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Episode 16: Vanessa Calderon On Dance, Movement and Messages
77 Plays4 years ago
Vanessa is a multi-talented artist with a lot to say about violence towards women. We hear how she uses performance to shine the spotlight on difficult topics.
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
I didn't want them to see me. I wanted to see the situation, what was going on.
Introduction to 'Doorknob Comments' and Hosts
00:00:11
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on doorknob comments, a podcast that we created to discuss all things involving mental health. We take the view that psychiatry is not just about the absence of illness, but rather the positive qualities, presence of health and strong relationships and all the wonderful things that make life worth living.
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm Dr. Farah White. And I'm Dr. Grant Brenner. Our guest today is actress and choreographer Vanessa Calderon.
Vanessa Calderon's Advocacy through Dance
00:00:34
Speaker
She is enthusiastic about sending messages to people which help them become comfortable talking about uncomfortable situations. And she is the founder of Demotion Act.
00:00:44
Speaker
a dance-based communication platform for bringing issues like this to people's awareness. She's addressed hard-hitting subjects like breast cancer awareness, multiple sclerosis, and forced sterilization. Welcome. We're so happy to have you here today, and I was really looking forward to meeting you and getting a chance to speak with you about your work and about your connection to grants. So I'd love to hear about how you guys know each other.
00:01:12
Speaker
I was working as a stylist when I moved to York in a glasses store. So, and Grant came one morning and he was looking for glasses. So I told him he was very unapproachable.
00:01:28
Speaker
I need to know which glasses. Yeah, unapproachable. Yeah. I gave him some glasses and we ended up sitting on a table and talking about his case and talking about kids in general and how he had a very rough morning. And then at the end I said, Oh my God, you're so loving.
00:01:47
Speaker
And so great, and so smart. So, yeah, he's been a supporter from the beginning. And I think we started trying to connect and see with my meager connections whether I could help in some way or give some feedback. But I was wearing these glasses that go over your glasses, the kind of sunglasses you can buy in the drugstore, or that they look like the sunglasses that ophthalmologists give people after cataract surgery. And it's basically just a mirrored shield.
00:02:16
Speaker
I remember those. I remember the first time you got prescription sunglasses. Did you help him pick those out? Yes. Thank you.
00:02:28
Speaker
now we can walk around together, be seen in public together. I know. I had been feeling badly because I had become frustrated with my son that morning. And I was thinking about how to be a good parent and stuff like that. And I think you said you worked with kids, right? Yes, at that time I was teaching tennis.
00:02:47
Speaker
but I had like four years old and five years old. So it was a challenge, but it was fun. And we were talking about how to communicate with kids.
Balancing Communication with Children
00:02:56
Speaker
Sometimes you have to have that balance between letting them be free and explore. And at the same time, be careful with the, you know, the lines and what you have, how you have to behave.
Vanessa's Dance Journey and Industry Reflections
00:03:08
Speaker
Well, I'd love to hear about your history with movement and dance and how you, is that of interest that kind of starts way back for you from childhood or?
00:03:19
Speaker
Yes, I was a child dancer. I always danced. I think I was born with it. There are singers that they sing when they're four and then I have to take classes and I was one of those kids that even I was always dancing. I was really good since I was very little. I think when you have something that you're born with it and it's your passion. And then of course I took tons of classes and
00:03:41
Speaker
I got better. I always got interested in jazz, hip hop, and modern dance. So I was not specific on something, but I danced everything. At a very early age, I became a choreographer. So I was always creating dances and I was always doing different movements for my classmates and my friends. So yeah, when I was around 20, I was choreographing already for events and shows.
