VBB 354 Blythe Hill: How A Dress Impacts Human-Trafficking!

Intro [00:00:01]:

Virgin Beauty Bitch Podcast, inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear of being defiantly different.

Your hosts, Christopher and Heather. Let's talk, shall we?

Christopher [00:00:15]:

Oh, my, oh, my, oh, my. Where does the time go? Now, today's guest is. Is someone I've been conflicted on how to introduce. Her bio reads CEO, founder of December foundation, speaker, and social impact consultant. But I believe what she does can be summed up in just one word. Hero. Welcome, Blythe Hill hero, to Virgin Beauty Bitch.

Blythe Hill [00:00:49]:

Hi, Christopher. Hi, Heather. That's really. I'm. I'm really humbled by that. I don't consider myself a hero, but that's. Yeah, just really honored.

Christopher [00:01:01]:

Well, I think that your story is a hero's journey. As a young girl, you suffered a personal indignity, which now fuels your determination to help others regain their dignity. Can we start with that story and how it has shaped you and your character?

Blythe Hill [00:01:15]:

Sure. Yeah. I. I was a little girl, and the first time I was sexually abused, and, you know, someone I trusted and should have been able to trust. And there have been just ongoing ripple effects of a couple of isolated experiences. And I have seen firsthand the. The impact and the havoc that sexual abuse wreaks on a person and the questions it kind of forces you to wrestle with around your identity and your worth and how it makes you complicit in shame, really. Like the shame you feel about something that was done to you, and you become complicit in hiding it.

Blythe Hill [00:02:13]:

And there's just so many layers of, you know, of impact that it's had on me and that I hear that it has on others. And it's. It's something you wouldn't wish on anyone, you know, to go through it. It's a club. It's a club you don't want to be part of. Right. Or you never asked to be part of. I do feel very fortunate in that I have had access to healing resources and, you know, counseling, therapy and support and, yeah, just really decades of healing that I've gone through, but it now really continues to fuel my passion to, I mean, first of all, ideally, prevent anyone from going through any form of sexual abuse.

Blythe Hill [00:03:05]:

But secondly, when we're talking about specifically human trafficking, which is large-scale, you know, an industry of exploitation, an industry of abuse, you know, if we, ideally, if we can prevent that from happening, that's the goal. But for people who do experience it, how do we provide them a pathway out much faster and give them access to the same resources and trauma-informed, comprehensive care on the other side of it to really make sure that the trajectory of their life can totally change in a positive direction, as mine has. So that experience, like I said, has really launched me on this journey and continues to fuel my fire and my passion towards reclaiming dignity, specifically for women and girls across the world, who are able to dive in.

Heather [00:03:57]:

For our audience, around the types of healing that you've gone through, that you've uncovered, or tried over the decades. That you found meaningful. Because I find that there are so many ways that can work for different people, depending on where they're at in that journey. So would you mind illuminating some of the things that have been part of that healing process for you?

Blythe Hill [00:04:21]:

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. And I would say, I mean, like you. Like you said, it's a highly individualized journey, but I think, you know, for me, therapy and different therapists, different modalities of therapy have been helpful in healing for different points of my life. I think, again, I can't really understate the power of shame that survivors of any form of sexual abuse experience. So there's a lot of healing power in finding a safe person or safe people to talk to about what happened. It's sort of a coming out of sorts. But then finding on the other side of that, I mean, assuming it's a safe person, you begin to reclaim your story and begin to truly advocate for yourself and others as a result, and really step into the truth of, like, oh, this is not my shame to bear. You know, I have been.

Blythe Hill [00:05:22]:

I've been ashamed of this for so long, but it's not, you know, truly, I'm not responsible for what happened to me. It wasn't anything I did or didn't do. And so the. The paradox of shame is, again, you. You want to hide it, but then you find that when you shine a light on it, it loses its power over you. At least that’s what I have found. So that has been very healing for me, and in the position that I'm in now, you know, I think for most of my life, I, as I found safe people to talk to about my experience.

Blythe Hill [00:05:58]:

I still never intended to sort of broadcast my story to the speaking stages or in the documentary film that we recently did at Dressember. So it's been. It's been really interesting for me to see, like, okay, not only am I shining this light on, you know, my most painful, shameful experience, I'm really. I'm putting a spotlight on it. And I would say it's been, it's extended my healing in a lot of ways because I've then been able to have so many conversations with people who are still on the other side of shame. And seeing, like, wow, the incredible bravery it takes to tell your story in a public capacity.

