yeah, yeah. I agree so much. And before we, you know, figure out what the heck we're going to say today through this conversation, I have to do my check-in with you because Vibe Check always begins with a Vibe Check. So Kimberly Drew...

What's your vibe? I know you've been waiting for that question forever. Yes, yes. I went line dancing. I wore cowboy boots every day last week. Like, I was out dancing when I was in L.A. last week, and one of my friends grabbed me to join in on, like, a group dance, and I panicked. But then continued to, like, join in and feel the swing of it and get twisted around and, like...

You know, it was infectious. And so my vibe this week is a little bit of bravery and a little bit of click clack and revelry in this dance. Like going through TSA, the girls were living for my cowboy boots. Really? Were they the red and white ones? Some red, ghani cowboy boots. We were walking out of Origins and someone literally ran out the door to tell Kimberly, I love your boots. I love them so much.

They have butterflies on the back. They're wonderful. And also, can we talk about line dancing? I grew up in Tennessee, so I'm very familiar with the culture. It is the best way to dance together. It gives you – everyone has the same purpose. It's kind of like you have rules, which is what I love the most. And it's just fun to kind of do drag, I think, right? Yeah. But it was funny. Okay, quickly. I didn't know that it was going to be like –

Hoedown music? Like, I think I went in thinking that I was getting, like, Chicago line-stepping or something or, like, Philly social dancing. And then it was, like, the best of country music until they played Troye Sivan. They played Rush? And I was like, that's my girl. No, they did One of Your Girls. Is that what it's called? Oh, yeah. One of Your Girls, yeah. Yeah. And it was sexy. And there was, like, one Janet number. And I was like, okay, I feel safe again.

I feel safe. So I was like, I can't do a dance I don't know. And then also music I don't know. And everybody, you know, girls get excited. Like people know the dances. It's the same thing that happens like in a bash mitts. Like, you know, the dancehall songs and like how to move your body. Anyway, Zach, what's your vibe? Oh, no one has asked us back what our vibes are in this moment. And that is amazing. Thank you for that. Thank you. And this actually represents why I love Kimberly Drew. My vibe is I'm feeling exhausted. Um,

You know, I've just been traveling. You're the only person I know in my life that travels maybe more than me. And the thing about our travel, as you know, is we try to keep our life at home going too. We don't take off work. We're trying to do the Zooms. We're trying to take the calls. We're meeting with people wherever we're at and also planning for the things in the future. And it's just really exhausting. And I had a moment when we were recording the show this week.

Right as we're beginning to record, I open up my travel mic and I'm in a hotel and, you know, our amazing producing team has like made sure I'm prepared and sent me everything. And I don't have the right cord. And we're about to start taping the show in minutes.

And I'm like running through the hotel and I'm begging the front desk people who are wonderful at this hotel. And they were trying to help figure it out, do all this stuff. And it was just so much chaos. And then when I told Saeed and Sam about all this drama, Saeed goes, girl, we're not doing brain surgery. It's fine. If you need to not be here today, you don't need to be here today. But I was there and we worked through it. And I think, you know, why I'm telling that story and this actually leads to our conversation today is because

You know, I'm a hustler. You're a hustler. We have been working so hard in our lives for so long. It's due to our gender, our sexuality, our race, all these things. It also is about our ambition and that we want bigness out of our life. But that wears on you. And there's moments in which, like, your body just...

shuts down and needs some rest. And as I was on my way home after doing the show from a hotel, then driving home, you were staying at my house and you said something to me that really touched me and it's going to be the theme of the show today. You said that you had done the laundry and that the bed sheets were done and prepped for me and Craig to come home because you wanted us to land softly. And that is the conversation today is about how to land softly and what does softness mean?

So, Kimberly, to get us going, when you sent that to me, what did you mean? What does soft landing mean to you? And why is it important to have softness in our lives right now? Yeah. Aw, Zach, I love you. Well, before that, I do want to say that it is really important to have these kinds of dialogues with your friends. I think that that's the first soft landing. Because in the vastness of the world, right, not having the cord, one might not register as an urgency. Mm-hmm.

