Rain Dove is the model working daily to challenge the gender binary that society has so aggressively thrust upon us: Blue is for boys and pink is for girls, suits are masculine and dresses are feminine, and so on. Ever since her agent miscast her in a men’s Calvin Klein show, Rain has been embraced by the industry notorious for making people feel inadequate. From that moment, when she walked the runway topless in men’s brief, Rain has embraced her androgynous looks and the business has embraced her. She has walked in both men’s and women’s fashion weeks and has since been featured by brands like Vogue, H&M, and DKNY. She sat down with WestwoodWestwood to talk about how social conscious is a trending topic, how today’s struggle differs to past uprisings, and the pressures of being a leader for social justice.

We’re fascinated by the way politics and social justice are trending. Do you ever worry it’s just a fad? 

Politics are huge right now. And I think we’re going back to the 1960s or 1970s in that everyone takes pride in their struggle. If you don’t have a struggle, you’re not cool. Having a struggle, having something that’s difficult about your life, having something you have to overcome, your story. Those are the things I think that make people feel really good right now, and with social media we have the ability to talk about so many things all at the same time. The women’s movement, the queer movement; it’s not happening individually and by decade, it’s happening all at the same time with so many different moving parts.

How do we continue to fight, even when we’re feeling a bit tired and even when Trump is tweeting something ridiculous every single day? When you’re hit with issues about gender equality every single day? 

There’s no other choice but to stay motivated. Things may be difficult, but I always say I grew up reading a lot and spent a lot of time alone, and you don’t find a book to be too interesting if it’s character-based and the character doesn’t have something to overcome, if there’s no conflict, no matter the conflict that comes up. I know that I’m just at the beginning of a very good story, and that’s what drives me. Every day isn’t the end result, it’s just a part of the getting there.

I think you have to think in terms of not “me,” but “we,” and “we” are more of a selfie generation than a selfless generation.  I think people inherently want to be loved. It’s one of the things about humans that is really special is that we need love as much as we need water and food and social media is a very addictive thing. It releases the same chemical components into your body as pulling the lever on a slot machine in Vegas. And I think I’m in a space right now where there is so much to be done, and in order for it to be permanent you just have to keep moving. And I’m just really grateful to exist and really grateful to be here right now, and I just know that my purpose is to help people achieve the ability to exist and acquire food, shelter, water, and physical safety on a basic level, and that’s it.

In terms of the modeling industry specifically, have you felt like you’ve been welcomed with open arms?

I think that it’s a mixed bag, like any profession. There are people who think that I’m ugly, or that I’m too political, or too big—just that there are so many different reasons I shouldn’t be here. And there are people who think I’m amazing, who love my look, who love my work, who love my words, who love my political stance, and the industry isn’t about working with everyone and having everyone love you. It’s about working with the people who represent you and working with the people who are a part of where you’re going and you don’t need to be with everyone, you just need to be with the right people. And the right people will sustain you.

There are a lot of fashion campaigns now that focusing specifically on social justice. Are you ever worried that it isn’t genuine? 

I think our generation, more than any other generation before us, is more wise to advertising and their motivations.  At the end of the day, all these companies care about is paying their bills, expanding their brand, and paying their employees. They’re going to do whatever they can do to get that money. And in a market that’s saturated right now with more options than ever before—more clothing options, more brands of food, more brands of beauty products—people are going to do whatever they think they need to do in order to get our money. So the idea of “trending” has always existed. The people doing the marketing are always looking for, “What is the best way to sell my product? What are people talking about? What are people looking at? What is the plight of the world?”In a way, it sucks, because our skin color is not a fetish, it’s not a fad, it’s not a trend. And our sexuality is not a trend, not a fad. Our age is not a fad or a trend. These are things that we have with us every single day as campaigns come and go; they’re not trends for us, they are our lives.At the same time, we have to realize that these brands have a responsibility on some level to society, but on another level, their brands. And they have a responsibility to their employees and to their bank accounts, and it’s a really, really hard line to walk.

Thanks to social media,  we’re in a weird space of transition where trending topics used to be what drove the market, and now it’s trending people. And those people are no longer chosen by the Anna Wintours of the fashion world. They’re now chosen by us, the people who click the “follow” button and the “like” button. We have the ability to raise anyone up in our society, and with those numbers we are endorsing them as a brand, and as a brand they are able to become the next faces and the next people that market things to us. Because at the end of the day people are still going to market to us, no matter whether we like it or not it’s like, alright, you’re going to have to take your medicine, this advertisement is going to exist whether you like it or not, but you get to choose the flavor now.

So your role in everything is to turn the narrative on its head, to work for the people while you’re also selling the brand. Would you agree with that?

