A woman calls in to complain about Dove's new "Real Beauty" campaign. She wants to make a change, but can't find a way to complain because she's a gender non-conforming person of color and feels like she's been left out of the conversation.
00:00:00.000Day three of hashtag MugClub quarantine, where everything is free in front of the paywall, what's usually available exclusively for MugClubbers, and we've added three more shows per week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
00:01:51.000Are you the representative I would speak with?
00:01:52.000Because I want to talk with someone who can make a change Over there at Dove, I don't want it to just go to some, you know, folks who just send it on to the higher ups.
00:02:04.000Um, I don't have the authority to give you anyone higher up, but I can absolutely take note of your comment and it does get passed as long as that is sort of the chain of command here.
00:02:14.000Okay, well I am calling regarding your Real Beauty campaign.
00:02:19.000You aware of your Real Beauty campaign?
00:02:28.000Okay, I'm gonna let you, I want to say at first, I appreciate y'all doing that work.
00:02:33.000I appreciate that you want to represent people, different people, non-binaries, okay, non-binaries, men and women, and people from different cultures, different races, different body types, because I get it, that's hard.
00:02:46.000But I, still, I do not, I, myself, am not represented at all by this campaign, and I am frankly offended that people of my ilk have been left out.
00:03:00.000I'm so sorry to hear that to confirm your calling, because the Real Beauty campaign, you still feel excluded from?
00:04:21.000But we don't have a combination of a non-conforming person of color, quasi-amputee with rickets.
00:04:33.000I apologize for that, but you do feel excluded by that, and I can absolutely empathize with how you- Thank you very- I appreciate your empathy.
00:06:29.000What made her want to do the campaign for Dove?
00:06:31.000You telling me, oh, everybody's beautiful, but we all supposed to have self-confidence, and that's all well and good, but I'm just supposed to look at their bodies.
00:06:40.000And the bodies, they ain't represented.
00:06:54.000Who do I gotta talk to to make a change?
00:06:56.000Cause I get it, y'all progressive, but it seems like y'all progressive in a way that's maybe comfortable.
00:07:01.000And what I'm doing right now, d***, I hope you understand what I'm doing.
00:07:04.000I'm just trying to make sure that you are all a little, and not you, d***, because it sounds to me like you're cool, it sounds to me like you understand where I'm coming from, but I want to make Dove just a little bit uncomfortable so y'all can feel the pain that I feel every f***ing day as a gender non-conforming person of color who is a quasi-amputee with rickets in a single income household.
00:08:19.000Well, it's people who thought, they thought black people were worse.
00:08:23.000They thought black people were animals or less than, right?
00:08:25.000And then, all of a sudden, they hung out with black people.
00:08:27.000They realized, hey, they're not so bad.
00:08:29.000People need to know people of other stripes and other patterns so that they can then know that we all want, that we are all the world, right?
00:08:39.000That's what you get exposed to people and then you're no longer scared of them, right?
00:08:43.000How many people there at Dove know people like me?
00:08:47.000People who are gender non-conforming, folks of color, quasi-amputees with rickets.
00:08:54.000How many people does your supervisor know like me?
00:08:57.000Absolutely, I can definitely see your point in that it is not someone...
00:09:06.000I can't say that I know someone who is a quasi-amputee with rickets.
00:09:13.000Then how you gonna know to put them in a campaign?
00:09:15.000It's like, it's like we don't even exist!
00:09:18.000You say that I ain't even, you, when you say that, that's like you saying that I don't exist.
00:09:23.000Again, I'm very empathetic with this, um, and I would be more than happy to, you know, get your contact information, pass this along to the brand, um, Who's that?
00:09:35.000I gotta speak with the supervisor, because I appreciate that you empathize, but I want to make sure that the people there who are making decisions, who are going out and putting this up there on Cosmopolitan and Elle and s***, that they hear from me.
00:10:52.000And I know that y'all deal with people on customer service all the time, calling in pissed.
00:10:56.000I get it's not your fault, but it is really hard, as a gender non-conforming, person of color, quasi-amputee with rickets, to find somebody to talk to who will listen to me speak my truth.
00:11:25.000It's like, you know one of those paintings that has like the eyes that are a little bit further back than the rest of the painting, so when you move, the eyes are following you and sh**?
00:11:58.000I don't see myself represented at all!
00:12:00.000And I wanna know why Dove thinks that it's okay to exclude people of my ilk in y'all Real Beauty campaign, when I am, and don't let nobody tell you different, I am a real beauty!
00:12:12.000Well, I certainly don't disagree at all.
00:12:15.000Dove believes that all women and girls have the right to, well, anybody actually.
00:12:19.000I was gonna say, I didn't say woman or girl, I said gender non-conforming.