And that urgency might not register against the landscape that you're dealing with to be able to even understand what the stakes are, to understand the stakes that we feel intergenerationally, the angling towards perfection that I think exists in so many of us.

And feeling the tangibility of success and then knowing that that cord can be the make or break, even if it's not. But, you know, there's so many metaphorical placements for what you're going through. And it's really such an honor to be able to have friends who intimately know whatever their missing cord is. Right. And I think for me, one of my missing cords is when someone stays in my house. Because I joke that I run like a youth hostel. Yeah.

But I'm like, y'all, please make the bed. Like, please don't leave a dish. If the yoga mat is out, leave the yoga mat out. Like, you know, these things are laid with some intention. And, you know, even Zach's partner was like, I can change the orientation of the bed because I know you like to watch TV in bed. You know, there's so much that goes into these decisions and how to make home safe, whether you're in it or lending it to someone else.

And so I wanted to make sure that I was taking that baton on and being able to pass it back as I was leaving your space. I've been just starting a book called Birthing Liberation, How Reproductive Justice Can Set Us Free by Sabia Wade, the black doula. And in the beginning of the book's introduction, Sabia speaks really eloquently about grief and liberation and how just to lend to this conversation of softness,

To be on this journey of softness is to understand that there is hardness. You know, to be on this conversation around freedom is to grieve the fact that we're getting free from something. And so when I'm thinking about softness or self-care or these kinds of things, like they are particularly rigorous acts. And there's a lot of labor that goes into the eloquence of it. Yeah, yeah.

It's become a viral trend too. This eloquence has, I feel through its virality, become less eloquent and that's where I think this tension is and where I would love to, through the time that we have with each other, really give people some material ways to live a soft life and the productivity within that.

And what I'm talking about is, you know, you go to TikTok. I think last I checked, there's over like 700 million or billion views of the hashtag soft life. You know, we don't know exactly where the hashtag came from. Some reports say it comes from Nigerian influencers who really came to dominance on TikTok and were kind of teaching us about a soft life in Nigeria. Other people just think it's a form of self-care that white women have commodified in the U.S. and stolen from black people.

But each image of soft life that we see on the internet is very much tied with like luxury too and about boats and living in a nice place and all of these things. So I guess, Kimberly, when do you think of soft life and how it's being portrayed on the internet? What comes to mind and what are the complications within that representation of soft life that you see? Yeah.

I mean, I think one of the other things that's important in our dynamic specifically is our commitment to DeLulu energy. Yes. And existing on our own little plane and letting our Pisces placements run free. But it makes me think of like my relationship to the term quiet luxury where I was just like, oh, yeah, it's like the things that like you know what it is because you really like that cashmere sweater and like the people who know the cashmere sweater know the cashmere sweater. Not like this vile.

vilification, like, or this, like, an indictment, a necessary indictment of a particular class of people. I didn't know those two things. And so I say that to say my definition of soft life, from what I understand it, yeah, is like, I'm like, I don't want to start my beef with the rest movement. Start the beef. Oh, because the rest movement, like, I struggle a lot with it. Because I think that there's a way to have softness that is not encouraging everyone to nap.

or encouraging everyone to bathe. Like, you should be bathing. But for me, when I think about the soft life, I think about dance. I feel like the rhythm of it, where it is building out the choreography of your life such that you can float through it. It is the rigorous work of setting boundaries. It is the rigorous work of committing to your craft that

That's what I think of when I think of soft life. I don't think of people who are living at a certain socioeconomic level and therefore makes such things accessible. I think for me, when I think about soft life, it is really about having a really hard audit of how you're doing things and orienting them towards conditions that allow you to float through them as best as you can.

