Danielle Prescod, TOKEN BLACK GIRL: A Memoir
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[0:58]Danielle Prescott is the author of Token Black Girl, a memoir. Danielle is a 15-year veteran of the
[1:03]beauty and fashion industry, and a graduate of NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
[1:09]A lifelong fashion obsessive, she was most recently the style director of VET.com.
[1:15]With Chrissy Rutherford, Prescott co-founded two BG Consulting, which aids fashion and beauty brands,
[1:21]and influencers on their anti-racism journeys. She dedicates her time to researching
[1:26]how feminism and social justice intersect with pop culture. An avid reader and writer,
[1:31]Prescott also loves TikTok, the arts, staying active, horseback riding, and exercising at
[1:36]any hour of the day. She has been featured recently in Harper's Bazaar, The Cut, and L,
[1:41]and was named one of Ulta Beauty's Muse 100, celebrating the most inspirational Black
[1:46]voices in beauty Token Black Girl is her first book. Welcome, Danielle. Thanks so much for
[1:51]coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss Token Black Girl a memoir.
[1:55]Yay! Congratulations on your book. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.
[1:59]Congratulations on your book. I wish I read it before I came on the podcast, but I am a very
[2:05]slow reader. I don't know how all y'all in book publishing read so fast, but I have a book pile
[2:12]like so high of books to read. No worries. But we're both with little A, which is great.
[2:20]I feel like it's been such a wonderful experience for me, so I hope you have all seen.
[2:25]It's also my only experience, so I don't know how it usually goes, but it's been great so far.
[2:29]Oh, good. It's a good one. Okay, so why don't you tell listeners what your memoir is about and
[2:36]what inspired you to write a memoir? Well, I never thought that I would write a memoir, so the
[2:42]fact that my first book is a memoir is kind of surprising to me. I started out my publishing journey
[2:49]wanting to write a fiction book and once I started doing that, I realized like what a challenge
[2:54]that was because I don't have experience writing fiction. All of my experience is kind of in
[2:59]personal narrative or in interviewing people and doing features writing about observations, doing
[3:05]research, and all of that. So when I was stuck writing my fiction book, I was like, I guess a way
[3:11]to unstuck myself would be to do the thing I know how to do and that's come easiest, which is
[3:18]writing, you know, from my own perspective. And once I started doing that, everything became
[3:24]a lot easier and I wasn't sure what I wanted to write about, but for a number of years in therapy,
[3:30]I had been speaking with my therapist about self-love and she had put me on a recovery journey
[3:38]from my eating disorder and we were trying to kind of uncover the origins of some thought patterns
[3:45]and things that she calls limiting beliefs. It's like a therapy term that a lot of people use.
[3:50]And one of the things that kept coming up was that, you know, she's like, you don't love
[3:56]yourself, you need to work on self-love. And I was like, of course, I love myself. I don't
[4:00]understand what you mean by that. And really, it was that I had been loving myself only conditionally.
[4:09]So I have been setting parameters around like how I would love myself. So only if I have a job that
[4:13]I like, or if I'm achieving something that I like, or if I dress the way I like, or my hair is
[4:18]done, the way I like all of these things. And it was like, why is myself at my essence very hard
[4:25]for me to love? I don't understand why I think I need to do all these things in order to, like,
[4:30]earn love, I guess. And so once I started tracing back the origins to where those thoughts came from,
[4:35]I arrived at white supremacy. So I was like, I need to write a book on how white supremacy affected
[4:41]me and also my participation in it when I was a member of the media. Because for many years,
[4:47]after I was a consumer of media, I was also a producer of media. I worked at various fashion
[4:53]publications in New York City. So I was also responsible for distributing the same kind of messaging
[5:01]that ultimately was very harmful to me. Interesting. Okay. So when you decided to sort of dig back and
[5:08]go into your life and everything, which you wrote about really in such vivid detail and, you know,
[5:14]it was really great. I mean, some of the things like your third grade or I don't know what grade it was
[5:20]when the girls were writing that mean note to you in school, which broke my heart. I feel like that
[5:25]was one of those pivotal moments for you. Maybe you could talk about that and maybe I'm wrong,
[5:29]but I just feel like that's when you sort of realized that there was or there could be perceived
[5:35]to be a difference among you and your peers. Anyway, maybe talk about that moment and
[5:40]how it affected you. So for anyone who doesn't know, I missed this part when I was supposed to
[5:45]introduce the book, but a lot of it is about my experiences in private school in Westchester County
[5:51]and then I went to school and credit Connecticut before I worked in fashion. So a lot of my
[5:57]interactions with my classmates were actually influenced by prejudice, racism, etc. But I did not
[6:04]have the vocabulary or the emotional intelligence to really tackle it. And it was something that
[6:11]I was very ashamed of for a long time because as you become an adult and you do get more
[6:20]solid in your own identity, you kind of want to hide if you weren't always there. So I was like,
[6:26]oh, I don't want people to know that I wasn't always like, wow, I love being black. This is the
[6:31]most amazing thing. And so it was very shameful to revisit childhood memories, but in writing a lot
[6:40]of this stuff, I've had several other girls who also women who identify as token black girls
[6:47]or did when they were growing up say that, you know, I didn't find out I was black until I was 12.