00:04:07
Speaker
I never felt that I have worked a day in my life. Yeah, like if you like what you do, you know, love what you do. And it is hard. I'm wrong. And I'm getting pain and all the tours, you know, and when you choreograph, you also have agencies and people tell me what to do and how to do it. So I became a very commercial choreographer. So I was making money very fast, giving jobs to
International Work and Challenges in Dance Industry
00:04:34
Speaker
my
00:04:34
Speaker
For instance, dancers, I always had the same team that I worked with, and it was becoming kind of a shallow situation for me. Was this in Spain? I was working in Spain, and I was always touring with singers, and I was always working in companies as well. It's like here is the same TV show, like you can dance, so those kind of TV shows, they had singers and everybody, and then we toured with them. I did MTV Europe,
00:05:02
Speaker
European MTV there with Robbie Williams and Afghan commercials with Antonio Banderas. So cool. And did you feel because I think some of the things that you're going to talk with us today are a little probably less commercial. Was there ever a point where you felt like you weren't able to flex your muscles creatively in the way that you really wanted or was it mostly a positive experience?
00:05:25
Speaker
It was most of a feeling. I was feeling kind of empty. I was feeling that everybody was, they were looking for cute girls that not have to dance. And I got tired of being the cute girl when I had a lot of work. People that were hiring me at that moment, they were very old.
00:05:45
Speaker
and they didn't really know much about dancing. And we were always the cute girls, but it's this kind of demeanor. They make you feel that you are not worthy enough or you're just cute. And it's like, well, I'm doing everything. I'm doing the wardrobe, I'm doing the stage, I'm doing the choreography, I'm hiring the dancers. This is a career and it's a lot of work. A lot of gender-based discrimination
00:06:10
Speaker
Especially with a career that is not as New York, because I studied here when I was 18. So I know that if they saw me walking on the street, they were like, oh my God, you're a dancer. What did you do? Who did you work with? There is an interest in here. There is a support. There is a big support in here. It's a career. In Spain, it was more like, oh, when are you going to get a job? They want to make money right now. I don't know how to talk. What else? Not taken seriously.
00:06:37
Speaker
no being taken serious. And because I was very young, that's true. I was very young and it was always the same thing. You're going to be cute and not be a professional. It doesn't matter which to dance, you need to dance at the end.
00:06:50
Speaker
So it got to a point where I was kind of bored and I did everything I had to do and I thought that I needed something else.
Innovation in Dance: Meissner Technique and 'The Emotion Act'
00:06:58
Speaker
So by that time I was taking classes in a school in Spain that came from London, Actors Temple, and they were teaching Meissner. So I went for a week, I left.
00:07:10
Speaker
everything that they were doing. For listeners, how does the Meissner technique work? Meissner works a lot with the emotions from the guts. What do you feel? And also they were a repetition. It's all like, how do you feel and how do you listen to the other person? There's a lot of listening to learn what's going on and to answer to that actor. Of course, we are born and we don't listen and we just we don't see it. We don't see it. We're blind. So when I took this week,
00:07:38
Speaker
I was completely amazed. And I was creating a dance by that time because I want to dance by myself. Like do a solo dance that I've never done it before. I started creating it on the beach and suddenly I had the beginning of my solo. And Danny was with me, he was recording all that beginning like, oh my God, what are you doing? And I was like, let's hear, create something. I took Maisner for a long time and it was a lot of work.
00:08:07
Speaker
And I combined the acting for real, what happened to that character, what she was feeling, what was going on with the choreography. And I found the right emotion. And when I found the right emotion, then everything flew. And I created my first solo, but just not just a dance.
00:08:25
Speaker
It was much more. So the message came across faster and stronger than when you dance. So sometimes people don't know what's going on. It was a huge satisfaction. There's something about the Meissner technique, plus your dancing that came together ultimately into demotion act.
00:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, I called it the Emotion Act. Of course, everybody has their own opinion, and that's great, but I've been an audience for companies and for dancers, and sometimes I'm like, I don't know. It's not getting to me. It's beautiful, but it's not getting to me, like through my heart. I wanted people not to look at me how cute, how good-looking I am. I wanted people to have an impression, to feel something, to go through something.
00:09:14
Speaker
So that was my point. I didn't want them to see me. I wanted to see the situation, what was going on. Because funny thing is, I've never wanted being seen. Like when I was dancing in my bedroom, I didn't want my mom to come in and watch me. I was like, what?
00:09:31
Speaker
What are you doing? So it's very intimate for me. It's not a show off. I was going to say, it sounds like it's really mostly for you, for your own self-expression. And so it sounds like there was sort of a transition from that to choreographing where maybe you weren't front and center to then really being able to express it outwardly. That gave me a lot of issues and auditions because I was like, I don't know if I want to see me sing. I was like, okay, I'm going to get a job. Next.