And why is it important to float through things? Because I think, you know, hustle culture is so dominant still to this day. I would say, especially for millennials, Gen Z, I'm not one, so I can't speak for them, but my millennial class, you know, we beat ourselves up for not owning homes yet, not hitting certain, you know, life points that our parents did. So we think, oh, I got to work harder. I got to start a side hustle. I got to sort of

business and then we just stress ourselves out and run ourselves into burnout and burnout is a real thing it's a real medical thing people can lose any energy or ability to care about what they used to care about because of overexertion so i guess my question is like

Why is it important to learn how to move through life with some softness and float through it? And what does that look like? Yeah. I don't think that we have to live in a world in which we always delay pleasure. I think that that's it. Like I, from a very young age, have always been really about like really seeing the harvest of my seeds. I don't understand like

I have to wait until this set of point in my life when I can actually enjoy it. I'm like, I want to work and enjoy. I want to work and enjoy. I want to have the best meals now. You know, like I don't feel like I have to fight or whatever that is within my own reach.

Like playing the long game, I just – I don't understand. And less and less because we are in this moment of such excruciating violence, there isn't really an incentive to delaying the pleasure. Of course, within lens of equitable thinking and trying to make sure that your pursuit of the softness for yourself doesn't discount the lived experience of others, which isn't – I'm like, I'm such a black woman having to say it like that. But you know what I mean? Yeah, I think that there is a shift –

that I would like to see more. I love like a soft goal. I always have soft goals where I'm like, this is the easiest thing to accomplish and I'm going to give myself a little treat. That's a short. I love that. Soft goals. I'm going to take that back with me. So when did you learn how to take care of yourself in this way? Because when I first met you, I forget how we met exactly, but I remember the first time I knew who you were was through your work on

on social media through Museum Miami, your incredible work advocating for black people in the art world and making sure black artists were being treated equitably. And I was just such a huge fan. And then I met you and you were even better in person than I experienced. But I knew at that time, this was years ago, you had a lot going on. You were working on a book, Black Futures, another book. This is what I know about art.

You had many jobs. You were just a reflection of myself. But within that reflection, I saw, oh, you must be stressed out. Things must be tough. Was it tough back then? And when did you learn how to take better care of yourself? Yeah, it took one little mental breakdown. It took one little mental breakdown to do like the first round of like, maybe I should change things. And then a second one to really sit me down. I mean, you witnessed me through this reckoning, but I lost so many friends.

And was in this moment where I just had nothing to give. And I felt very much like all the things that I had worked for were being taken away from me. And I think that that's especially where my desire and my, I guess, more security in being like, I'm going to see my flowers. I'm going to see my own flowers. Yeah. Because, yeah, it's like you end up in these systems that would rather you be dead, to be quite frank. These systems in which you are safe.

seen as a visitor, no matter how long you have been present. I've been working in my industry for a decade and still have these constant reminders of how I am a visitor or in service to

And I think the only autonomy that I do have is the hours in my day and how I spend them and how I'm able to reorient them and how I'm able to better associate for myself what success actually looks like. Because I feel like oftentimes there are ways in which people's imaginations of us are so limited.

You know those moments where people are like, your goal is this. And it's like, you have no idea the vastness of what I see for myself and that that might be something soft, which is something I often say to you is that, Zach, you hold such incredible soft power amongst so many of our brilliant peers who are like driving it home with such force. And you're just like.

I'm working my butt off and throwing myself around the planet for these meetings, advocating for ideas, advocating for people, but doing it with such grace and thoughtfulness. You know, like I've never in our dynamic ever, ever, ever felt like I had to edit myself.

Oh, I love knowing that. Which is like rare, you know? Yeah. Yeah. No, and I'd love to actually go deeper into that because I was in Utah and one of Craig's friends, our dear Craig, is an ex-Mormon feminist writer and she's really wonderful. And I think he was quoting her and she said, you know, femininity is...

Not about kind of the stereotypes that you think of it where it's about like, you know, hypersexuality, submission, all these things. She said it's about attraction. It's saying femininity is about attraction.

