“No matter where I go, I feel like, in a way, I’m bringing home with me.”
Kairyn Potts’s TikTok videos are heavily nuanced. By mixing comedy, real-life experiences and education, the Toronto-based Two-Spirit youth advocate and former social worker has amassed a following hovering near the 293,000 mark. His entertaining content shines a light on important Indigenous topics and issues, like Two-Spirit/gender identity, mental-health awareness, sexual health and child welfare, to name a few. It’s a winning formula that has landed him on TikTok’s 2022 edition of The Discover List, a compilation of 50 creators from across the globe who are making a tremendous impact on the platform. Another key element that’s often woven throughout his videos? Colourful graphic eye looks. Here, Potts shares how makeup plays a defining role in his messaging.
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I’m a Nakota Sioux from Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation near Edmonton in Treaty Six Territory, and I grew up going to powwows. Powwow makeup can be many things, but one of the main looks I would see women in my community do as fancy-shawl and jingle-dress dancers is really graphic liner along their eyes, using a lot of dots in different colours and sizes. That makeup was the pinnacle of beauty to me, like the upper echelon of what it meant to be pretty.
I was a powwow dancer myself when I was young, except I was a men’s traditional dancer and I wasn’t being me. I was really scared of what people would think, so I stifled myself a lot and would always say to myself, “Damn, when I grow up, I’m going to try that kind of makeup.” Now that I’m older and not ashamed of who I actually am — I’ve come into my Two-Spirit identity…
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