00:09:59
Speaker
So I've had so many situations where I wanted to dance and usually people go and oh my god, you don't have the right look. Oh my god, you're not tall enough. Oh my god, you're just kidding. It's always a judging and it's like Aaron took with dancers.
00:10:14
Speaker
Everyone was supposed to be great on stage and transmit something, but I was in this commercial world that, of course, everything is cute, besides whether you dance or not. And I was in the wrong world because I had fun before, but I was growing and evolving and I wanted something else. I created this choreography and I asked Danny to film it because he didn't know about dance, but he was a filmmaker.
00:10:41
Speaker
He is a filmmaker. So I wanted to do something which is just the story. It's not a video dance. And I told him what I wanted. And he just had his vision. And with his vision, DP, amazing DP in Spain that I met, and he was super happy to help us. We created 330 TK. It was my first solo through the Emotion Act. And when I watched it, I was like, oh, shit. What have I done? This was so bad.
00:11:10
Speaker
The DP being a director of psychiatry, director of photography. What is 3.30? What is that about?
Societal Pressures and Self-Expression for Women
00:11:19
Speaker
3.30 decay is the time that this woman takes to fall apart. Three minutes and 30 seconds to be destroyed. Completely. It's record time. Yeah. We can do it at last. Start to finish for me.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's the story of this. It's basically what women do to call the attention all the time. We try to look amazing. We try to be great dancers. We try to be sexy. We try to look younger. We try to be fit. We try everything. And sometimes not even that works because it's not about the person outside, it's about yourself.
00:11:58
Speaker
It's not working with you because maybe it's not the right thing to do. Maybe you want to be curvy and you just want to have fun. What is in front of you is not your right target and it's not your right audience. You need to find your audience, which is amazing. And there is an audience for everybody. But we think that we have to fit in this social box that they always tell us. And I was so tired of it.
00:12:19
Speaker
fixing and trying to like be, I don't fit anywhere. So they're trying to put me in a box. And I was like, no, no, no, no, this is not for me. And that's why I created this. And when I did the show, I sent it to my friends and they were all telling me how they felt. Nobody told me how good dancer I was or how the lining I have.
00:12:40
Speaker
They were, like, feeling things and they were, like, expressing, oh, my God, I went through a breakup. And I just, I was crying the whole short film. Or, oh, my God, I was so disgusted. Oh, my God, it's so sexy. Or it was amazing. It was amazing. I got my point. Yeah. I'm sure that taking, you know, creative control and being able to put that out in the world must have felt really like a moment for you artistically. It is scary. It's just like you feel that everybody's going to judge you, you know.
00:13:09
Speaker
You know, harsh way. But even though people that just told me, oh, my God, you're just cute, whatever. It's fine. It's fine. They got that. You know, you have to also learn to believe and know that not everybody's going to love you and like what you do. And it's fine. Yeah. What other what other topics have you taken on since then? What what other pieces have you done?
00:13:32
Speaker
Since then I met Peruvian girl that she used to do fighting choreographies with swords and I did that medieval swords and tagas and I used to be in.
00:13:44
Speaker
in a company in Barcelona. So this lady, I asked her, what's going on in Peru? And she told me about Fujimori in 1998 when he was, what he was doing is he was trying to stop a poor lady from women having children. And he was sterilizing all the poor ladies in the country, of course, that they had nothing. And they were giving them just rice or they were just giving them really
00:14:13
Speaker
little food so they could stop having children. And for these women having children and being very connected to the earth meant that they were fulfilled. And suddenly when they did that in a very bad situation,
00:14:28
Speaker
because they didn't have the right doctors or the nurses. They didn't treat them well. They had tons of issues after that. They couldn't recover. They had to keep on working in the country and they didn't have the strength. They didn't have the health anymore. So they destroyed.
