Jordan Daniels is here to change the world. This is something the San Diego-based storyteller has learned through his journey toward radical self-love and liberation. As a writer, podcaster, and photographer, Jordan offers thoughtful commentary on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, fashion, and body positivity. He joins Ilana to share how he leads by example, integrating his own identities to embrace and express his whole self. Content warning: This episode contains discussion of self-harm.
Jordan Daniels is here to change the world. This is something the San Diego-based storyteller has learned through his journey toward radical self-love and liberation. As a writer, podcaster, and photographer, Jordan offers thoughtful commentary on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, fashion, and body positivity. He joins Ilana to share how he leads by example, integrating his own identities to embrace and express his whole self. Content warning: This episode contains discussion of self-harm.
Follow our hosts on Twitter:
Learn more about our organizations:
Special thanks to the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation for their support of this podcast! To visit them, go to https://hjweinbergfoundation.org/, and follow the foundation on Facebook, and Twitter.
Content warning: This episode contains discussion of self-harm.
(Theme Music)
[00:00:00] Ilana Kaufman: Hi, I'm Ilana Kaufman. And you're listening to Just Leading, where we're thinking differently about leadership within and beyond the Jewish world. In each episode, we're talking to people who are leading through the complex challenges of today to understand how we can build a better future.
[00:00:17] Jordan Daniels: Liberation chose me because I exist in these identities that liberation has been so a part of. All of who I am has had liberation tied to its story as its identity and as its work.
[00:00:29] Ilana Kaufman: That is Jordan Daniels. Jordan is a storyteller who offers thoughtful commentary on gender, sexuality, race, body positivity, radical expression, and so much more. Check out his upcoming podcast, Black Fat Femme.
Jordan brings joy to all of his work, and I'm so looking forward to speaking with him today. Jordan Daniels, welcome to Just Leading.
[00:00:56] Jordan Daniels: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
[00:00:59] Ilana Kaufman: Jordan, you have thousands and thousands of followers out there, and your followers are expansive in terms of how they self-identify and how they interact with and engage with you and what they receive from you.
I almost said take from you, but I don't think the physics of that would have been right. And so I just want to, like, just really name how expansive your leadership is.
[00:01:24] Jordan Daniels: Um, thank you. Thank you for saying that. I do feel like the community that I am continually building around me -- I say community, because I think, like, folks will call me an influencer and I don't always love that word because I think, one, I don't want to influence people.
I'm not trying to, like, tell them what they should or should not do it themselves or their bodies. I'm just trying to offer a, another pathway to what it could feel like, to feel liberated in self, and discover together what that means for ourselves and each other. And then also, I say community because follower sounds like then I am placing myself above them, and I think my power is that I am continually in praxis with people. I don't, I don't say, "Hey, I've done this work. You do it now." I say, "I'm doing the work with you." I think that's also why my community is so expansive because it's touching all facets of who they are as people and how they are doing the work alongside me.
[00:02:13] Ilana Kaufman: Right on, right on. I'm going to take a risk and share that my observation of your leadership is that you weren't always this expansive and confident, and that's a word that I get from your leadership. One of the things I gleaned from your early life is that you weren't always this integrated as a human, as a leader, as a person with multiple identities that somehow beautifully roll up into this extraordinary leader and human.
And so I'm curious if you can take us back a little bit to your early life. And who were you before you developed into this version of a leader? And how did you become that first stage or second stage Jordan?
[00:02:56] Jordan Daniels: Thank you -- the way you weave that together was really nice. I do resonate with not feeling as integrated for sure before and living restrained. I think I will first say, I honor my parents. One is no longer here with us, but two incredible parents that never made me feel like I couldn't do anything I wanted to do in life. And I say that because that's so special, 'cause how many children get parents that tell them you can achieve what you want in your life and that they believe in me before I ever believed in myself. I will say middle-school Jordan really went through a lot of self-harm, went through a lot of pain for growing up a fat kid, and also being mixed. It was interesting, growing up in the Bay Area where there, I think is such a great community of mixed folks, but there is also still a lot of ostracism and where you find yourself-- I'm super light-skinned so it's like Black folks that know that I'm Black, but white folks would say you must be different with something. I grew up not knowing who I was, so I couldn't integrate because I didn't know where I fit in the world. I was told not to talk about being Jewish, to lead with being Black over being Jewish, or people not believing me.