00:15:13.000I understand completely and I assure you I will pass your information and your feedback on to the brand so they're made aware of your concerns.
00:15:38.000So you don't have a clue what kind of pain someone like me goes through every day having to deal afterwards with having effectively myself mutilated and then sutured up.
00:15:48.000And they give me the device that I gotta use to reopen that wound every day just so I can go around living like you.
00:15:53.000And you know how much harder that is when you got rickets?
00:18:12.000You tell them that Just a Possibly E is available, and not only, not only for beauty shots, but I'm available for an interview to speak to the transgender, gender non-conforming, people of color, quasi-amputee, with rickets, single mother community at large.
00:19:07.000And by the way, I think I can hear from your voice that you a white cis woman laughing at a woman of color, gender non-conforming, quasi-amputee, single income household with rickets.
00:20:11.000Listen, this next phone call can be ACLU or Jesse Jackson.
00:20:15.000I just want to make sure that you don't find my condition funny, and that you're taking it seriously, and this isn't going to go in some suggestion box with a bunch of other angry white women saying, oh, 77 cents on the dollar and sh**.
00:20:26.000I want it to go to someone who really understands the community that I represent.
00:20:32.000Gender non-conforming, people of color, quasi-amputees, single income household with rickets.
00:20:46.000It's bad enough that I got to look at posters and paintings all over the place with Jesus looking like he just came out of an SS catalog and blonde hair and blue eyes.
00:22:56.000I said, I smoke cigars, you know, like we do it every time on the show, so I don't want you to deny a claim because, evidence!
00:23:01.000And imagine that if I go, I'm like, I would like to claim, well my wife would say, I'd like to claim my life insurance over my cold corpse.
00:23:08.000And I'd say, sorry, you can't claim it.
00:23:41.000If you take a syringe full of heroin, and you've been doing it your entire life, if you were a heroin baby, and you've never stopped heroin, and you put a grain of fentanyl in there, you die immediately.
00:30:06.000But you did that, I will say, I've never seen anybody put together props and it's the kind of thing you could lock me in a cell and I can't get out until I can make an R2-D2 like you did out of, you know, a bent back paper clip, some yarn, and a trash can.
00:31:15.000But I remember, too, when we did the... I don't know if it was the first Crowder Confronts, the one where we did Open Minds of America at that Democratic convention?
00:31:32.000And we were there, and it got kind of dicey, where some people got physical.
00:31:36.000And at that point, I just have my head in a swivel, and I'm going, OK, where are people who can possibly hurt me?
00:31:40.000I can't necessarily be aware of everyone on the team.
00:31:42.000And when I went back and watched the footage, I noticed some people who shrunk back and basically left a wide opening for people to just tee off on me.
00:31:51.000And I see Garrett like a little John Belushi.
00:32:42.000Meaning always steps on jokes, but that was my thing for a while like I did it so many times It was my shtick, but we're just rags a dental just like by the way bill.
00:32:50.000Yeah, he'll only does it with people He likes like I've been on the phone with me, and he literally said fuck off and hung up I respect him so much for that, too.
00:33:56.000Um, I was wondering how did you guys, how did you meet up with, uh, Gerald?
00:34:00.000Um, it's always something that's actually been on my mind since we know, um, like Garrett and Maddie and a couple other people, uh, golden ticket.
00:34:10.000Um, but as somebody who was from Detroit and, uh, Uh, French Canada, like, how did you guys, like, how did that friendship start or how did you guys first meet and stuff like that?
00:34:25.000It's something I don't think you've ever talked about.
00:35:08.000For every way the world could be, there is a world which is that way.
00:35:10.000When I was in humanities in college, I drove my professor nuts.
00:35:13.000I think that's the reason it's the only time I've ever gotten 100% on any assignment was my review of 12 Monkeys because he just wanted me to die.
00:36:35.000And so I just started talking with Gerald, and then when I was driving home with the girl who was our kind of mutual friend, I said, who's that Gerald guy?
00:37:12.000And then you obviously came in, and the reason I liked you is we connected, and when you came in, like, you know, you weren't ready to edit.
00:37:18.000We just needed an editor, and we're like, well, let's see if we can bring him back in part-time.
00:37:22.000AudioAid, I don't know, he's probably the most polished person we've had hired, I'm not really a misfit.
00:37:26.000Even when I used to go to College Republicans, there was an event in Cal Poly, there was a kid, I remember, who had like an Iron Maiden or Megadeth, one of those.
00:37:35.000He had that shirt on, long hair, and all these other people looked like, you know, Tucker Carlson, Bowtie Era lookalikes, or Ann Coulter minis, and I just spent almost the whole night talking with him, just because I'm going, how do you, this was long before alt-right, long before this show really existed as it does now, or Milo, or any of these people, you know, where it's sort of become, I don't want to say more hip, but acceptable to be conservative now.