00:14:44
Speaker
their lives, basically. And because they're poor and they're in a country, nobody cared about it. So it was a big issue. And I know they did it in Europe also. So these things have been done. And the funny thing is always have been done to women. It's very dramatic. And when she told me about it, we watched some documentaries that they were talking about the issue and we talked to a lot of people and we decided to do one little short about this issue. And what was that like?
00:15:14
Speaker
It's always been very well received. We had some awards and festival festivals in Spain. La Dica, these short films, they went all over the place and it feels like maybe we get to know more and more what's going on in the world and we don't close ourselves to the unknown.
00:15:33
Speaker
we may be happier at the end and more relaxed. Because when you get to know the issues, how things work, and you just ask, I'm very curious. So when I am
00:15:46
Speaker
like this girl that I met from Peru, I was like, what's going on in Peru? Tell me. Because I've never been there. I don't know what's going on. And she was like really great about it. And we both put it together. And it's fantastic just to know what's going on in the world. Like, where are you coming from? What are your issues? Because at the end of the day, the funny thing is we all share issues. And we all have problems. And we may be the same. Different language, different color, different place. But we may go through the same things.
00:16:16
Speaker
So it brings us together when we can understand each other. Emily, I think what you were saying before was about how it can become overwhelming to hear about some of the hardships that people face and sort of what one element of this kind of burnout is called compassion fatigue. But I feel like you're sort of energized by the compassion that you find for others.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, and also being grateful that I didn't go through that. Even though I have men that tried to pull me down or I had a mom that helped me and taught me how to defend myself and how to protect myself, which they're both, you need to know how to defend yourself and how to protect yourself being a girl and being cute and being a dancer and being so open-minded. So of course my mom was scared of everything. Instead of installing that fear, she tried to help.
00:17:13
Speaker
the way she could just to let me know how to navigate those circumstances that are still happening. She equipped you rather than taught you to suck it up or whatever. Or I think to be afraid of the world, which is something that can happen. Women have a harder time, I think, living their fullest lives if they're sort of shut in and shut off. Yeah, like being happy with yourself.
00:17:39
Speaker
loving yourself or for who you are. It's funny. It's always something. Yes. Well, it's a very big taboo, actually. And I think there are some comedians that have touched on it. But to have this sort of positive self view, to have acceptance for yourself or your body or whatever it is, I mean, that's pretty revolutionary.
00:18:00
Speaker
We are getting closer and closer and it's amazing. And also to let others do whatever they want to do. You know what I mean? Or whatever she looks, even if you don't like it, she has her audience. So stop putting people on the edge or women just because, oh my God, you're so brave. It's not about being brave. It's just go out there and do what you feel you have to do. Let's teach the new generations to be themselves.
00:18:27
Speaker
and to be strong. Because if you're strong and you love yourself, we won't have issues with man. We will get more equipped to talk to each other, to communicate with each other. This is not for women to be stronger and lead the world. No, this is for us to get together and closer. I don't want to get away from men. I want to pull in and communicate with them because we cannot blame anybody else.
Gender Communication and Modern Dating Challenges
00:18:51
Speaker
Do what you have to do to evolve.
00:18:53
Speaker
And I think if women get separated and very strong and very fierce, we've been a terrified man too. And that's not what we want to do. I mean, what for? There is something very terrifying about female sexuality and, you know, the female body has been commodified and politicized and all of this. And hurt.
00:19:17
Speaker
and hurts. That's true. Yeah. Well, the way the body is treated in general is sort of a topic of great importance and one that has been slow to evolve in our culture. The way men's and women's bodies are used, it makes me think of a book called The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry. And one of the things she talks about is how the military uses bodies.
00:19:43
Speaker
The idea is to inflict damage on human bodies. And bodies are objectified like people in the military are called units. And then the military equipment, the machines and the weapons are usually given women's names. The ship is her and your gun is your girlfriend, this sort of thing. But what I hear you talking about is reaching into women who are isolated from one another.
00:20:07
Speaker
and creating a community, trying to take the trauma and turn it into something generative. Yeah, I think it's also in your mindset. I always felt that they were looking at me and they were talking about me. But now I think that they are admiring me. And it's as easy as just a smile back at them. And you got a smile back. All these things is in mindset. It's our emotional education. That's what I think we're lacking in our society.
