Bold Blind Beauty On A.I.R.

Season 3 - Episode 1: My BOLD for 2023 is...

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Episode title and number: My BOLD for 2023 is... Season 3 - #1

Brief summary of the show:
In recognition of the new year, we here at Bold Blind Beauty On A.I.R. asked a few of our previously featured guests to share what their BOLD for 2023 is. We love their answers and hope you do too. Here are their names in order of appearance: Anne Mok, Roy Samuelson, Caroline Desrosiers, Melody Goodspeed, Rudy Gaskins, and Catarina Rivera.

Our hosts, Nasreen Bhutta, Dana Hinnant, Stephanae McCoy, and Sylvia Stinson-Perez get in on the fun by sharing their bolds. Then Dana provides her Beauty Byte followed by a brief discussion.

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Bullet points of key topics & timestamps:
0:00 | Welcome
0:37 | What it means to be bold
3:00 | My BOLD for 2023 is...
15:50 | Supporting Bold Blind Beauty
16:30 | Dana's Beauty Byte
18:92 | Viva Magenta
27:20 | Upcoming features

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Music Credit: "Ambient Uplifting Harmonic Happy" By Panda-x-music https://audiojungle.net/item/ambient-uplifting-harmonic-happy/46309958

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My BOLD for 2023 is... Season 3 - #1

[00:00:00] Steph: Welcome back to another edition of Bold Blind Beauty On A.I.R. Podcast, the show that's clearing the air for more A.I.R. (Access, Inclusion, and Representation). I'm Stephanae McCoy and with me are my co-hosts,

[00:00:29] Nasreen: I'm Nasreen Bhutta

[00:00:31] Sylvia: and Sylvia Stinson-Perez.

[00:00:38] Steph: Happy New Year. When asked what sets our show apart from other podcasts, I'd have to say it's the connection with our featured guests. Spotlighting those on the spectrum of blindness and our sighted allies who advocate for equity are equally important. This is one of the reasons I was so excited about our theme for this month's episode My BOLD for 2023 is... Both blind and sighted guests share their bold, and what I love about their submissions is the common thread.

Courage is another word for bold, and I think this quote adequately represents submissions from previous guests on the show. "Courage is about learning how to function despite the fear to put aside your instincts to run or give in completely to the anger born from fear. Courage is about using your brain and your heart when every cell of your body is screaming at you to fight or flee, and then following through on what you believe is the right thing to do." ~Jim Butcher

For those of us on the blindness spectrum every day, we face a world that doesn't value us, like those who aren't on the spectrum. Every day we encounter barriers that require us to use ingenuity and problem-solving skills to break through those barriers. Since misconceptions and ignorance continue to persist within our culture, advocates and our allies continue to educate about the importance of A.I.R. (Access, Inclusion, and Representation).

When we're sighted, we look at blindness through the lens of our lived experience and conclude that it's a horrific way to live. But based on my personal experience and the hundreds of people whose stories we've shared on Bold Blind Beauty, this is a misconception. For those of us who make a conscious decision to continue living our lives while on the blindness spectrum, we are bold, we are able to see the world through a spectrum few get to experience, and together with our sighted allies who get it, we are changing way blindness is viewed through our advocacy.

We invite you to listen to the submitted sound bites from our previous guests, then Dana Nasreen, Sylvia and I will talk about our bold, and after that, Dana will share this month's Beauty Byte.

[00:03:17] Anne Mok: Hi, this is Anne. My bold for 2023 is to empower. I want to allow myself to embrace my strengths and confide. I want to empower others that I connect with to be confident so that they can live to their fullest potential. As a community, we can all be empowered to be active participants in change.

[00:03:40] Roy Samuelson: Hi, I'm Roy Samuelson from the ADNA Presents, and my bold for 2023 is to amplify audio description professionals' credits in film and tv, and with all the other bold 2023 ideas here. Oh, let's do this.

[00:03:53] Caroline Desrosiers: My Bold for 2023 is to continue to grow Scribely's writing teams so we can help even more brands and businesses deliver born accessible image and video content for their customers, to stay true to our motto of humans writing for humans, so we can break down the digital access barriers standing between us and create content that delights and includes everyone.

