We were lucky to catch up with Kyanna Alexandra recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kyanna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I 100% wish I would have started my career sooner than I did. I tried a couple of times, and I didn’t stick with it, thus making me start my job a little later than I would have liked to, but if I just started creating the content that I create now, maybe four or five years ago, I’m sure I would be in a different place in my life and my career than I am now.

But of course, when I started, I thought I wanted to focus solely on LGBTQ content and never showcase my personal life regarding my day-to-day business. But as time passed, I realized I was more than just being a queer woman. I have passions and interests that go past my sexuality as a woman, and I knew I wanted to showcase that, and that’s how I started incorporating fashion into my content.

Kyanna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Well, to put it, I am a content creator, but in its complexity, I am everything. I am the creative director, the editor, the visionary, the liaison, and the point of contact; I’m a one-woman team getting it done. But in the depth of being a content creator, I create videos/photos/blog posts about being a queer and plus-size woman while showcasing my life as I deem fit.

I wouldn’t say this road was difficult, but not easy either. When I started creating content, I only made content that revolved around the LGBTQ community as a queer woman. I recently came out to my mother, dated a woman, lost my family because of that, and broke up with my girlfriend all in a year.

That hardship inspired me to take content creation seriously again and pick up my camera. But as time passed, I realized I was more than just a queer woman. I knew I needed to expand and talk about things that mattered to me/what I felt like I would indeed fall in love with. I am queer, but that’s me, not a tangible thing I thought I could offer to the world.

That’s when I decided to expand on my love for fashion or “putting an outfit together,”, especially for women who either 1) struggle with feeling confident in their bodies or 2) need a place to come and find outfit inspiration. This newfound niche allowed me to not only dive into something I felt completely comfortable talking about but also opened up new opportunities for me.

Starting out creating content for the LGBTQ community and then adding the fashion niche into my brand scared me because I knew it wasn’t what my followers came to see, it wasn’t what they originally signed up for, but I knew I needed to add something to my band because I knew I didn’t solely want to be an LGBTQ creator, I wanted to add something else that made sense to me and in the long run, make sense to the people coming to subscribe to my pages as well.

But throughout all this, I learned that getting stuck in one place is easy and that if you need a chance, don’t be afraid to. If something doesn’t feel right, determine what it is and rectify it. I believe we constantly get caught up in what we think is the only way to do something, not remembering that there are many different paths to get to the same destination.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson that I had to unlearn was to “always respect your elders.” I know this is a bit controversial, but hear me out. All my life growing up, I had to respect my elders simply because they were older than me, no matter how they treated me, no matter how many times they didn’t care about my feelings, no matter how many times they didn’t allow me to speak, or even when it came to simply existing, there was a multitude of times where I wasn’t allowed to do or say anything because I had to “respect my elders.”

As I got older, and when I had to navigate my life after my mother kicked me out of her house for having a girlfriend and after my family disowned me (except for my grandmother,) I realized that I no longer needed to respect people who didn’t respect me. I am no longer required to worry about anyone else feelings about how I want to live my life but my own.

I knew that I needed to unlearn that and not seek permission from anyone to do anything I wanted. For example, I remember when I tried to get my nose pierced, and I thought to myself, “Ah should I ask my mother?” and then quickly realized, “I no longer speak to her; no, I don’t need to ask her anything,” and “I’m old enough to make my own decisions.” It was a jarring feeling because I always asked my mother for everything I needed or wanted when I was younger. Not having to do that anymore changed my life because, as I mentioned earlier, I got to live my life the way I wanted to.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Inclusivity and representation are A particular mission driving my content creator journey. When I create content, I not only want the content to be fun and informative, but I also want my content to showcase who I am; I want people to see that as a queer plus-size woman, I’m not letting anything stop me or hold me back from being me.

Too often within the plus-size community, women are made fun of, mocked, or treated less than others because of their size. But, on the other side, I saw women who struggle to find confidence within themselves or are unsure where to start when looking and feeling their best. So when I create content, especially fashion content, I want to showcase my confidence in myself and my body. I’m confident putting an outfit together regardless of what others think I should wear.

But also, being a queer woman needs its own form of inclusivity. When I first came out, I didn’t identify, mostly because I didn’t feel the need to, but now I’m identifying as queer. However, I have a boyfriend. It’s not because the situation is uncommon, but I do understand that representation that are queer people with different sex partners also needs to be seen. Society thinks that the only way to be visible as an LGBTQ person is to be in a same-sex relationship, and that’s not the case all the time.

So being a voice or an example standing out in these two communities is why I’m on this journey. It keeps me going as a content creator and provides proof in my mission that all people are not created equal, and looking at these amazing things we can accomplish is why I do this.

Contact Info:

• Website: TheKyannaAlexandra.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/TheKyannaAlexandra
• Facebook: Facebook.com/TheKyannaAlexandra
• Twitter: Twitter.com/TheKyannaAlex
• Youtube: YouTube.com/TheKyannaAlexandra
• Other: TikTok.com/TheKyannaAlexandra Pinterest.com/TheKyannaAlexandra Lemon8.com/KyannaAlexandra