[6:52]Nobody had this conversation with me until later in life. And I'm not sure really what the
[6:59]parenting manual said at the time, I grew up in the 90s and for our households, it was
[7:07]I'm mostly this color blind messaging. I don't think that anyone wanted to emphasize that there
[7:13]was necessarily a difference. But eventually, I think in the life of a child of color in America,
[7:20]your parents have to let you know that there is a difference between you and your friends if you
[7:26]are the only person of color. And so for me, that happened kind of against their wishes. My wish
[7:33]is when somebody at school, I went to, I transferred schools and somebody was like, I don't like
[7:37]the new girl because she's black. And the message that it got relayed to me and it became this
[7:44]big scandal. And so I hope that what people get from the book is talking to children about race
[7:52]is important from both sides because you don't want to be the child finding out that you're
[7:57]a minority at the hands of another child. But I'm like, you also don't want your child to be the one
[8:02]who is saying, I don't like so and so because they're black or in a lot of cases using the
[8:07]N word, you know, or we're using it another slur because they have heard it repeated and they
[8:15]know exactly how to use it because it's weird, even though parents might not tell children that
[8:20]they have a way of finding things out. Yes, kids are way smarter than parents thank for the
[8:26]the most part. Well, you also go into, are you comfortable talking about your eating disorder? Do
[8:34]you mind? Oh, yeah. Okay. I mean, I know you wrote about it, but you know, it's different when we're
[8:38]face to face or zoom to zoom or whatever. But you talk about, you know, coming to terms with your
[8:43]own body, you talk about starting ballet at age three, which obviously puts the body into a whole
[8:50]another realm of attention and form and all of that and and how you were determined to make
[8:58]yourself as thin as possible and to sort of outsmart your own body in a way from becoming what
[9:04]it was supposed to become. Tell me a little more about that. I think that really what I was trying
[9:11]to achieve the most was that I wanted to be the emptiest vessel because I felt that everyone was
[9:17]constantly projecting their wants and desires onto me, what they wanted me to behave like, be do
[9:25]and it felt so powerless to me. Like it was so outside of my control, I often write about how I was,
[9:31]you know, on the cover or feature on the website of every school that I've ever attended and they
[9:36]put my face there. You know, when I worked at L, I was on the side of the Hearst Building, they put
[9:41]my face there and then I am, you know, not allowed in certain meetings where I left off with emails
[9:48]with no one asks you, hey, is this okay with you? And I did not really have the tools to be like,
[9:54]I'm uncomfortable with this. So I was like, instead, I will just make myself as empty as possible.
[10:00]And for me, it was a lot about control.
[10:04]If I feel like all of that stuff is out of my control,
[10:07]the one thing I can control is like how I look.
[10:11]And it made me feel very powerful to be in control
[10:14]over my own body and to say,
[10:16]I don't have me, it's like other people.
[10:19]There's a lot of people with eating disorders
[10:21]who are like, you know, mind over matter people.
[10:23]They think it's like they're superpowers.
[10:25]So it's like, I never have to go to the bathroom.
[10:27]I never sweat.
[10:27]I don't have human needs
[10:29]because I can override that.
[10:31]I'm super human.
[10:32]And it makes you feel really powerful in a way,
[10:35]but it's just not a sustainable way to live.
[10:38]Like eventually you have to address.
[10:41]Like it's your mental health,
[10:43]it's your physical health,
[10:44]it's your emotional health.
[10:44]It's all of those things working together.
[10:46]It's very holistic.
[10:47]So there's not a way to isolate these things.
[10:51]So when did you first develop your eating disorder?
[10:54]Can you talk about that?