Blythe Hill [00:06:44]:

It's healing to me to know that I am fostering that healing in other people that I'm a living example of, like, no, you don't have to live under the burden of this shame. You can talk about it in a way that's empowering to you. And so in this wild way, by advocating for, you know, Dressember exists to advocate for survivors of human trafficking, and by advocating for them and declaring in this very public way that the abuse, the exploitation that's happened to you is not your fault, it's not your shame to bear, not your responsibility, is categorically just wrong and evil. By advocating in that way, I am also advocating for myself, which is a really beautiful and redemptive thing in my own story. So, yeah, I wish mental health services were widely available and accessible. And that's a whole other conversation around privilege.

Blythe Hill [00:07:46]:

Mental health should not be a privilege, and I think therapy and access to healing resources should not be a privilege. But in my own life, I mean, I've tried or I have explored and experienced healing through different therapists and through even unconventional or other pathways like acupuncture or therapy. There's the whole somatic part of this, that trauma. Your body really holds on to trauma. So finding different avenues to heal that trauma, not just mentally, emotionally, psychologically, but also physically and spiritually in some ways.

Christopher [00:08:29]:

Thank you for sharing that. In November, we typically use the month to speak with women who have gone through exactly what you have as well, and we hear those stories. I'm always fascinated that the thing that brings women to some sort of, if not peace, at least some sort of calm within themselves is this act of vulnerability of opening up and sharing where they've been and what they've gone through and how counterintuitive it feels. But eventually, it seems to be the one door they need to go through in order to get to the other side. Thank you for sharing that. Now, the reason I put a hero tag on this, and I know you're embarrassed by it, but what you're doing has influenced so many people and has made such a change in so many lives. Tell us about Dressember and how that came about, and what your intention was, and where it has gone. It's Amazing.

Blythe Hill [00:09:32]:

Yeah, I. So Dressember is such a, it's such a funny journey in retrospect, because I, it was a bit of an accident in a lot of ways. I heard about human trafficking when I was in college. It just stopped me in my tracks, you know, I think my own experience. And yeah, I just was horrified that sex trafficking, labor trafficking, all of it just horrified me. And I felt a sense of urgency that I had never felt around an issue before, that like, oh, I've got to do something about this.

Blythe Hill [00:10:06]:

And like I said, I was in college, and so I thought about totally rerouting my life and career towards something that would allow me to engage to the level that I wanted to. And I kind of kept running up against a wall because the conventional pathways were social work and psychology and criminal justice, law enforcement, and none of those pathways really felt true to who I am and how I'm wired. And they just didn't feel sustainable for that reason. And it sort of felt like, and not only that, when I took inventory of, well, what are my sustainable sort of natural inclinations, hobbies, skills, those things, you know, I'm interested in fashion and trend forecasting, writing, and blogging. And so it felt like, okay, well, how do I get these things to line up? They don't seem to line up. And not only that, the things that I'm naturally interested in feel kind of shallow by comparison.

Blythe Hill [00:11:14]:

And it very much felt like, okay, I have to make a choice. I have to choose between how I'm wired and what I'm naturally drawn to versus this growing passion I have and the desire to engage in a significant way. And it was awful to feel that way, to feel so passionate but so powerless, because again, I knew, okay, well, going around putting a square peg in a round hole or whatever the expression is, like, that's not sustainable. And I just don't see how that could work. And so, then, fast-forward a couple of years: feeling that tension, feeling powerless, but still interested. I was in grad school and I was looking for a creative outlet because, like I said, I love crafting, I love baking, I love, there's just something therapeutic about, like, creating things just for the sake of creating things. And I didn't have time for any of that.

Blythe Hill [00:12:14]:

And so I was sort of missing that outlet in my life. And I thought, okay, well, I have to get dressed every day. And you know, fashion, getting dressed, like, there's so much opportunity for creativity there. It's such an expression of your personality. And I thought, well, maybe that can be my creative outlet right now in this busy season. And I had the idea to try wearing a dress every day for a month. And it happened to be late November when I thought of this, so I said, okay, I'll wear only dresses in December.

Blythe Hill [00:12:46]:

And I love puns. And it quickly became Dressember, Dresses in December. And then I did it. I wore a dress every day. I took a picture every day and posted it on my, I had a blog spot at the time, which is a real throwback, but I had a very modest following. And so it was more like, you know, this, I'm just going to post a photo and prove that I've. I'm doing this.

Blythe Hill [00:13:08]:

I've done this. And that was supposed to be it. I wasn't. There was no plan to do it again the next year. But what happened is some of my friends brought it up, and they wanted to do it with me, and so I did it again with them. And then the year after that, my friend's friends wanted to be part of it. You know, people I didn't know personally, and, you know, I kind of joke that I have a lot of ideas that never really get very far.