00:20:37
Speaker
Boys and girls. Yeah, boys and girls, of course. Because sometimes that attention leads to predatory behavior as well. And I think sometimes women are taught not to respond and not to make eye contact and not to smile back. How do you think about that?
00:20:52
Speaker
I have been kind of shy in that area because I have had different situations. Sometimes you smile back and, oh, are you? What's your name? So you got that kind of interaction. I think if you are relaxed with yourself and you have your self-esteem in the right place and you're happy
00:21:10
Speaker
It's okay to smile back. It's okay to say, oh my God, you're so handsome. Oh my God, you're so good looking. You're dressing great today. It's not just about women that we all tell each other, oh my God, love your jeans. I've told men, oh my God, love your coat. That's so cute.
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah, I did it with my students. I was teaching modeling and dancing and acting and I was like, oh my God, you're so cute. You're a teenager. You're so handsome. Okay. But I can't say anything else because you're 16. That's interesting to like open up and relax and smile. And you can smile to a 16 year old.
00:21:45
Speaker
And it's okay. I've been teaching teenagers that they look like they're 20. But you know they are young. So you love them in a way they know they're loved and respected. They're not patronized because they know. But at the same time, there is no danger because it's like it's a zone where everybody is in their own hands. So we need to start stopping being terrified because terrified made us be controlled by the rest of the world.
00:22:13
Speaker
If you're terrified, people are going to control you some way or the other. So you need to be responsible for what you want, what you think, and how to make it happen. And if the person that approaches to you doesn't have the right idea, you can also tell that person in a very constructive way, hey, thank you, I'll admire, and thank you for your positive feedback, but I'm married, and I'm not looking for anything, but we can be friends. That's it. So it's not that harsh. And if the person is crazy, you can just say bye.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah. That's a big part of the distinction, right? Of wanting to stay safe in a world where most people are good and have, you know, decent intentions and may just be curious or admiring or want to get to know. And I think that the moments where people can become threatening, that it's important to know that you can say bye, right? That you have to stay. Right.
00:23:04
Speaker
You can protect yourself by saying bye and nice to meet you and I gotta go. So that's the way you protect yourself and that's the way you defend yourself. So that's the difficulty I think we're living in and especially now with the phones that everybody is looking down. So everything is happening through a computer now. So you don't see the emotions, you don't see their eyes, you don't see anything and you don't know who you're talking to.
00:23:25
Speaker
That's the danger, not a guy that comes to you and you see who's coming. But you have a 15-year-old now on Instagram and there are tons of people out there. The world of social media is pretty scary to me. I think Grant knows that we're just sort of dipping into it ourselves. It's been interesting. It is interesting. Yeah.
00:23:45
Speaker
You know, most people are quote unquote good, but a certain percentage of people have quote unquote dark personalities and they don't play by rules of mutual respect or morality. And if you can't, as you sort of said, see who's in front of you, it's much harder to assess.
00:24:03
Speaker
who they are. But even then, it's sometimes very hard. I mean, but like serial killers, you know, like, oh, he was such a nice guy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, some of your work that I've seen has been very hard hitting those. So I think I think talking with you, it's not like you hold back.
00:24:19
Speaker
on the subjects that you address. The piece you did on forced sterilization with sword dancing is not something that viewers are going to watch and walk away from with sort of a fluffy light feeling. You know, the way you get through the fourth wall and reach.
00:24:37
Speaker
The audience, I think, is unique because you're not speaking directly to the camera usually. You're, as you said, kind of evoking feelings in people and getting through on much more of like what we might say is an attachment-based level in the in the rhythmicity. It's very unconscious. I'm curious if you have any thoughts about about that part of your work.
00:25:00
Speaker
I think I'm very honest. As Danny says, you don't have to do anything. We read you. And it's true. And that's something that I've learned how to be bold, constructive, or how not to hurt people if I'm very, very direct. So sometimes I just chat and don't say anything. That's been helping me. But I think that if we were older,
00:25:23
Speaker
and honest and direct, and we would talk to each other that way. We wouldn't have as many problems as we have, especially in communication. Like when you have a boyfriend that he's flirting around and you're like, okay, love you to death, but I'm going to cry for a week, not for a month. I want this. If you want that, it's all great, but I don't want to be here. Instead of checking the phones and going behind him or just dealing with those things, it's what do you want? And just be honest, I've always been like that in my life. My career was my priority.