[00:04:18] Melody Goodspeed: My bold for 2023 is to stand firm in my beliefs and be kind and gentle to others while reducing fear and elevating voices that are creative, bold, and fabulous.

[00:04:43] Rudy Gaskins: Hi, my name is Rudy Gaskins. I am the Chairman and CEO of the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences. My bold for 2023 is rejuvenation and living in possibility. I will regularly pause to let my mind, body, and soul recuperate from the unnatural pace of daily life. I will generate personal ways of being that support the creation of a life I love.

[00:05:09] Catarina Rivera: My bold for 2023 is smashing disability stigma while taking care of myself. I interpreted this as what's your bold move for 2023, and I really think it is bold to reject hustle culture to question it. There's no need for me to work if I'm not living a good life. So I'm looking forward to this year focusing on the things that really matter to me. My health, having fun, enjoying my friends and family, and working in a way that serves that instead of me prioritizing work over everything else.

[00:05:54] Nasreen: Hi everyone. I'm Nasreen. Happy New Year. My bold for 2023 is having a positive outlook and keeping that flame of positivity burning, even in trying times, and finding joy in the smaller and finer things in life. It is often the small steps and not the giant leaps that bring out the most lasting change in positivity, and that's what I would like to achieve this year in everything that I do, whether it's professionally or personally. Dana, how about you?

[00:06:33] Dana: My bold for this year, for 2023 is it's personal and it's build a better me going to the next level of things in because I'll be hitting a new decade this year and just build, build a better me.

I started last year, the end of last year of spreading my wings and jumping out on some things professionally and. Just taking care of me, building a better me, whether it be personal or professional, and also putting in self-care, those self-care things in place too.

[00:07:18] Steph: Can I just say that I love both of your bolds. They really speak to me, and I just wanna thank you both so much for your words. They're very encouraging both of them.

My bold for 2023 is also personal. 2022 was a bit trying, and I've been having a little bit of a struggle sort of connecting the dots sometimes with my memory and things. So what I'm going to do for this year is, go to a neurologist to get a baseline to see where I stand just in case, you know, there might be a little something going on there.

And so what that will allow me to do is just to track it to be proactive, maybe see if there's some therapies or something that can help me. But I'd rather know now and address it than to just let things go to chance. And so I think by investing in myself and becoming, as Dana said, a better me, that will help me be better to be able to continue to do my advocacy work for other people.

Sylvia, how about you?

[00:08:41] Sylvia: Hey, everybody, happy 2023. And I love that all of us seem to really be focusing on bettering ourselves and how bold it is to, to share those. And so I the same, I have some, some personal things that I'm working on. So number one is to be more present, be more present for myself, like to really enjoy the things that are going on around me and the people I'm with. But also to be more present for the people I'm with too, so that they're heard.

My one that kind of goes along with that is to make a more individual positive difference in people's lives. I definitely, you know, I, I'm hitting a big mark this year with 25 years in my career and have made that kind of more impact on people's lives in a holistic way.

But now to really focus in on every day trying to make a, a difference in individuals lives, which really takes a lot of work to, to be in contact with people. And, then finally we kind of, I think I heard quite a few of us talking about those well-being goals. Dana mentioned hitting a new decade.

I hit that a couple of years ago. So but I really have come to realize, I have got to focus on my well-being on my and I have started this new year with a whole new plan of just taking care of myself and well-being and getting really healthy and strong. So, sounds like we all have some super exciting things and we have to work on keeping each other accountable too.

That's the big thing. We all set these goals and then life gets in the way and we're like, oh, where did that go? So awesome.

[00:10:39] Steph: That is really wonderful what you just said, Sylvia. And it, like you said, there's common threads I think throughout our individual bolds. Nasreen said something that really stood out to me and that is finding joy in the small things because you know, everybody experiences trials and tribulations struggles. Life is full of it, but life is also full of a lot of joy and a lot of good things. And I think especially when we're in the downtimes when we can find those bright spots of light that if we. Just grab a hold of those.