[10:56]Or like when did you feel that, you know,
[10:59]quote unquote power from starving essentially
[11:02]and how did it transition to more Bolivia and all of that?
[11:08]I would say probably it was like 12 or 13
[11:11]because I really noticed that I felt like
[11:14]I was getting much bigger than all of my friends were.
[11:16]We always used to share clothes and swap clothes
[11:19]and all of a sudden I could not fit into their clothes.
[11:22]I also had some sort of drained idea where I don't understand
[11:26]where I got it, that I had to wear the clothing size
[11:32]for the age I was.
[11:33]So if I was 12 years old,
[11:36]I had to wear a size 12.
[11:38]I have no idea why I thought that I didn't like that.
[11:41]I thought it was real.
[11:42]I also was like my life will be over
[11:45]if I get over 100 pounds.
[11:47]Again, there's many ways that this is communicated
[11:52]in television shows.
[11:54]At the time there were horrible tabloid magazines
[11:57]that would often print weights of women
[12:01]or when they gained weight and when they lost weight
[12:04]that would let you know and it would be at the grocery store.
[12:07]Like you could not really escape this obsession
[12:10]with like other people's bodies.
[12:12]So it felt only natural to also have an obsession
[12:16]with your own body.
[12:17]And so I would restrict my eating a lot
[12:21]and eventually it turned into bulimia
[12:23]because you get so hungry.
[12:25]I was very active as a child.
[12:26]So I was played with a lot of sports.
[12:28]I did a lot of things.
[12:30]And you need energy for that.
[12:32]So you need food.
[12:33]And so I would feel so guilty though for eating.
[12:38]I was like, I have to get rid of this thing that I did.
[12:41]It was just, it was like a cycle of shame
[12:44]that almost never went away.
[12:47]And then of course it becomes like a lot easier
[12:49]when you leave your parents house.
[12:50]Like things are very hard to control
[12:53]when you are living under someone else's roof.
[12:57]And you have to follow certain rules.
[12:58]We had a lot of family dinners.
[13:00]So I felt like I had to be very creative
[13:02]and how I kind of avoided food.
[13:05]But I discovered that being like I'm studying
[13:08]or I have homework that was like also a really good way.
[13:11]So again, kind of like achieving myself out of having
[13:15]natural needs was something I wanted to do and show everyone.
[13:20]And how do you feel like you were able
[13:23]to get this under control?
[13:25]Well, it all happened kind of accidentally.
[13:28]When I turned 30, I froze my eggs.
[13:31]So when you go through that process,
[13:33]you have to do like IVF to essentially like
[13:36]simulate your follicles to produce a lot of eggs
[13:41]so they can harvest them.
[13:42]And there's three rules.
[13:44]No drinking, no exercising, no sex.
[13:47]And I was an obsessive exerciser.
[13:52]And I was like, well, they obviously don't mean
[13:54]no exercise for me.
[13:56]They mean no exercise for people who don't exercise.
[13:58]But I'll continue to exercise.
[14:00]But the other stuff, I don't even drink.
[14:02]So I was like, I don't have a problem, guys.
[14:03]Like I don't have a partner.
[14:04]So I'll be abstinent.
[14:06]And the first day that I was on hormone shots,
[14:10]I took myself to SoulCycle and I started cramping
[14:14]in SoulCycle.
[14:15]And I got so scared because egg freezing
[14:18]is so expensive.
[14:19]And I was like, wow, how did I deny that I thought
[14:22]that I was going to mess this up?
[14:24]And actually, I'm sitting here
[14:25]doing exactly what the doctor told me not to do.
[14:28]And I was like, I really want it to work
[14:30]because I don't want to do it twice.
[14:31]It's really disruptive to your life.
[14:33]Like you have to go to the office pretty much every day
[14:37]for two weeks, get an ultrasound and blood test
[14:39]like to the doctor's office.
[14:41]You have to focus on giving yourself
[14:44]these shots at the same time every single night.
[14:47]And because I was probably myself for hormones,
[14:50]I was hungrier than I have ever been in my life.
[14:54]So I just started eating because again,
[14:56]I really wanted it to work.
[14:59]And I was a little like superstitious.
[15:01]I was like, I have to just like try my best
[15:03]to like make sure that this is successful.
[15:05]And so I stopped exercising and I ate a lot
[15:08]and I gained like almost 20 pounds in like two weeks,
[15:12]which was really alarming to me,
[15:14]but I was also very sure that after it was over,
[15:17]I could lose it.
[15:18]I was like, no problem.