00:25:53
Speaker
So if you are in, you are in. So this is what I'm trying to, when I've been talking to my students that they're teenagers, fantastic teenagers, they have the same issues that we had because we are still in the same place. It's so funny. And they go through everything, play people, relax.
00:26:09
Speaker
things are going to change and they're going to be amazing. Just what did you want? And I expect for anybody else to tell you what they want. So when I do a job and I work on the screen, I don't like not to be honest with people. Like if you have an audience and you make them watch something or they just want to enjoy something, you better be honest and deal with that creativity in a real way. Do not pretend because people know, we know that
00:26:34
Speaker
you want something else and I want something else because I am an audience as well. So I won't be able to be honest in their job. And I know who I admire when I see the work or we're just like, okay, that's fine. I'm not going to criticize, but I'm not your potential audience. To me, this is a lot about sort of authenticity and
00:26:53
Speaker
The ability to really connect to people, I think, that people want to connect to the true self and not to the false self. So maybe that has something to do with why your work has been so moving. Whether it's breast cancer or whether it's we did insane, which is not dancing, but how I'm working with my body as well. And there are issues that, of course, there are 15, 13, 15.
00:27:19
Speaker
But there are situations in our lives where we still use women to blame them for what they're doing. And this is not fair anymore. I feel horrible when I see injustice, and especially injustice in our way, because it always falls in this way. It doesn't fall. It doesn't go up.
00:27:39
Speaker
feels sad. So I'm tired of, and this is funny because when we screened Insania here, Susan Saranda was in the same festival that we were. And when we finished, she approached and she told me, it's funny because when I was in the 80s doing a play, nobody had information about this. What is Insania about?
00:28:02
Speaker
In Sun, sorry, in Sun is about a rape and how a woman gets rid of the raper by doing something. But that's the only way that she reacts for him to go because she is pregnant. And she has this lioness instinct to do something that is trying to kiss him. So the moment she tries to kiss him and say, keep on going, because she goes through an insane moment to protect her child,
00:28:26
Speaker
he leaves and he tears him off completely. This scene of course has a big impact and it's all choreographed and it's an insane moment and it's crazy because you can think that that woman is turned on by doing that.
00:28:46
Speaker
It all depends on your own mind, which is very interesting. But I did this, we, Danny and me, we wrote it together and he filmed it and we were scared to death to do it. But I thought if one woman is going to feel okay with this because she has been assaulted before, I'm happy. Funny thing is I had several friends
00:29:08
Speaker
telling me in a very discreet way, in a very friendship way, that they were right. And that I should use this video to protect other women. This is to reinforce you don't have to be hustled.
00:29:24
Speaker
or harassed or even told anything. We all need to learn this. It still happens because it is stupid and it's very disrespectful. They're not going to do it to a woman like me that right now I'm empowered. They do it to the women that they are very young, they're very shy, they don't have self-esteem.
00:29:46
Speaker
That's what really bothers me, that the hunter is going to go to the little prey. And I have had so many teenagers telling me so many stories that they are very, very, very terrifying and very close to them. So I've been gone through so much teaching, acting, modeling to all these kids.
00:30:07
Speaker
that I feel that we should be prepared, we should be alert, and we should teach our kids to protect ourselves. And that is like ASAP, not tomorrow. That's something that we need to do.
00:30:18
Speaker
To me, it also, I agree, and it also makes me think of bullying prevention because bullying is so common. I read a paper recently that there's been no decline in rates of bullying in US high schools in the last decade. Still about 20% of people experience bullying in person, about 15% cyber bullying.
Concerns about Societal Injustices and Empowerment
00:30:41
Speaker
And when you try to talk to people about these things, you get this huge resistance.