Like a softness that allows you to pull people in and attract people. And I guess that leads me to the question of like soft power. What does that mean when you say that? When you say I have soft power, you have soft power. What does that look like? And why is that actually maybe better than this hyper masculine power we see play out in work environments where people feel like they have to dominate, they have to control, they have to exert harm onto others to win? I think it starts first as a commitment to what you're doing.

Being committed also means listening. Being committed also means understanding that, especially in the case of the intersection of both of our work, we're entering into longstanding institutions. And I think we both intimately understand that they have existed for a reason as they do. And so starting in with questions as opposed to a very, okay, this is my shade for urgency. Um,

It's not about like radical immediate change, but really thinking about how to sit within something and think through collaboratively how to make lasting change. That for me, I think, is a soft power, power move where you are there in collaboration, but you still have your goal. You're maintaining your morals, but you're not coming in and like setting the thing on fire.

Because I think that that's also how you build trust, which I also see in the realm of soft power too. And then also I think in your case, it's just the diversity of things where some people make the choice to be really concentrated in one direction, one vector, one trajectory of their career. And both of us are just very thirsty for capital C culture. And being within that kind of multiplicity,

It softens you because you're tenderized, because you're not building yourself as like express expert in one thing. And it does take a lot of beating. Like for me, it's like I'm between art and fashion, two of the most exclusive industries, period. They have tenderized me. And I find that my life, my quality of life is better when I approach them both with a softness. Listeners, we're going to take a quick break right here, but don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

Listeners, I hope you're enjoying the conversation. We're just taking a quick break to thank Ulta Beauty for presenting this episode of Hey Sis. In an industry where beauty is often defined by standards, Ulta Beauty is on a mission to change that by encouraging individuality, authenticity, and highlighting brands that do the same. That's why Ulta Beauty is celebrating Black-owned and founded brands this month and every month.

I personally love going to Ulta for all my black-owned beauty brands, but especially for Fenty Beauty, who I've been using for, God, years. Rihanna's foundation, listen to me when I say this, Rihanna's foundation is perfect if you ever are on camera or on a date or just looking too glistening. It is the perfect powder, I swear to you, on that. And that's for every skin tone, but especially if you are black.

So listeners, head to your local Ulta beauty store or visit Ulta.com to shop your favorite black-owned and founded brands. All right, we are back and we are jumping right back into this conversation with Kimberly Drew. There was a recent article in Essence.com, I think, and the title is, Here's Why Black Women Are Rejecting the Strong Woman Trope and Living a Soft Life.

And you just mentioned that you operate in two very hard, rough industries, fashion and art. And fashion is just...

I love going to fashion shows with you because you are my softness and my protection there because it is not a soft place to be. But I know for you as a black woman, as a queer person, coming in with softness is not what people are used to. Talk about that experience and how, you know, you've softened yourself within an industry that wanted to harden you and still found the successes that you wanted through all this.

I just want to stay in it. You know, I think it reverts back to what I was saying before. It's like, I love what I do, you know? And I think it's weird when you do the thing that like is a part of life. You know what I'm saying? It's like, I'm not selling like Salesforce. You know what I mean? Like I work in the industry of aesthetics and in culture. I'm not going to turn my back on culture. So I have to find a hospitable place to exist in within it. And I think one of my dear friends, Marcellus Armstrong, who is...

super talented artist. The day that we met, we were at interns at the incredible Studio Museum in Harlem. And he was like, we're going to do this forever and we're going to be friends forever, you know? And that's just been my guiding principle where it's like, to the best of my ability, I want to maintain these relationships and have as real of relationships as possible. Like me and you, Zach, rant a lot about the fake ones, you know, where it's like, you actually don't care how I'm doing. And if you don't care how I'm doing, I prefer you not ask me.