[15:20]I'll just, you know, go back to dieting after this is over.
[15:22]And I realized like I was just so exhausted by it all.
[15:26]I was like, what if I just stopped?
[15:28]And it was also around the time of lockdown
[15:31]and quarantine.
[15:32]And so I wasn't seeing a lot of people
[15:36]so that also made it easier.
[15:38]I didn't have to like wear fashion clothes
[15:41]and have to go to parties.
[15:43]That made it a little bit easier.
[15:44]So then slowly but surely I started experimenting
[15:48]with being a little bit healthier.
[15:50]And I think having it even sort of like being an alcoholic,
[15:54]you have to think about it every day.
[15:56]You have to think like I'm choosing every day,
[15:58]like not to revert back to old behaviors,
[16:01]but I try my best.
[16:03]So I think it's going well.
[16:06]It's been about three years now.
[16:08]Wow.
[16:09]Well, it takes a lot of time to undo so many years
[16:11]of entrenched behaviors.
[16:13]And that's, it takes, you know, be patient.
[16:16]And, you know, it's not perfection.
[16:19]And I know you know all this.
[16:20]I don't know why I feel like I need to tell you
[16:21]but I don't know.
[16:22]Well, the listeners might not know.
[16:23]And it's also like so much of that behavior
[16:26]was a coping mechanism too for me to like,
[16:28]when I had something stressful happen,
[16:30]I would be like, oh great.
[16:31]Okay, so I'll just like push to decide
[16:34]or I won't eat or I'll focus on this day
[16:36]and you know, you can't really do that anymore.
[16:38]And like I have to remind myself,
[16:40]you have to eat, like I'm like, after this,
[16:42]I have to eat breakfast.
[16:44]You are, you're at the East Coast, right?
[16:46]So it's like you're an hour ahead of me
[16:48]is on a little behind.
[16:50]But yeah, I'm like, I have to remember,
[16:52]eat breakfast, then eat lunch, then eat dinner.
[16:55]It's okay to like stop and want to snack
[16:57]in the middle of the day.
[16:58]It's a lot.
[16:59]It's, yes.
[17:01]I have a lifetime fascination and deep interest
[17:05]in eating disorders for several people who were close
[17:08]to me who had really serious eating disorders.
[17:11]And I majored in psychology and college
[17:14]and I worked at the Yale Center for eating and weight disorders.
[17:17]And I worked at the adolescent inpatient unit
[17:19]of a psychiatric hospital and have just, you know,
[17:23]learned a lot.
[17:24]And I've struggled with my own weight
[17:27]and my own ways for years and years.
[17:29]And anyway, it's just been something
[17:31]I've done a lot of research on.
[17:33]And so I feel incredibly, you know,
[17:37]empathetic towards what you're going through
[17:39]and the phase of recovery that you're in.
[17:41]And, you know, it's hard because food is everywhere.
[17:45]It's not like an alcoholic, not that that's easy.
[17:47]That's also perfectly hard.
[17:49]But, you know, at least you can choose not to go to a bar
[17:52]or like put yourself in the scenario.
[17:53]But with food, it's everywhere.
[17:55]It's not like you can be like, well, you know,
[17:57]I'm not, it's, you can't get away from it, so.
[18:00]You can't.
[18:01]I think for a long time, I also hated holidays.
[18:04]Like, I hated like, especially Thanksgiving, the worst.
[18:08]And everyone loves those holidays.
[18:10]And it was like amplified by having social media.
[18:14]It just became this other thing as well.
[18:17]Yeah.
[18:18]So it's very hard to manage because food is also,
[18:21]it's very cultural is how people express love.
[18:23]Like, they want to feed you, can I understand that?
[18:27]But it's also, I think, hard to explain to people like,
[18:32]it's not that I'm rejecting your love
[18:34]is that I don't think I can accept this package
[18:37]as you're giving it.
[18:38]So it's a lot of negotiating personality
[18:42]isn't helping to open up.
[18:43]But I also think the book has made it easier for me
[18:46]because personally, I think that, as you know,
[18:49]working with people with eating disorders,
[18:51]like the secrecy of it all becomes its own thing.
[18:56]So I felt like I was hiding so much from so many people.
[18:59]And I write about this in the book
[19:01]that once I had these kind of jobs and media
[19:04]where it was supposed to be part of my job
[19:07]to make it look so fun.
[19:09]And it was the best place to be in the world.
[19:13]And that and your hungry and know what you know
[19:16]and can know that part of it, it just becomes really difficult.