So that was always hard for me, and then I think when I started coming out as queer, that became a whole other facet of "who are you in this world?" "How do you exist in this world?" I grew up right during the times of Prop 8, so I'm coming out as gay at a time where I'm told gay is not right, but I was not given the chance to be integrated.
But yeah, younger Jordan had a lot of struggles with feeling like himself. He did theater a lot. He loved theater, and I love theater today too, but I realize I also was struggling so much with playing Jordan, that I found it easier to play other people. It wasn't really until community college that I realized I can play myself.
I don't need to play other people because Jordan is amazing, and Jordan is fun. And that really gave me the courage to discover that, oh, I can integrate who I am, and that these identities don't have to exist in opposition with each other, that they can exist in love with each other. They can exist in strength and that they don't have to live separately.
(Music Transition)
[00:04:59] Ilana Kaufman: I know that you've been an advocate for mental health awareness and wellness to the point where you've shared tools with people around you, particularly LGBTQ community, young people who might have a stigma about taking care of their spirits. And I'm wondering about sort of your connection to that work and the capacity you hold to share it with others.
[00:05:23] Jordan Daniels: I feel so dragged right now because I'm currently passing through a moment of burnout where I have left the tools behind, because I've just been so focused on getting this work done that I've been doing. And so, part of me is like, "oh, I feel like inauthentic in sharing this," but I think that's also part of the mess, and also part of the care is recognizing when, "You know what? I'm not giving myself the time right now to actually care for myself. And I know that I will at some point, like, now that we have moved through this phase of burnout, I now know how to integrate care into myself and that's going to happen." So I want to first be intentional in saying, for folks who are considering therapy, there are so many more resources now than there were before. It is such a great idea because it's not just about identifying a problem. Like, I think people see therapy as just a way to identify a singular problem, and then fix it, and I have learned so much in my sessions with my therapist, that it's not about fixing a problem, it's just about having a fully unfiltered and unbiased space to share how you're navigating life. You will find, I always joke with people that you come out with more problems than you do coming in, because you make yourself so much more aware and you have a guide there to share that with you. And so, I find mental health so important in leadership because I have seen firsthand, I used to thrive in stress -- or I guess I told myself I thrive in the stress -- just to realize that stress actually burned me out more. And when I'm burnt out, I actually can't give myself as much to my work and to the people that I am with. And I'm not present. I'm irritable. I'm not happy or joyous, and I'm somebody who has always been optimistic about life. I think also because as a fat person, you're told so much about you can't control your physical health, you're unhealthy, and all these things.
That's a question between me and my doctor, not between you, me and Dupree, so calm down, but, because I feel like I didn't have control over that physical health or was made to feel I had no control over it, I knew I could have control over my mental health. And then it became a, "oh, you actually have to have a strong mental health to have a strong health all around." Your mental health, relates to how you speak to yourself and how you have others speak to and how you speak to others.
I want to bring this into a more Jewish context, actually, like, I think so much of b'tzelem Elohim -- of image of the divine of when I speak badly to myself, if I'm created in the divine image, then I am harming the divine, if I speak to others in negative ways, I am harming their divinity in themselves. That's not gonna happen in my house anymore. Not today.
[00:07:40] Ilana Kaufman: I love that.
(Music Transition)
I imagine you view yourself as still continuing to develop and evolve and integrate. As you've shifted from someone who engaged in self harm, who felt a sense of shame, who was told what fat meant to you versus you having your own relationship with yourself in that way. Can you talk with me about how you've emerged into this version of your leader-self, the values that you lead with and, like, how did you get to those?
[00:08:16] Jordan Daniels: I'm going to say something that I haven't, I haven't said this before in like a public setting. I've told certain friends this, but I want to say this next, I want to, like, honor myself and give myself this moment. I feel like I was put on this earth to change something. And it feels like really weird saying that because part of me feels like, "Is that not being humble? Is that not showing humility?" And I also want to be really honest with myself and with people listening and you. I know innately that one of my missions in this life is to change something. And not like necessarily change the world, just to change something and to help people develop who they are and master themselves, which I actually think is actually quite, like, exemplifies humility because it's not about me, it's about how can I help folks be their best versions or their favorite versions of themselves.