00:30:46
Speaker
because I think it's an uncomfortable topic. And I don't think that we're going to be able... I mean, I wish that we could decrease rates of bullying, rates of sexual violence, but I think equally important is empowering people to understand that it's not their fault, that there are people who will listen and help, and really what you're describing. And I think the reason I'm
00:31:09
Speaker
very interested to see in Sanya is because, you know, rape is often described as a sexual crime. I see it as a hate crime because it is really, you know, targeting when it's, you know, man to woman, targeting someone because she's a woman. And so to sort of see the reaction of a victim
00:31:30
Speaker
who fights back really with love or with intimacy or with just doing the best she can in a very painful and humiliating situation. But I think that is probably something that I wish a lot of victims could see, that there's no right or wrong way to respond. Exactly. It is yourself.
00:31:52
Speaker
Like, sometimes things are going to overwhelm you, but it depends how compared you are to answer to that. Right. And what we can do to keep ourselves safe in that moment, right? Because a lot of what you're describing, you know, the cat calling on the street, oh, hey, beautiful, right? If you respond one way or the other, you know, hey, beautiful becomes fuck you, bitch.
00:32:13
Speaker
really quickly. But the moment you talk to them is, yeah, you can, you don't know what you're opening yourself up to, right? So I think that for teenagers is the scariest thing because they're just really coming into, you know, they sort of look like women, but they really are children still emotionally, you know,
00:32:34
Speaker
It can be difficult and people should have a right to appear and dress the way they want. And it's important to recognize that a lot of times people can become empowered and prevent or interrupt things from happening that are bad.
00:32:51
Speaker
And I know we all know this, but I think it's also important that sometimes, as you said, we're not blaming victims for what happens to them. And the idea that there's more that we can do doesn't mean that you should feel bad for what has happened in the past. But it sounds to me like you're also talking about
00:33:12
Speaker
increasing self-awareness and also learning how to manage yourself in ways that are smart. And it makes me think also about your training in acting and dance because there's so much deliberateness in those disciplines. I have lived in a very open discipline and world, which is being a dancer and actor. People are very open-minded, but I have also felt that it looks like we're the easy target.
00:33:41
Speaker
I have had to learn how to respond because it's the same thing in the affair you were saying before that you get there, oh, who did you think you are? You know that hat. It's like, okay, five minutes before I was the hottest thing in the world and I'm saying no. Yeah, not if you have your own will.
00:34:00
Speaker
It is a constant attack. And because I'm from that world and I know how to protect myself. And before I was very aggressive because I didn't have the tools and I was overwhelmed. So I understand these kids, they used to tell me, we're going everywhere on the street and they're following us and they're telling us things and they're just wearing a sweat pant.
00:34:23
Speaker
There's a whole other side to this, which is how are men acculturated and what kind of homes do they grow up in? But I see the time is running short. Maybe it's something we can talk about later. But I want to thank you for joining
Conclusion and Disclaimer
00:34:39
Speaker
us. And I think it's going to be very useful for our listeners and very thought provoking and very heartfelt. I want to ask you to let people know where they can find your work.
00:34:51
Speaker
Oh, my YouTube is Vanessa Calderon and all the videos and everything is there. Be careful with the PD-13 and stay in here.
00:34:58
Speaker
And also, yes, Grant, I have to say that we are focusing on, because I'm focusing on female most of the time to help us, whatever we're doing. But of course, if we are generous enough to tell our boys, because I have had talks with my teens and pre-teens, boys and the males, how to educate them to protect women and help women, that will help us a lot too, because we need to evolve at some point.
00:35:25
Speaker
It takes everyone. Vanessa Calderon on YouTube, and do you have a website? No, I don't have a website because it just broke down for some reason, so all my work is on YouTube. Okay, okay. Very good. Thank you so much for being here today. It was really a pleasure to meet you. Thank you. It was great talking to you. I'm very happy that you're doing this podcast. It was a few guys. Very interesting. Very smart. Thank you.
00:35:54
Speaker
All right. Thank you for your time. Thank you. One disclaimer, this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of psychiatry or any type of medicine. It's not a substitute for professional and individual treatment services and no doctor patient relationship is formed. If you feel that you may be in crisis, please don't delay in securing mental health treatment.