And like you said, Sylvia, just be present in those moments. That can be so empowering for us and it can just fill us with so much joy that even for a moment we can be taken out of, you know, that darkness.

[00:11:38] Nasreen: I was just gonna say, Steph, I love your boldness of just sharing with us your plan of self-care and self-healing this year, that takes a lot of guts and gusto to kind of come to that, that understanding that you need to take care of yourself and to do something and go out there and get it done.

In your case, you were speaking about, you know, having a bold test done, and I, I commend you on that for sharing that with us. It's all about self care. I think this. ,

[00:12:12] Sylvia: And maybe it's because we're realizing that we give and give and give and we might not give enough to ourselves. Mm. That is interesting.

 And if we give to, yeah. And if we give to ourselves more, we're gonna have more to give to others in our community.

[00:12:28] Steph: Right. I love that because we, we can't pour from an empty cup. Mm-hmm. . And what's that saying about, well, the analogy of the airplane mask the oxygen mask. Mm-hmm. and how you put it on yourself first and then your child, because if you pass out, then you're no good for your child or anybody else.

Mm-hmm. . So self-care is really important.

[00:12:59] Dana: I think going through the process of this pandemic has taught us to be more present and be more aware of ourself and taking care of ourselves. You know, we had to go through a, a world pause in order to put things into perspective and as we are moving forward through the process of post-pandemic, quote unquote. I think we, it just, it made us more aware of things, I think, just to stop and pause, and I think that is so important and has become more important because we had a ch, we didn't have a choice but to pause when we were going through the pandemic at the height of it.

[00:13:45] Nasreen: That's a great point, Dana.

[00:13:49] Steph: Yeah, it's almost like. It's almost like to some degree we needed something like that to happen to shift our thinking on what's really important. And again, I come back to what Sylvia was talking about, you know, and being present, you know, we're going through our days so quickly in one of our bolds the person mentioned the grind. You know, especially here in America, it's all about the grind and the, you know, the hustle and just doing, doing, doing. But you can only do so much of that before one, you burn out, two, you begin dropping balls, and when you drop balls, you can't be present for other people.

You know, I noticed that a lot where, you know, even with myself, where I intend to, to do certain things or call certain people or email certain people or whatever, and I don't, because I'm so distracted with all of these other things. And when you take a pause and take a time to sort of step back and reassess it does, I think encourage some, some thought, and, you know, causes you to think about, you know, your purpose, your passion, and what's really meaningful in life.

[00:15:30] Nasreen: And Dana, I love your fact of saying I gotta take being a better me. And I think that can resonate with everybody this year is that we can all work on being a better me. And Sylvia, one of the things I loved about what you said, which is really, really true and it is hard work, is to be present individually for people.

That takes a lot of effort. That takes a lot of time and energy to do that one-on-one with people you care about. People who you want to get to know better, to give of yourself to others. That is remarkable and incredible. So hats off to y'all ladies for really. Bringing and sharing, you know, these moments, which I think can resonate with everybody boldly.

[00:16:22] Steph: Boldblindbeauty.com is an advocacy platform that shares uplifting stories of people navigating life while on the blindness spectrum. We are a social enterprise that sells a message of empowerment, acceptance, and hope. When you shop our online store, you support our mission and projects like this podcast. Our newest line of products is a bold take on the word BLIND (Bold Leaders Illuminating New Directions). For full product details, please visit bold blind beauty.com.

[00:17:02] Sylvia: So Dana, what do you have for our Beauty Byte? Let me tell you, I'm always loving it and so can't wait to hear what you've got.

[00:17:16] Dana: Oh my goodness. It is some interesting things that are trending for the year coming up, so I kind of narrowed it down to a few to get your years. So first in hair color, one of the colors that is trending is what TikTok has coined "brownie battered chocolate" and another hair color that is trending is "going for the gold," which is a brunette's hair color with golden highlight minus the red and orange.

[00:17:55] The manicures are taking the art up a notch with textured manicures. I saw some of this emerge around the holiday season where manicures are mimicking fabrics such as velvet and cable knit sweaters, and how it's achieved is by dimensional polish and magnet. I thought that was pretty cool and interesting. You can have a lot of fun with that.