Like, if you see me say what's up, but like, we don't have to engage deeper than that. We don't have to pretend it's more than it is. But I think, you know, like people actively avoid me because I want to have like, I'm going to be at the club. I'm going to ask you,

you doing? What's your research? Like, you know, like if you want to talk about, you know, what's going on in here, here and there, like I would, I'm so much more concerned with those things. And I think that's my particular soft superpower is like, I really do want to have great conversation. I really would rather that than you feel like you have to edit or have to shrink, you

Because it is the robustness of who you are as to why you're in this room in the first place, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, this is like church for me. And everything you're saying is actually giving me language to...

understand what I just went through. So to share, you know, and I said this on the show in one of the episodes before, this experience at Sundance this past year was very complicated because a lot of incredible inclusion in films. A lot of our friends were in movies. They're, you know, queer people, trans folks of color, all getting their shine. And I loved it. And I loved being there for them. However, the audiences did not look like them at all. And people, when you walk through them as, you know, queer bodied people, as black people, they were not nice to us at all. And it was very confusing to me.

And the real point I want to make is as I was going through all this, I felt my soft power activate. And I kept thinking, oh, I don't want to go to that party because I don't want to have to be fake to people who aren't going to be nice to me. Oh, I don't want to go to that dinner because I don't want to have to have shallow conversations because I want deepness there.

And so I'm sharing all this. And as you're saying this, I'm realizing that like softness is not only kind of like a mode of being in these spaces, but it's also a way just to keep yourself alive because a lot of these things do destroy you. Do you relate to that feeling? Yeah. And the only thing I'll add, because I think this is also true, is that we work our butts off. Like I work my butt off so that I don't have to go to the vein things that don't feel good. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm like, I will write the heck out of this essay. I will, you know, like take 5 a.m. calls from your couch which is in the background of the Zoom because if it's like, if I can't speak for myself as a person who is a deeply sensitive person, I have to let my work speak for me and I know that that's like

can sometimes be the trade-off. But I was listening to you talk through that story of like what it means to have this engagement with culture and then see that that's not what people actually mean. I mean, we're in this moment now where people want to talk retroactively about genocide, but we're in the middle of one. Like, it's just, you know, we have to ground ourselves

We really do have to ground ourselves and not treat everything like this third space and understand that these things actually do impact us and affect us. Like, how are you is a real genuine question when it's coming out of my mouth. And if you say fine and you mean fine, that's fine. But don't say fine and not mean fine. Don't lie.

You're very much like, I mean what you say, say what you mean type of tea. Yeah, I'm just like, say it with your chest, which holds your heart. Like, that's okay. That's okay. And I might not be that avenue for it. And that's okay, too. But I sure as hell hope anybody who's listening is able to access their avenue for it. And to understand that those friendships are equally powerful.

You know, I think one of the biggest heartbreaks that I have is when you think that someone's your friend and then you realize that it's like this weird like power play and you're like, no, we're just homies. Like, I don't actually want anything from you. Yeah. I really don't. I really don't. Yeah. I think...

What you're saying just now reminds me of a definition I've held for friendship for many, many, many years is that to be my friend or for me to be friends with someone is to love and support them through anything that they do. And the day I can't do that is the day that we have to have a conversation that I'm not being a good friend. And I think that softness, it's, you know, saying...

Be however, arrive however, say what you need. And I'm always going to show up the same way with you. And the day that we don't, we're not friends and that's okay. And that's a part of life. But, you know, we have to have an understanding that friendship has to be a place where you can let it all go. And I feel like a lot of us out here have friendships that aren't that way, sadly. Yeah, especially your kind. I'd be like, y'all, I'm so worried about the gay men in my life. I'm like, what's happening?

It's a mess, a war. It's a war, a war inside. And I think it's also grace. Like, I think more than even soft life, it's like a graceful life. It's like, just provide grace if you can. Like, what a tremendous resource that you cannot buy is grace. Amen.

So, so far we have, I think we've been doing a good job of talking about softness, how it applies, how you can carry it, how you move through it. And I hope people are picking up and getting inspired in ways in which they can activate it in their own life. But this brings me to something that you posted on Instagram that I want to read. You wrote on January 1st of this year, 2023 was the year I learned how to respect myself.