I’ve never worked for a brand that I do not feel comfortable with. I’ve turned down a lot of work because it doesn’t align with me morally, or because what they stand for is something I can’t stand with. So I have to be selective in the brand alignments I have, but my job is to be responsible for every word that I put out, for every image that I put out, and to not just be a model but to be a movement. And to not just be a social media platform, but to be a platform for other people and to have a space where other people can shine and share their voices. My hashtag is #educatedonthate, so I know that aesthetically and sometimes politically I’m going to upset people, and I do frequently upset people just by wearing something. It’s really silly. I want people to learn how to speak about their perspective on things without using hateful language, without demeaning people, without trolling people, but simply sharing their perspective and being okay with the fact that not everyone is going to agree with them. Being okay with the idea of free speech and just being okay with the idea that consistency will go a long way.

How would you like your vision to be translated to the people that are following you? You want them to also be their own movement, right?

Absolutely. I had the great privilege of being lifted up by several platforms that make me very visible. This is not about me; I have a very limited perspective, and that limited perspective is my own perspective. I want everyone to be their own movement, I want everyone to be responsible for themselves, I want everyone to hold themselves to that standard and say, “let’s be solution-oriented.” All these protests, all these things that are being said, all this violence that’s happening now, all these rocks that are being thrown, they’re not productive. Violence can be productive for a short period of time, but they’re not productive. I’m hoping that I can help people work through their own things so that way they can go forward in the world and just be solution-oriented and focus on creating a better world. You can’t create a better world if you’re stuck in all the hate, if you’re stuck in place. You have to be fluid.

For those who don’t have your platform, how would you suggest they empower themselves?

But nowadays, anyone can be a model. Anyone can be validated, anyone can be visible, and anyone can be a model. I 100% thoroughly believe it. Social media is changing the game. It doesn’t matter your height, your age, your weight, anything. You can do whatever you want, you just have to get people behind you. But the only way you’re going to get people behind you is if you are honest, if you are persistent, and if you are about more than just yourself. Even it’s being about more than just yourself behind the scenes, collaboration is a big part of rising.

How would you envision that sort of highly competitive model world being? Genderless?

Ideally, it would be really great if we did see beyond gender, because I don’t think that gender exists. It does exist because society reinforces it, but it’s not a scientific thing. I think that ideally what we do is we bring the art back into fashion, and we respect fashion as art, you know? And runways, they really should go back to being things for the buyers in my opinion. They shouldn’t be something that is such a social event, and the reason why is because a runway is such a limiting space, it doesn’t really allow for the representation of a lot of different kinds of people in certain ways. Some people can’t even walk down the runway, some people will never fit into those sizes. I think some of the responsibility needs to come back on the consumer, it’s like a mixed relationship. Designers will hopefully be more responsible in their marketing, but they’re not required to. And we the people, we need to be responsible with our purchasing power. It’s up to us to change things.  And that means that we shouldn’t be supporting brands that are intentionally exclusionary.

So we should start by taking responsibility for ourselves first.

It’s so easy to complain and it’s so easy to take to the streets, but we have more power as people than we ever have had before. It’s incredible. We can change people’s thoughts on a social issues that people have been fighting for for centuries, we can do it overnight on Twitter. It’s insane. Absolutely, these designers, they totally have to step up to the plate. But at the same time, they don’t have to. If we pull the money from them, I guarantee you they’ll change. All they want is our money.

Have you personally ever felt activism fatigue?

This is something I’ve been experiencing lately. As things become more and more out there, people will write lots of letters—things like that they’re suicidal or they got raped or they’re hurt or they haven’t come out yet or they’re thinking about coming out, and I feel responsible to answer as many as I possibly can. I spend about anywhere from one to three hours a day answering messages for people. Every Friday I spend a few hours doing Skype meetings with kids and their parents or with people who are like, “Hey, I just need to talk about this thing and my identity.” I feel responsible. I feel like if I don’t answer, someone is going to hurt themselves, because I’ve had that happen with a couple of people over the past few years.

Even just a couple of months ago, a kid reached out on social media and said that they were going to hurt themselves and they committed suicide a few days later. And I didn’t see their message because I was traveling abroad at the time, I was in Greece and I just hadn’t checked it, and I know I’m not responsible for it, but it’s exhausting and it becomes addictive in and of itself. I’m not anyone’s savior by any means, but I definitely feel exhausted at times, like I have to be 100% present at all times.

You don’t get a day off, it’s not like this is your day of rest. You have to be present as often as you can and try to grow other people to be present with you so that they can help people, too, and hopefully help lessen the pain and the stress. But the number of people I know who have been in the hospital, who have gotten really sick, things like that because they’re up all night. They can’t sleep or function because they know they’re getting messages. They know people are suffering until this law is banned. It’s really interesting, but I guess that’s part of being an artist. It’s part of fashion.