00:38:20.000So do I. So it was kind of funny because, and not funny the situation that happened, but funny how things transpired after that because that person that was a mutual friend who I did not like, though you have said I liked and my wife has said that I liked.
00:38:35.000She actually kind of predicted, this is one of the rare prophecies that anyone has ever, I just immediately discount them, but she told me that effectively, she's like, I just, I think that you're going to be doing what we're doing right now.
00:39:03.000So the whole story is that I was in ministry school with this group of people, and there was people that were way older than me, there was people that were way younger, but I served in youth as well.
00:39:12.000And you taught specifically course in Islam?
00:39:14.000I created a class called A Christian's Response to Islam, and I brought speakers together from different places.
00:39:19.000Then I taught specifically on Islamic eschatology as it relates to Christian eschatology.
00:40:33.000Anyway, she gets into an accident and then you and I kind of came together to help put a campaign together to buy a laptop.
00:40:39.000We ended up buying a laptop for this person.
00:40:41.000She ended up being kind of heavily involved with your family and so I think that's one of the ways that our friendship connected a little bit more.
00:40:48.000Yeah, because it gave us more opportunities to hang out and then we just kind of developed from there and then Ended up being in your your wedding and that was the first time I saw or didn't see Steven naked Do you remember that at the house?
00:41:01.000So you get I remember I do remember our wedding Keep us in mind.
00:42:09.000At the premiere of Avatar, you see when he walked up to this reporter, like at the premiere, going through the red carpet, and then he goes, ah, numakande, but whatever, something, numakande mana, and she goes, what, that means, what's the name of that, Navi?
00:42:32.000He's trying to work on all of them at the same time, which is taking him decades.
00:42:36.000He'll probably die before that ever happens.
00:42:38.000But anyway, that was really, that was kind of funny.
00:42:40.000That week, I think, is where our friendship really kind of grew a lot, because we spent a ton of time around each other.
00:42:46.000Well, I think it's also why we, good examples, comparing that to your wedding, how we sort of counterbalance each other as friends, because you remember how nervous I was.
00:45:13.000I know more about motorcycles than I do about cars because that was sort of my luxury vehicle until I moved from Michigan to Texas and I wouldn't be caught dead in the freeway because I'd be caught dead on a motorcycle.
00:45:24.000I just like a car that gets me from point A to point B, but we did get a company car.
00:45:28.000We have a used Expedition, because we needed something that was safe, stable, big, and has an outlet, too, so you can plug in your laptop.
00:45:36.000And we also had the secret shitty news van before that, but that's for sale, by the way.
00:46:17.000I didn't have any place to land at this point.
00:46:19.000I think I've talked about the union dues that I had to pay, and thank you again, Jordan, for covering those for me before I got into the set of Greek, where my character's name was Jace, but it might as well have been called Drunk Guy Number Two.
00:46:30.000Didn't quite have the arc that my agent was anticipating.
00:47:01.000So, not a car enthusiast, but I like cars that, for me, a car is like an iPhone in the sense that I want a car that I enjoy, I'm comfortable in, it's safe, it gets me from point A to point B. If I could have any car that kind of fits those parameters, it would probably be like a Porsche Cayenne, used, just because it's an SUV, it's practical, but also really fast.
00:50:36.000Well, we also gave you, I think we charged you like $100, because I always want to get a car just so we could change the title, and you have to pay something.
00:50:43.000The van, which air conditioning didn't work.
00:51:40.000I will say, though, the Expedition that we have, I don't know if we need to bleep that because then people might be looking for it, but there's so many of those.
00:52:29.000Because I have this exact conversation.
00:52:30.000So when I was in Los Angeles, before I bought the van, I was kicked out of someone's house who was actually a contact from the church where I went there and then I argued with him about Obama.
00:52:38.000I think I know who you're talking about.
00:52:41.000But then he was talking about being pulled over because he was black, and I was like, you just told me that you had, like, eight speeding tickets in the last two years.
00:52:50.000But, and then I went to the church that was primarily black, and all of them had a Thomas.
00:52:55.000He had a speeding ticket ministry, you know what I mean?
00:52:58.000So I don't know, you know, listen, I'm not asking you if it is, but they all, I lived with three different black families at different points.
00:53:04.000I went to two different black churches.
00:53:05.000One in, actually three, because technically it was two different forms of the congregation.
00:53:09.000One in Jamaica Hills, sorry, one in Forest Hills, one in Jamaica, Queens, and then one in Los Angeles.
00:53:13.000They all got up later than most white people that I know, and seemed to have a lot of speeding tickets.