[00:18:24] And finally, the Pantone color of the year is Viva Magenta. So you'll see this color popping up throughout the year, whether it be in fashion, lipsticks, blushes, and even accessories. So you can have a lot of fun playing with this gorgeous color for the year. And Happy New Year. Try something new. And that's your Bold Blind Beauty Byte.

[00:19:09] Nasreen: Wow. Magenta, I love that color. I just, I, I can do, I can do that.
 
[00:19:17] Dana: I think it's one of those colors that a lot of people can pull off if you do it the right way. I like it with like the color. If you throw a jacket with a solid color, like a neutral black Navy tan, just pop that over it. Or, you know, a lipstick in that color or a blush, and that really looks really nice on darker skin tones. Hmm. And even popping the color in your accessories. So you'll see like even coming forward into the spring, like fuchsias, so it would still be in that, that magenta color. And it's a, it's almost like a transitional color.

[00:20:05] It's a bold color in a sense that if you're not a big red person, but you can wear within the red family, I think this is a good option.

[00:20:17] Sylvia: I'm so glad you mentioned that fuchsia fit in because I, I'm trying to remember exactly since I can't really see color anymore. I'm trying to remember what magenta looks like, but I love everything in those pinks and reds.

[00:20:33] So it helps to, to know that fuchsia fits into that. And awesome. I'm guessing like, would plumb be kind of part of that too, and like a what, what colors fit into that for those people who, who can't really

[00:20:47] Dana: Raspberry. and Ooh, stay tuned. Yeah. Like a ra again, if you remember what raspberry color looks.

[00:20:54] Mm-hmm. looks like. Mm-hmm. . Keep that in your, in mind and stay tuned for Bold Blind Beauty, cuz there's some tips on, I share on how to use that Pantone color for the year throughout your routine. So, but think of it as a raspberry shade.

[00:21:11] Sylvia: You didn't say that Magenta was a hair color, but I've heard people do that.

[00:21:15] Dana: Oh, it's, that's, that's, that's, yeah, it is. You can either go full throttle or highlight. So yes, it is, think of the magenta color as a combination of warms and cool. So if you stay within those families, even if you pop a plum in there, It would still work because it's still, to me, it's still kind of all in the same family. Family is just very shade, so I love it.

[00:21:44] Steph what's your thought?

[00:21:45] Steph: Can we talk about, you know, I hear a lot about the different names of colors, but color is an abstract. Sort of mm-hmm. things for people who have never seen and it really means nothing. Right. I would like to think of a way to describe colors to help people who haven't seen how to relate to them in a, I don't a more physical way. I don't know how we do that.

[00:22:20] I know Pantone historically has done a really good job of providing descriptions of some of their colors. And Dana, thank you so much for, providing us the color of the year. I didn't go out to their website to check out the description they provided for this year.

[00:22:39] But you know how sometimes they have like sort of abstract names for colors that really aren't colors? It's just an abstract name for color. But for somebody who has never seen for, for those of us who have had sight, we can sort of imagine what that might look like if we're given some parameters.

[00:23:01] But for people who haven't seen, I think that that would be sort of a complicated process. So would you recommend perhaps maybe a colorist or a stylist or someone who's familiar with colors to help people who you know, have never been able to see how to mix and match colors?

[00:23:26] Dana: Absolutely. .

[00:23:28] Sylvia: And I would say that even if you have seen colors, it's been a little while for me, it's probably been, you know, three or more years since I've really been able to see color.

[00:23:42] And honestly, you lose those memories of what that especially like. You can say red and you could say blue, and that pops into my mind. But when you say things like magenta or chartreuse, I'm like, oh, what did that look like? It's hard to pull that back into your mind, but when you say a raspberry or a tomato or a plum that helps.

[00:24:07] And so when I think about magenta, I'll, I'll be honest all of the parents are here, will laugh. Magenta always makes me think about the character Magenta on Blues Clues.

