Once you get labeled, there's nothing you can do about it.
There's a problem which is when you're trapped in your own identity and everything is really you, then you feel less freedom to sort of explore who you want to be. So I think it's kind of something we're stuck with as long as humans are the way we are.
Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You're caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn't go running with Curt today because you don't want to sweat out this straightness. You're always battling to make your hair do what it wasn't meant to do.
You have no doubt guessed long since that the conquest of time and the escape from reality, or however else it may be that you choose to describe your longing, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality. That is the prison where you lie.
I can remember, actually, seeing the film 'Oliver!' and understanding so badly that I wanted to play that part, but that I would never be able to because I was a 'girl' and Oliver was a 'boy.'
Black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of white supremacy is that black identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it…Negative stereotypes about the nature of black masculinity continue to overdetermine the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves.
I think I'm expected to behave in a certain manner.
But sometimes I've felt a little constrained by that idea of who I'm meant to be.
You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
I don't like the idea that in music, clothes, taste or anything, we are limited to a certain style, because we need to maintain an identity, maybe between some subculture group. Hopefully, all those walls break down, and music is just music.
How dull it is to have people defining you.
Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.
I think that all men and women both, particularly women, hold back on parts of ourselves because they don't fit into the traditional workplace model.
Feeling trapped in identity isn't just the purview of women and minorities.
I see the wielding of a pronoun as something that can be freeing for some members of society but a shackle to others like myself.
I can't compete for roles that require me to be Caucasian or African American, even if those characters really connect with me and intrigue me.
Tons of musicians who I love are imprisoned by their identity. That can be totally fine because they are so amazing in their technique, but for me, I'm a little too restless for that.
In fashion, there are so many gangs, if you identify too much with one, you get caught - I would lose my freedom.
If someone believes they are limited by their gender, race or background, they will become more limited.
There are all these languages that keep people in place that conform us to a set of terms. It's why I think the whole idea of identity as something that is something of a straitjacket. That most of us like to think of as natural and innate. That we just find and go, 'Yeah, that's who I am.'
My number-one goal is to never feel like I'm strictly defining myself. The minute I feel like I'm doing that as anything - as theatrical, as feminist, as songwriter - I feel like the minute I name it, I'm stuck in a box.
My white counterparts are always pushing the line, and they are fearless, so why can't I do that, too?
Most so-called 'black' people do not feel themselves at liberty to simply turn off or ignore their allotted racial designation, whether they would like to or not.
We're prisioners of... things.Of who we are.
You don't actually have control of the position people want you to be in. If they say, 'You king of the blacks,' you're king of the blacks - whether you like it or not.
