After hearing some of Michaela Angela Davis’s story for our Dispelling Beauty Myths series with Allure, we were jumping out of our skin to explore her full journey for What’s Underneath.
Light-skinned and blond, the former fashion editor and present-day activist recalls, “So many people would want me to be something other than black, ‘You could be Brazilian or from this island off the coast.’ There was this idea that, if I had an out from claiming my American blackness, I should take it.” Growing up, Michaela was barred from going to her white best friend’s house, once her friend’s mother realized her race. “She’s in the same deeply flawed patriarchal white supremacist structure that we’re all trapped in it,” explains Michaela. “We’re in different rooms (with most poor black people locked in the basement, with the boiler in hell), but every American is in it.”
Michaela also exposes the negotiating that she’s doing between the 50-year-old person that she is and the 20-something body that she sometimes still sees when she looks in the mirror. Tenderly opening up about the struggle she’s had with her “battle-scarred” post-baby stomach, Michaela reveals the tattoo -- “And So It Is” -- that she recently got on her abdomen as an expression of her new found acceptance. As for the fallacy that “women in the middle” don’t have vibrant sex lives? “You’re fabulous, you’re smart, you’re comfortable in your own skin and your successful with your own corner office... but you don’t like fucking? It’s a lie.”
For all of Michaela’s searing honesty and irrepressible energy, press the play button above.
Thank you, Chantelle Lingerie, for sponsoring this episode and for providing Michaela with a personal bra fitting and the lingerie shown in this video. For more info about Chantelle, please click here
All editorial decisions were made by us (StyleLikeU) and are in keeping with the mission of the What’s Underneath Project.
xo,
Elisa + Lily
Follow Michaela on Instagram: @michaelaangelad
Follow her on Twitter: @MichaelaAngelaD
Michaela's video was edited by Andrea Cruz & Naomi Ranz-Schleifer