Blythe Hill [00:13:35]:

And so when you see one going beyond, you know, your immediate circle, like, oh, it's not just my friends humoring me. People like this idea. There's something good here. And that's when I started dreaming of like, okay, can I add a layer to this? Could I, could I turn this into a fundraising campaign? It took me a couple of years, but in 2013, which was year five of Dressember, as a style challenge, I officially decided to try turning it into a fundraising campaign for anti-human trafficking, which was a no-brainer for me because I'd been so, you know, just looking for a way in for so long. I thought, okay, maybe this is, maybe this is finally my way in to, you know, making an impact in anti trafficking. And in retrospect, I mean, it's just, it's so cool and it's so humbling in a lot of ways that, like, okay, not only was this my way in, but, I mean, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people have participated in Dressember in the nine years since then. And it's shown me that so many people feel the way that I felt, which is, you know, passionate about this issue. They feel a personal level of interest and passion towards it, but maybe they are busy in another career, or they're, you know, stay at home, parent, or, you know, for whatever reason, they just are not able to.

Blythe Hill [00:15:06]:

They want to do more than write a check. And there aren't a lot of opportunities to do that. And so it was my pathway in. And it's also been this pathway for thousands of people who feel the way that I felt, which is so passionate but so powerless. And it's really such an easy, fun way to get involved in anti trafficking. We've expanded as well to include ties. So you can wear a dress or a tie. Love your tie, by the way. Don't know if you're wearing that just for me or a tie guy. Okay, well, it's great. I love it, and it looks hand-tied, which is impressive. So, yeah, it's very much like choose your own adventure. We're not saying women have to be in dresses, men have to be in ties. We have, you know, I wore ties in 2020 all of December. So fun.

Blythe Hill [00:15:55]:

And it's just a fun opportunity to be creative and experience the community of Dressember, which is again, like this vibrant and diverse community of people who believe in the dignity of all human beings. And a lot of them are participating from a place that I can relate to, which is like, okay, I myself have experienced sexual abuse, or someone I love has experienced sexual abuse. And so not only do I get to advocate for ending this horrifying industry, criminal industry, that's happening all over the world, near and far, but I get to advocate for myself and, you know, my sisters around me. And so that's a really beautiful thing, the community of Dressember that has been created as a result. And it's just amazing to see how much it resonates with people.

Blythe Hill [00:17:14]:

I think back to the hero thing. I feel like I am just someone who opened a door, and there are so many people who are part of this movement that I think it has allowed so many people to be heroes in their own right.

Heather [00:17:32]:

I'm so intrigued just from your passion for fashion and how you've tied this to this other calling in your life. And just for our listeners, if they want to get on board, is the premise to dress in a tie or a dress, and then you raise money throughout the month that goes towards the anti-human trafficking? And people get to just, I feel like that's such a fun way to also gender bend if you want to, you know, there's no way that you have to show up. You can just be your full self and take that on. If you could share a little bit more of kind of like the fun side of that that you've seen, I'd love to hear some of those stories.

Blythe Hill [00:18:18]:

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, just like you said, it's really just deciding to undertake the challenge. Right? Like, okay, I'm going to commit to wearing a dress or tie every day in the month of December, and then it takes a couple of minutes to create a page on our website, and people can get intimidated by the fundraising aspect. But I just say, like, you know, we set different examples of how much you could try to raise that have a specific impact tied to each one. So, for example, you know, $100 can pay for roughly two and a half hours of aftercare therapy, like trauma therapy for a survivor. So different levels like that. And then, yeah, it's just a matter of, you know, actually doing the challenge and posting about it, which I think, you know, social media has been a game-changer for fundraising. And like, asking your friends for money essentially is because you're not face-to-face.

Blythe Hill [00:19:22]:

It's not the same pressure as face-to-face asking someone to give. It's just posting like, this is what I'm doing. This is why I care about this issue. And if you want to help me hit my goal, I'm trying to raise X amount through the links in my profile. And then just, it's really amazing and delightful to see who shows up to be part of that impact. And then, as far as the like, yeah, I love the gender-bending. That phrase we've just seen. I mean, I've seen so many creative ways that people show up.

Blythe Hill [00:19:56]:

You know, there are people who, depending on the day, wear what they feel like wearing. You know, like, oh, today I feel like a dress, tomorrow I feel like a tie. I've seen, you know, there was a man of Scottish heritage who wore a kilt every day in December, which is so cool. There's definitely, you know, women who feel more comfortable wearing ties, men who feel more comfortable wearing dresses, or just, you know, non binary, nine, non binary folks who show up however they want to show up. It's really providing them with those avenues. And I think there's something to be said about, you know, we want people to show up in the way that's most comfortable and natural for them. And then we've also seen kind of the opposite, where people are like, you know, I hate dresses, but I'm gonna do this because I hate the fact that people are trafficked more than I hate dresses. And the impact of that.