[19:19]So now that the book is out there, I feel very free
[19:23]and relieved, kind of everyone can know.
[19:27]And I also hope that some other people kind of
[19:30]maybe realize like how serious their responsibility is
[19:34]as members of the media.
[19:35]I mean, there's no shortage of research that shows us
[19:39]that how harmful certain imagery and language is
[19:42]to be out there.
[19:43]And yet I don't understand, like it doesn't stop.
[19:47]Yeah.
[19:50]Yep.
[19:50]So what is your personal outlook on your own contribution
[19:56]going forward?
[19:57]Like how do you want to see yourself professionally?
[19:59]Obviously.
[20:00]You've written this book to counteract some of the,
[20:02]you know, to point out the things people should be aware of
[20:05]and start that dialogue or continue that dialogue rather.
[20:09]But, you know, given all of your work experience in that realm,
[20:12]like what are you thinking sort of now?
[20:14]Like where do you want your career to go and all of that?
[20:16]Or maybe you haven't thought about it that much,
[20:18]but I don't know.
[20:20]Well, I really want to write more books.
[20:23]I really do want to write fiction as well.
[20:25]And I have a consulting agency
[20:28]with a business partner who's also a former editor.
[20:31]It's called 2BG Consulting.
[20:33]And we help brands, beauty and fashion brands,
[20:37]craft and tie-racist identities
[20:39]and help them to be more inclusive in their language
[20:43]and their marketing so that, you know,
[20:45]when people are introduced to their brand
[20:48]or interacting with their brand,
[20:50]they are feeling welcomed by it
[20:51]and not necessarily excluded by it.
[20:54]That's great.
[20:55]Really wonderful.
[20:57]Have there been any surprising reactions to your book?
[21:02]I don't think so.
[21:03]You know, I've had some lifelong friends reach out
[21:06]who've known me for a long time
[21:08]and some white friends and say something like, you know,
[21:13]I had really fond memories of us growing up.
[21:17]And I'm like, I did as well, you know,
[21:20]the book is not heavy on like the good times necessarily
[21:25]because, you know, like I feel like I spent so long projecting
[21:33]that everything was perfect and fine.
[21:35]And my participation in being in all those photographs,
[21:38]like I'm like, you have that story.
[21:40]So now I want to tell the story
[21:42]that feels most authentic to me.
[21:44]But it doesn't mean that like I had a bad childhood
[21:47]or that things weren't happy or it didn't have happy memories.
[21:50]I think for every negative experience I had in the book
[21:54]at the hands of white people.
[21:56]I also had twice as many positive experiences, you know?
[22:00]And like I have several friends that I can trust.
[22:04]I don't know if this is in the book.
[22:05]We might have cut it out
[22:06]but my father's mother, that grandma on my side
[22:12]was always like questioning my mom was so shocked.
[22:15]She was like, you were gonna let them sleep
[22:18]over white people's houses.
[22:19]Like you're gonna let them play these girls
[22:21]and she would tell me she'd be like,
[22:23]those girls are not your friends, like don't be fooled.
[22:26]And it was because I didn't know this at the time of course
[22:29]but she just had so many negative experiences
[22:34]with white women that she was just like,
[22:36]I want to protect you from that.
[22:37]She couldn't believe that my parents were like,
[22:40]willingly putting me in situations.
[22:42]And for the most part it was okay,
[22:45]but I do want people to know that like when it's not okay,
[22:49]it's very serious and that, you know,
[22:51]this is not something that's gonna work itself out.
[22:53]It's something that we need to be very proactive
[22:56]about challenging before that something goes very wrong.
[23:01]Next one.
[23:03]Danielle, thank you.
[23:04]Thank you for coming on
[23:05]and talking about token black girl, your memoir
[23:08]and your experience being so open and honest
[23:12]and helping so many other women out there
[23:14]by sharing your experience.
[23:15]So it's really wonderful.
[23:17]Thank you for having me
[23:18]and thanks for having me
[23:19]here a nice library.
[23:21]You're welcome.
[23:22]I love your studying.
[23:23]Thank you.
[23:24]Thank you very much.
[23:25]Happy plates.
[23:27]All right, take care.
[23:29]Hi.
[23:31]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[23:34]to Read Books.
[23:35]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[23:37]at Zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[23:40]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zebioans.com
[23:43]and sign up for my virtual book club
[23:44]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[23:47]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[23:48]Like, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[23:51]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[23:53]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.