[00:09:07] Jordan Daniels: So, I think liberation, I definitely think it chose me because when I say "I'm meant to change something," that is acknowledging, like, divinely, I knew that liberation chose me, and I didn't have those words for the longest time and it wasn't until, I think, until I started going to university where I learned about Afrofuturism. I learned about, like, working in Black communities. I learned more about my Jewishness and how liberation is a big theme in Jewish communities and in Black communities, and then also in queer communities. Like, liberation chose me because I exist in these identities that liberation has been so a part of. All of who I am has had liberation tied to its story as its identity and as its work. You know, I have to metamorphosize myself all the time. I think one, because I've had to as a queer person, as a Black person, Jewish person, a fat person, which I know you identify with, you've had to shift yourself, but I think that also gives me a power in knowing that I'd never want to stop shifting. I never wants to stop changing. I know that to change people and to change the things I meant to change this world, I had to change myself alongside with that, and that is, like, so much of my leadership.
(Music Transition)
[00:10:12] Ilana Kaufman: One of the ways I observe your coming into a whole new version of your bad-ass self is in fashion. You have this powerful relationship with color. You have a powerful relationship with patterns and textures, and you have a powerful relationship with heels and your footwear. And there are a couple of things that have happened in your fashion, which is the embracing of this unbelievable set of heels, which doesn't make you smaller in the world.
That's the thing that struck me, and that's very deep. It's very deep. And the other thing that you've done in terms of fashion, as you've started to show some skin, and I see you nodding across our screen. Talk to us about what's happening for you as Jordan, the human and Jordan, the leader, which is being facilitated in some ways by these unbelievable choices around your aesthetic
[00:11:15] Jordan Daniels: Well, first, I want to hone in on unbelievable, because I, like, and I know how you mean it, and I also want to say that, like, what makes it unbelievable? Why haven't we just seen that we do-- that these choices are believable for our bodies, that I, as a mix of cis and masc and femme man. Why isn't it believable that I can wear heels like this?
I can dress in bold colors. I can wear crop tops. I think there's an issue of how we view masculinity, an issue of how we view fatness, and an issue of how we view queerness. I think also as a fat person, we think of heels are meant for people who are thin and are shorter and like I can wear heels. The through-line I want to say, first, is that because I've lived in a body where people have told me so much what I can and cannot do, and, to the point that you made of it doesn't make me small. Nothing about me is small, like, the, I am a big a person. I am fat. I know that people have told me that I shouldn't take up so much space or I should, like, lose weight and blah, blah, blah, but I can't hide that, you know? When I think of people say wear slimming clothes, like, slimming for what? You, like, you can see that I'm fat, whether I wear black or not.
[00:12:25] Ilana Kaufman: Stripes or not. That's right.
[00:12:27] Jordan Daniels: Don't get me started.
[00:12:28] Ilana Kaufman: Whichever direction my stripes go, I'm still exactly the same size.
[00:12:32] Jordan Daniels: It's so inconsequential to who we are as people. Also, I think of the access to fashion as a kid, like there weren't access to plus size clothing.
[00:12:40] Ilana Kaufman: Yes.
[00:12:41] Jordan Daniels: No shade to like KingSize Direct, but that was the only, like, catalog I can look at. And that was, like, men in their thirties and forties wearing boxy clothing that, like, I can just tell they didn't feel good in that outfit. Like, I've grown up so much with being told that I should not show my body because of it's too much, it's too big, or someone's offended. And I just realized like, someone's offense is not really my problem. I don't have time to be worried about how people think about my body. Like, when I first started going into fashion, it was right when Black Lives Matter was really ramping up. My, like, my cousins are being shot in the streets, my folks are being shot in the streets, I don't have time for you to talk about how I am not dressing appropriately for you and your body. I also wanna be really clear and intentional in saying as a cis man, how do I take up space as well? That's what I'm thinking about a lot. I hope that I don't take up space over other people in moments where I'm talking with them, but in terms of fashion, like, fashion is all about liberation. And fashion is all about taking risks and making choices. I want to wear these different colors and textures to say, I love taking up space as a queer person that has been made to feel like I can't, as a fat person, who's been told I should be small.