[00:24:28] That is always my favorite preference for Magenta, but that was a character on the Blues cartoon who was this magenta pinky kind of bright color. But I love thinking about the raspberries and the, the cherries and the things like that because it feels, I don't know, something about it. It creates this burst of freshness and you know, springiness to me

[00:24:59] Nasreen: Yeah it is a warm color it is a deeper color, so it's not a bright pastel light color. Mm-hmm. . It's a deeper color and it, and it brings warmth about it, depending on how you put it together, whether and what you're using it for, whether it's lips or clothes or nails. It has a different element and it gives off a different vibe for each of those areas.

[00:25:22] Sylvia: But I, but that goes to say is that I still think even someone who has had color be, been able to see color could often benefit because I know that I, I really do still need now at this point, need help figuring out what can go together. Will this look good on my skin tone? Because I don't remember what my skin tone looks like, so,

[00:25:44] Steph: That makes sense. Yeah. I'll tell you the other thing I'm intrigued by is the textured nails. Ooh, yes. Yeah.

[00:25:53] Sylvia: I'm not sure I'm loving it. I'm not sure.

[00:25:56] Nasreen: Cable knit sweaters on our nails? I don't know

[00:26:00] Dana: that one. I, I, when that came across, that was like, that's interesting. And then there was like this whole trend with the velvet nails during the holidays and how it's achieved.

[00:26:11] So I said, those who can pull it off, it, it, it can work if, you know, if you could pull it off. But I thought that it's just what they're, the technology that's being incorporated in beauty, it, it, it is. Just as you, as you know, technology is advancing everything. So just stepping up the nail art just from the basic pearl or rhinestone or something, but to actually mimic fabric. That is pretty cool.

[00:26:39] Sylvia: Is it healthy for your nails though? You know?

[00:26:43] Nasreen: That's a good question, Sylvia. Hmm. That's a

[00:26:47] Steph: Well actually, I mean, when you think about it, nail polish and some of the other stuff we put on our nails isn't healthy. Yeah, it isn't. And, and if you go to the nail salon, like I used to do religiously to get I had tips put on and so to keep them maintained, I would get them filled.

[00:27:05] And there came a point where after a number of years of doing that, I decided no more and I really didn't give much thought to all the chemicals and things. Mm-hmm. even being in that environment in the salon mm-hmm. , how unhealthy it is to inhale all of that stuff. These are things that we don't think about and I'd actually like to, at some point have a discussion about beauty and the toxicity of, beauty.

[00:27:34] Even facial makeup and stuff like that. Yeah. But, I do like, the dimension of being able to have different, tactile features incorporated into a manicure. I don't know that I would do it, but I just find it interesting from an artistic perspective.
 
[00:27:56] Dana: Right and

[00:27:56] Sylvia: It's definitely interesting,

[00:27:58] Dana: Yes, yes.

[00:28:00] Nasreen: Yeah.

[00:28:01] Dana: I don't, yeah, I don't think I would necessarily try it because I'm a basic, as far as my fingernails are concerned, I like a clean look. So like I said, I know there's people out there that would do it. I'll just admire it from others. Mm-hmm.

[00:28:20] Steph: Since bold is our word of the year for 2023, we have an exciting lineup of bold topics for this year to include Fragrance, A step out the door makeover to give you more confidence, Travel, Caregiving, An exit strategy. Navigating the medical system while blind, Standardized versus universal design, and more.

[00:28:45] So stay tuned and while we're on the subject of our lineup, have you checked out our monthly newsletter? If not, you're in luck as we'll include the link to subscribe in the show notes.

[00:29:01] Nasreen: Thanks for listening to Bold Blind Beauty On A.I.R. with your hosts, Stephanae McCoy Nasreen Bhutta, Sylvia Stinson-Perez, and Dana Hinnant. If you enjoyed this episode and you would like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post it on your socials, or leave a rating and review.

[00:29:23] To catch all the latest from Bold Blind Beauty, you can follow us on Instagram, Facebook check out our YouTube channel @BoldBlindBeauty. Thanks again for listening, and we will see you next time on another edition of Bold Blind Beauty On A.I.R.

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Nasreen Bhutta

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Stephanae (Steph) McCoy

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Sylvia Stinson-Perez

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