Blythe Hill [00:20:52]:

When people tell, like, you know, they show up in a dress, and you're like, what are you doing? You never wear dresses. Like, you hate dresses. And they're like, you're right. I hate this. It's uncomfortable for me, but I'm willing to get uncomfortable on behalf of literally millions of men, women, girls, and children who are being exploited right now as we speak. So, like I said, it's very, very much choose your own adventure. And people choose different pathways in and different kinds of messaging around how they're engaging with it. I think, you know, there's.

Blythe Hill [00:21:25]:

There's one story I can think of, too, where there's a male advocate who joined in. I think last year was his first year, and he wore a dress every day. And then, since then, has continued wearing dresses and has shared with me and my team that, like, this was really a. I guess, like, kind of a gateway. I don't know if that was the word he used, but he said, this has allowed me to really step into dressing how I want to dress, which is, like, I love dresses, and I've been. I've been scared to wear them for fear of what people might think. And so dress Ember allowed me, like, a purpose initially to get to do that, and then the courage or seeing, like, oh, okay, like, this actually isn't. You know, the people. The people who matter most understand or, like, you know, aren't gonna just abandon me, you know, as a result of what I'm wearing or, you know, we kind of conflate things in our minds sometimes of, like, what the impact or what will people think.

Blythe Hill [00:22:11]:

And so I love that journey. I love. You know, there are so many different levels of freedom when we talk about, obviously, with human trafficking, like, physical sexual freedom. But then there are so many other levels of freedom. And I love that Dressember is providing pathways to those different types of freedom for different people.

Heather [00:22:48]:

That sounds. You know, I love how you've painted the different access points and levels to freedom because there are so many ways that people can interact with what you've created here and have that be part of their discovery of these different levels of freedom. So I just think it's so beautiful to see what you've built, and it's such a pleasure to chat with you. We love to ask our guests if the name of our show is one of the words that we unpack, spoke to you, or had a kind of visceral response between Virgin Beauty, or Bitch, and what kind of came up for you in that word?

Blythe Hill [00:23:25]:

Oh, that's a great question. Yeah, it's definitely an eye-catching title. And I think, you know, juxtaposing all of those labels or categories that we put women into is really interesting. I have to think about that. I suppose the Bitch.  The Bitch label is the most provocative for me, or like, you know, that strikes me the most because it can be, it can be an empowering, like a term of endearment, or like, you know, she's a bad bitch or whatever. But it can also obviously be like, oh, what a bitch. And there's a lot there, especially when you look at females in leadership and the hurdles that female leaders have to overcome that men just don't have to, and the expectations we have of male leaders that don't translate over to female leaders. And so slapping that title of bitch onto them, like, oh, is she asserting, like, is she a bitch or is she just asserting herself? Is she, is she a bitch, or is she like actually the boss? So, yeah, I think that one.

Blythe Hill [00:24:35]:

Clearly, there's a lot I have to say about that one.

Christopher [00:24:39]:

What you're doing is miraculous. It really is. To give so many people, so many women, an opportunity to grow out of something that is so devastating. I cannot say enough about what you've created and the opportunities you've given others by just a simple act of acting on something that you're passionate about. I love that. I totally love that. Thank you for doing that.

Blythe Hill [00:25:05]:

Thank you. Christopher.

Christopher [00:25:08]:

What can people do? How do they get connected to you and what you're doing?

Blythe Hill [00:25:12]:

Our website is a wealth of resources in general. We have an ethical fashion directory if someone wants to kind of explore or lean into shopping, fair trade, and ethically made goods. That's kind of a secondary part of our mission, being such a fashion-driven organization, to educate people on the unfortunate overlap between the apparel industry and labor trafficking. We also have a blog full of articles on the different complexities of trafficking. So if someone's interested in specifically, you know, how trafficking and the foster system overlap, or, you know, reading different survivor stories, or we did a series called things survivors wish you knew back in January. That's super powerful. There's just a lot of information that someone could dig into on our website. But as far as social media, you can find me on Instagram, Blythe Hill, you can find https://www.ijm.org/dressember

Blythe Hill [00:26:11]:

We're also on all the other sites as well.

Christopher [00:26:14]:

Such a pleasure.

Blythe Hill [00:26:16]:

Likewise. Thanks for having me.

Heather [00:26:18]:

Thank you so much for sharing everything, Blythe. It's been, honestly, a true joy to talk to you.

Blythe Hill [00:26:24]:

Thanks.

Christopher [00:26:25]:

And you've been listening to

Heather

The Virgin,

Christopher

The Beauty

Heather [00:26:30]:

And the Bitch, or is she the boss?

Christopher [00:26:36]:

Go on now. Go on and find us. You're going to want to like us, and you're going to want to share us, and then come on back and enjoy some more of us.