Like, again, I'm not small whatsoever, so, if I can't hide it, why not just show it more than just showing skin-- you're talking about showing skin-- it was a choice of, okay, as I'm talking about positivity, what's the next step for me to feel more rooted in myself? And do I take the risk of putting my body out there in this way, when I know that it will be held under microscope and I know if I'm honoring myself and my purpose of "I have to change something," then it's necessary for me to do this, regardless of what people say about me, and also to recognize in myself that what matters most is not what people say about me, but how I react to it and what I think of myself. And now I'm like, my body is amazing.
My body is beautiful. When I think of, when people say don't show your fat body cause it's gross or people feel offended by it, or "you're unhealthy," like this Black body has hiked Mount Masada. You cannot tell me that you know, that this fat body, that this Black, Jewish, queer, fat body hasn't done things that people have said it can't do.
It has existed, regardless of what people have told you what it can and can't do. It, its existence is resistance to the world. And so, how, like again, how dare scorn my divinity by not showing it to the world by not revealing it to the world.
[00:14:57] Ilana Kaufman: You better preach, Jordan. I love it.
(Music Transition)
Jordan, I have loved this conversation and talking with you, and I want to ask you one last question, because we've talked about kind of the importance of coming further into our own and into ourselves so that we can be who we are destined to be. And you talked about owning your destiny as somebody who supposed to be making some change. How did you keep on going? What inspired you? What motivated you to lead even though you were susceptible to burnout and kind of all of the hard stuff that also came with the last two years? Somehow you have thrived and you've been able to share that thriving with others.
Jordan Daniels: Most of 2020, I will be honest in saying I just worked. I just worked, like, I just worked through it. And I think also, you know what, when George Floyd was murdered, like, then I, I think that's when I really used my voice and some ways then became, like, a person to talk to about Black, Jewish experiences, which is interesting for me, because I feel like these past two years I've been placed in this role versus consenting to that, you know? I wasn't given a choice to stop. There is so much happening around me. Pandemic, Black Lives Matter, Black folks are being killed, people I love are getting sick, we're having to work still, people need our emergency funding, people need community. There wasn't a chance for me to actually stop. So 2020, I just pushed myself to keep going further.
And, in some ways it was great because it set me up for a lot more success in that next year, and people were like, you're doing so much great work, but I was definitely experiencing symptoms of burnout. And then when I got COVID, it was the, probably the biggest wake-up call for me. My biggest fear when I was sick was I want to die because I'm fat, 'cause they keep telling me that fat people are not going to get helped at the hospital. Hospitals are overwhelmed. If you're Black and you're fat, you will not get helped and you die. So I just kept thinking I'm going to die for three weeks. And so when I survived that, I said, "Wow, this body that once again has been told, will not survive, has dared to survive."
How can I honor it for daring to survive every day? I started jogging more, I moved my body more, I started honoring it in the ways that made it feel good because that's the best way I can show up for myself and my body.
Ilana Kaufman: Jordan Daniels, I want to thank you for spending this time with me. I want to thank you for your leadership.
I want to thank you for being the kind of person who constantly reflects on the self to share more with the people around us. And I want to remind the audience, this thread of owning the fact that we get to be loved and we get to be whole because it is our right. And in that right, it might take some time on that journey.
And you've given us so many tools about what to take with us on our journey and I'm grateful, Jordan. So, thank you.
[00:17:52] Jordan Daniels: Thank you so much for having me that -- ooh-- feels so beautiful to receive and thank you, thank you, thank you.
(Theme Music)
[00:18:03] Ilana Kaufman: Our goal on Just Leading is to think differently about leadership. Next week, I'll be passing the mic back to Elana Wien. She'll be speaking with Shana Aaronson.
[00:18:14] Shana Aaronson: There have been positive movements, there have been negative movements as far as how people responded and are still responding, but overall, it's obvious and clear to say that there is movement. Just Leading is supported by the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. It's produced by Wonder Media Network and Anna McClain.
[00:18:32] Ilana Kaufman: For more information about the organizations we work for, check out the Jews of Color Initiative at jewsofcolorinitiative.org, the SRE Network at srenetwork.org and Leading Edge at leadingedge.org.