2023 was a year I listened to myself for some of the first times in my life. I took to-do lists personally. I let myself set goals. I let myself discipline myself, not in the sense of self-flagellation, but in the sense of a sharpening. At 33, I have needed these years to learn to trust, trust that my desires are enough, trust that external validation will never slap as hard as being truly satisfied with the sharpness of your own oyster knife.

And it's this word sharpening that I loved and Nora, who produces the show, also loved. And she's the one that flagged this to me. And I want to hear what you mean by that and how that lives within a soft life. Because even though the words we're using there, softness, sharpness, are a contradiction. But I see very clearly as your friend how this exists. But tell us in your own words. Yeah.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, it's also just like because language is fun, right? Like I have an oddly like poet brain, even though I don't do that, which is why I love Vibe Check. Oh, my God. I love you guys so much. I love you. It makes me sick. The way that I like in my house, like talking back to the podcast, it makes no sense. But yes, I think it is about these kind of guardrails. It's almost like existing, not like in a bubble in a fully delusional way, but

But understanding, like, there's only so much that we can control and hold. And that, within that, we can say, you did a good job, bitch. Like, you can say that to yourself. Like, we're in this moment, Oscar moment, awards season moment, blah, blah, blah. Like, you have to know that your performance was good. Like, that's, I think, one of the most, like, difficult things of watching America Ferrera talk to Kevin Costner's at the Golden Globes was, like, this weird...

of confirmation from him. I think it was Kevin Costner. It was like this weird wanting of confirmation from him about the monologue and she's like, are you going to say my monologue back to me? And it's like, girl, you knew the monologue was the best to your ability and if you don't know that, that's such a better use of your energy than whatever's happening right now. Like we cannot wait for these external confirmations. We cannot, you know, be the gold you want to hold to quote Solange. And so that's, I think, what it is for me because within this context of the internet, within this kind of cultural moment, it is...

It's so awful the way that compare and despair runs rampant in our own homes. Like the way that we punish ourselves should be studied. And I don't know if generations ahead of us did this. I don't know what it looks like for Gen Z or Gen Alpha or whatever the newest ones are. But you have to build in these safeguards. You have to be able to look at yourself and say you did the best you could with what you had. And you have to know that. If you don't know that, then that's your work. Yeah.

You bringing up America Ferrera also, and with everything else you just said, makes me think of Niecy Nash. Did you see the clip of her where she thanked herself? Wait, with her and her wife? No, no. That's the other part of this. No, Niecy. I was like, I saw the skinny dip video. I saw her.

I saw her in her, with her better half in a jacuzzi. I mean, we do love those. Kimberly and I send a lot of Meecy Nash content to each other. But what I'm talking about is when she won her Emmy and she said, I want to thank myself because I did this. I put in the work there. Is that kind of what sharpness is to you? Is that moment of being like, no, I did it. And I know I did it. I'm not going to act coy about this. And that's the only business I want to stand on. Like my business is the only business I truly feel like I can stand on. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Yeah. Like, I love that. I love that. You have to be able to do that. You have to. And I think that, and you know, that is soft power. That is feminine power. And that's what I think I want people to walk away from this conversation about softness is that,

To soften yourself is not to let go of yourself or to make yourself submissive or to forget yourself. It's to say, I'm like, you know, to Beyonce, I'm comfortable in my skin. Like I'm here. All parts of me, all vulnerable parts of me are good. Every part of me is great. And, you know, and from that place, I can sharpen myself. I can direct myself. And all these things exist at once. And, you know, it doesn't have to be this really hard life. We should aim for softness at the end of the day.

Especially to like two people who are interested in cultural production or people who are coming to this because they're in the art world. They want to get in the art world, whatever. Like you have to find the ways in which you derive pleasure in this journey to what it is that you are hoping to accomplish. Because if you are stepping so far outside of yourself to get in it, do you want to be there in the first place? Yeah. Like there is just not enough reward on the other side. You have to find your why and your how.

