MAKERS HONORS 2024 - Bethann Hardison & Lena Waithe

MAKERS HONORS 2024 - Bethann Hardison & Lena Waithe

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

LENA WAITHE: Hello, everyone. Y'all look great. Y'all look really good. You should give yourselves a round of applause. Thank you so much.

Where's Ms, Hardison? Where is she? There she go. Hello, the queen. I'm so honored to honor you tonight.

Bethann Hardison is a one on one. She is someone that reminds us to not only live our lives to the fullest but she is someone who reminds us to live our lives with intention. And what I love most about her is that she leads by example. She never expects anything of you that she doesn't demand of herself. She doesn't think she's better than anyone. She doesn't sit on a pedestal, even though that's where many of us would like to put her.

Ms. Hardison is a person that isn't afraid to speak the truth, even when it stings, even when it calls out something all of us can see but we're all too afraid to say it. She doesn't believe in combat. She believes in us coming together because she knows that when we do, that's when change happens, and that's when progress can begin.

Now, this isn't always a popular opinion, but she doesn't mind if you don't like the way she goes about things. Her only concern is pushing us forward. She will do whatever it takes to right old wrongs and bring about change in areas where things have been business as usual for far too long. And she knows that the best way to bring about change is for all of us to join hands and walk forward together as one.

Bethann Hardison has left her beautiful fingerprints all over the fashion industry. She infiltrated, set it on fire, and left it in better shape than when she found it.

Ms. Hardison proved that a brown-skinned model with more confidence than most could-- than most could shake things up and be a force for change. She refused to let her beauty and the beauty of so many others be overlooked. She demands to be seen, and she reminds the world that models are not a monolith. They come from many different walks of life, and they all deserve to be centered. She understands that seeing is believing.

And because of her tireless efforts, so many people get to see themselves in ads and campaigns that look just like them. See, it's not just about getting jobs for models. It's about people seeing themselves reflected in those models so that they don't feel invisible.

Well, Ms. Hardison found-- Ms. Hardison founded Black Girls Coalition. She challenged an entire industry to take a look in the mirror and ask, Is this who we want to be? Is this how we want to show up for future generations? She forced culture to shift and adapt to the world in which we live. She knew it was time for the modeling industry to stop living in the past and to take a giant leap into the future, and her work is still relevant to this day.

I think of her as a north star, a change maker, an icon, a godmother, and a living ancestor. It is an honor to honor you, not just today but every day. We are forever grateful for your presence in our lives and in this world. We love you. Now I'm going to toss to a video.

- When I started, I was the first Black Black-looking model on 7th Avenue.

- There was no people who looked like me. I knew the difference of segregation from childhood.

- Everyone's talking about diversity and inclusion. That directly stems from the work that Bethann did.

- Without her, the opportunities wouldn't exist for me to do what I love.

- She's the godmother of fashion.

- A lot of designers did not use models of color.

- No Blacks, no ethnics.

- Where are the Black girls?

- The image making is they who control the market want to reflect themselves.

- Turn the pages of just about any magazine or catalog in America, and it's a sure bet that you will hardly see any African Americans. 11% of the readers, on average, of these magazines were African American. Only 3% of the time did they show up in ads.

- I started the Black Girls Coalition.

- My name is Iman. I've been modeling for 14 years, and I'm from Somalia.

- My name is Veronica Webb. I'm from Detroit, and I've been modeling eight years.

- My name is Naomi Campbell, and I'm from London.

- My name is Roshumba Williams from Chicago.

- My name is Tyra Banks, and I've been modeling for one year and a half.

- We want to provoke conversation. We want to provoke ideas.

- She moved our glamour and our good looks into the arena of activism.

- Bethann was able to unify us, and then it helped to usher in a real conversation around racial discourse in fashion.

- She's a game changer.

- I'm not here to put anyone down. I'm here to bring everybody up.

- She has changed the way beauty is defined.

- She's like a second mother to me.

- But I still want to do more things.

- There are a lot of young people out there who really have something to say, and they come along like a tsunami. They come along as a wave.

- The game's not over.

- Once you meet this person, it's going to change your life, whether you like it or not.

- I don't know who I think I am, but I do be trying.

LENA WAITHE: Told you. Friends at MAKERS, please stand, please, and welcome the one, the only Ms. Bethann Hardison.

BETHANN HARDISON: OK. All right. All right, sit down. Wow. That's so heavy, you know? Thank you so much. Really, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for just caring so much about yourselves and each other and recognizing someone like myself who is honored by you to be so honored.

You know, for a long time when I first heard the word MAKERS, I wondered, what kind of name is that? What does that mean, MAKERS? And just tonight watching this, I understood that you're here to make things different. You're here to make things. So I'm very happy about that.

I want to thank my darling newest daughter in every capacity for being here and want to present me with this award. She has been a big fan, just number one, of a different world. Just Hillman Grad-- I mean, that's major to us. If you don't know about a different world, if you don't know a different world, google it.

[LAUGHTER]

- We know.

BETHANN HARDISON: We know. And also for the fact that, you know, when I see something like that, it really wears me out. I mean, to see so much energy and so much spoken about you, it really-- as time goes on, you begin to learn a lot about yourself as you get older and especially for the work that you didn't think was even anything you were doing so great. You just needed to get the work done.

And once I did the film, you know, "Invisible Beauty," that's when I--

[CHEERS]

Thank you. That's when I really began to see that I had really had done something that was of great value because at that time I was busy just trying to change the game because I knew we had already been there. So when we got erased because of the fact of Eastern Europe and all that had happened, it was very important because I knew it would affect other industries. If we could see color, if we could see and make sure that things were diverse racially, then I knew it would make a difference to all industries. And it has, and I've really seen that.

So I'm really grateful to all of you for being here. I was really happy to be at [? Circle ?] last year and really, really having the opportunity with Abrima interviewing me and talking. She's one of my children too. I was really very happy to have that experience and seeing the greatness of all of you coming together and the conversations that were had after mine. I really am very impressed with this organization and thanking MAKERS and Yahoo for really believing in it and wanting to make sure that it exists.

And that, you know what I feel when I watch that and when I realize who I am? You know, that fashion shit-- pardon the expression-- it just seems so mundane. It seems so simple compared to what's needed to be done now. The world that you've got and we've got to live in right now is so dangerous. It's scary. And to me, fashion is just a clip. That was something that happened 10, 15, 20 years ago, and now look what we're walking into.

And I really appreciate all of you for anything you can do, any activity, any organization you create, anything. Fight the power to be. Believe me, fight the power to be.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all very much for coming out. And my friends who came out to support me, thank you. Bye-bye.

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