Finding A Sense of Belonging in Beauty

At The Business of Beauty Global Forum, activist and author Schuyler Bailar shared his journey to understanding beauty and self-acceptance as a biracial, transgender man.

Background: 

For Schuyler Bailar, an activist, author and the first openly transgender NCAA Division I swimmer in the US, finding a sense of belonging hasn’t always been easy. Bailar realised being accepted by society wasn’t as important as accepting himself. 

“Belonging is not something that's going to be given to me. It's something that I have to find on my own,” said Bailar at The Business of Beauty Global Forum 2023. 

This week on The BoF Podcast, Bailar opens up about his own experiences with the pressures to conform to Eurocentric and cisgender beauty ideals as a biracial, transgender man, how he discovered his path to self-acceptance and why he wants others to be able to do the same. 

Key Insights:

From an early age, Bailar was acutely aware of the negative role the beauty industry and society as a whole can play in shaping an individual’s perception of belonging and self-worth, a deep sense that was shaped by the experiences of his mother as a Korean immigrant growing up in the US. “She tried very hard to fit whatever it was that would make her feel included, which a lot of the time meant bending towards whiteness, bending towards assimilation,” said Bailar.Before he transitioned, Bailar attempted to conform to society’s cisgender expectations of how women should look, which ultimately led him further away from his true self. “I tried so hard to be what society expected of me. What society told me I was: a woman,” said Bailar. “I was trying so hard to figure out how to be this woman, and yet I was miserable.”At his first collegiate swim practice at Harvard University, Bailar said he felt hesitant and scared standing before his teammates in a Speedo, but he found the courage to continue swimming. “I stood alongside all my teammates, none of whom were transgender like me, feeling not beautiful, feeling misshapen, feeling strange, feeling weird, feeling not man enough. But I dove in… and I swam with them anyway,” said Bailar. Since graduating, Bailar has turned his attention to activism, and works to challenge society’s beauty standards. “What I want from the world is for us to be able to dive into a beauty that originates at every single person so that nobody has to stop being themselves, so that nobody has to show up and change who they are in order to feel like they belong,” said Bailar. 

Additional Resources:

Lessons From Day One of The Business of Beauty Global Forum: During BoF’s The Business of Beauty Global Forum, Schuyler Bailar discussed how the beauty industry and Euro-centric standards affected his mother’s childhood and his own. Schuyler Bailar, first trans athlete to compete on a NCAA Division 1 men's team, wants all trans athletes to feel represented: CBS News interviewed Schuyler Bailar about his experience as the first openly transgender athlete to compete on a NCAA Division I men’s team. 

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