And you have to keep those things sustainable. It's a non-negotiable. There's no cheat code on that because you will get to the top of your industry or what someone else has told you is the top of your industry and be fucking miserable and not be able to look at yourself in the mirror. Miserable. Miserable. And people will eat you alive because you can smell like a shark in the water, that misery. And people will drag you and walk you like a dog.

Yeah. That is so true. I was speaking with a dear friend, Jedediah Jenkins. He's a really wonderful writer of memoirs. And he said to me, I had to let go of the checkboxes of my life many years ago. And we were sitting in a park catching up. And he'd mentioned, you know, as a writer, his dream was to be in the New York Times bestseller list. He got

there and I know many people like this they get there they get that award they stand up there and it feels so hollow because they've built their whole life towards this one goal and when they arrive they're in their body and their body just holds nothing and it's just so external and it's awful it's awful

And I feel like you are a person when you say these things to me, I'm like, yeah, that's right. You have done some amazing things. You've seen the most amazing things. You've been to all the shows. You've worn all the clothes. But you still have such a great sense of like yourself and making sure that Kimberly is good and Kimberly is filling herself up.

Yeah. I just haven't been a silly goofy time. Yes. Which is our other big bot. It's like, I'm having a silly goofy time. Like, I remember I went to Salone, which is this incredible design festival in Milan. I cried every day because you have to leave yourself open to the magic. Like, you have to know that your true power is when you are able to take a moment and truly look up and feel something. Like, you can take on your own time the time to feel.

and not be at the beck and call. Like, I could have run my little ass around Milan, but instead, I looked at a little Ava chair and I cried a little bit. Mm-hmm. And that was beautiful. And that's my prerogative, you know? Yeah.

Oh, I love this. Well, before I let you go, because you are such an expert in art and fashion and the world and thinking of beauty, I want to ask you about beauty itself. How do you find beauty in things and what does beauty look like to you? Because I think people have this obsession with it being in a certain box or certain way, but what's your advice for people to find the beauty in their own lives? I think beauty is one of the most vulnerable concepts in society.

our lives. I think about the violence that people who are traditionally beautiful might feel, you know, it's like you feel hunted for. You feel like your beauty is something that, I mean, Zach, we talk about this all the time in your beauty. I'm like, how are you doing, baby? Because I have watched people hit on you in ways that are like to jail, to jail, to jail.

And I don't even feel it. I don't even see it. I'm like, baby, when we did South By, I was like, Zach, are you good? Anyway, but to be succinct, beauty is a very precious thing and should be coveted. And your definition of beauty is something that I think will take a lifetime to define. But I think for me, I'm a person who tries to stay open to abundant definitions of things like beauty without trying to kill it. Because like I said, it is a hunted thing.

and often vilified commodity. Yeah, because it's soft and it's feminine. It's soft, it's supple. But yet we're all trying to grasp it or hold it. So it's complicated. Well, Kimberly, I love this. You have to come back. This has just been the joy of my life having you here. And I'm just so excited that I have you in my life in so many ways and that you can be in this space too. So thank you for that. Yeah.

Yes. Thank you. And then thanks to the listeners for continuing to be Vibers. I don't know if we're called Vibers. I just need to say it out loud. We haven't given it a name. But yeah, I think what you guys do is such a beautiful, speaking of, beautiful thing in a soft part of my morning. And so mad props, mad respect, and so much love. Oh my God. I love you. Thank you.

Listeners, thank you for tuning into this week's episode of Vibe Check. If you love the show and want to support us, please make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast listening platform. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and leave a review. And most importantly, tell a friend. Huge thank you to our producer, Chantal Holder, and Marcus Hom for our theme music and sound design. Also, special thanks to our executive producers, Nora Ritchie at Stitcher and Brandon Sharp from Agenda Management and Production.

As always, we want to hear from you. So don't forget, you can email us at vibecheckatstitcher.com and keep in touch with us on Instagram at at Sam Sanders, at Zach Staff, and at The Ferocity. You can always use the hashtag, hashtag vibecheckpod. And with that, stay tuned for our regular episode this Wednesday. Goodbye. Stitcher.

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