thank you [Music] do you all remember a significant moment where your life changed the year here is 2020 and I have just come out of 112 days in lockdown and I'm one of two women on a split screen broadcasted digitally all over the world and I hear and the winner is Maria the till and in that moment I had just become only the third woman of color in 69 years to be Miss Universe Australia thank you but you can see it on my face there was this air of disbelief because I had gone from being
this closeted child of working class Indian immigrants one of who is an ex-priest to now being I didn't realize that was funny but somebody had a giggle you know I and then I went to being the representative of our country on one of the biggest stages in the universe and now I'm an openly queer and sex positive author TV presenter podcaster and host and I can see how yeah that it looks like it the moment my life changed in fact it was actually my little brother who's here today who recently said to me I'm just
waiting for my Miss Universe propeller moment you know the one that's going to change everything and to be fair he is so gay so he might actually be waiting for his Miss Universe moment I don't know but see I've learned something about these moments that change our life and contrary to what you think of that it wasn't it in fact it wasn't even a moment but it was six words and just four years ago I was broke in five figures of death newly single and closeted and I just moved back in with my parents I
was working in a corporate job that I hated but I knew with every fiber in my being that I was meant for more but I didn't know what and I didn't know how but I was waiting for something just anything to change my life and how many of you relate to that you know you've worn what someone else has said to you and now you feel like you can't live the life that you want to live because you're stuck see I first felt stuck when I came to my skin it's 2013 and this is what
I looked like I was basically cosplaying as a white woman you guys like I don't know why nobody told me lose the eye contacts color match the foundation it just what drives someone to wear a costume for everyday life you know I'd absorbed messages that I did not fit ideas for beauty power and success and so I thought I had to change and I absorbed those messages really young I mean I was five when my first crush said to me that he couldn't like me because I was a monster with dirty skin and I grew
up in an Australia where diversity wasn't celebrated they didn't have representation for South Asian people like me and racial abuse was tolerated so I would go home and I would scrub my knees raw in the shower hoping the color would wash away because that little girl grew into a 13 year old who used skin bleaching creams before she even used makeup same and I look back on it and I think about how I thought if I changed my skin maybe I'd be good enough and I did the same thing when it came to my sexuality
too and I'm going to be so real with you guys for a minute do you know what it's like to be the daughter of an ex-priest and trying to tell your parents that you like to eat out and I'm not talking about restaurants try explaining that junk to mum and dad later you guys I grew up in a really culturally conservative and religious context and the ideas I had about life love sex agenda it was from these limiting Frameworks that taught me The Honorable thing to do is find a nice man to fulfill marry and
procreate with and so I obsessed over that and I figured if I marry a nice white guy who ideally looks like Zac Efron I'd be good enough I'd have made it and I got there not with Zac Efron but I found a man that I loved and I spent years waiting for the ring and falling asleep every night whilst fantasizing about what it was like to be with a woman but it stayed a fantasy because I thought I was powerless to change and I did the same thing when it came to my ambitions I after
school did degrees in Psychology in management I started working in corporate HR and I thought if I follow this conventional blueprint for Success people are going to look at me and they're going to be like yeah she's successful she's made it see I wore what other people said and it made me think I can't because I'm not enough and so did I do anything to change my life I didn't and so four years ago I hit that sad broke low but that same year I saw an Indian Australian lawyer win Miss Universe Australia and I
felt two things one excitement because I thought I've Just Seen Her propeller moment but two this unshakable unexplainable fire where I just thought I have to know what that feels like and so short as I am Brown as I am I threw my hat in the ring and so it's 20 20. covert came and lockdowns followed guys how do you compete when you can't attend events you can't Network you can't exercise I couldn't even leave my house for more than one hour a day and at the time after that broke up I moved back in
with mum and dad what was I gonna do on a dirt road on the outskirts of Melbourne to show people that I could be Miss Universe Australia well this hi guys yeah um okay just give me a minute to explain guys uh in Miss Universe there is a catwalk segment and because I was locked down I had to submit a video of myself doing it but my parents lived in a tiny rental didn't have a good enough stretch of floor to catwalk on so what did I do I hit the streets but obviously that wasn't
working and so God my mum came to the rescue and this story is about to get so much weirder she called the local priest and she asked him if we could use the church Hall and honestly I don't think he knew that this is what was going on but forgive me Father for I have sinned and so honestly the way I campaigned in 2020 was by asking myself what do I have I had a phone and I had an internet connection and so I decided to host an empowerment series online and every week for 32
weeks I went on Instagram live and I would talk to people about social and political issues that mattered and I spoke about things like sexual harassment consent race and that series garnered hundreds and thousands of views because I decided if I'm gonna win I'm gonna win because of what I have to say and not because I'm fitting somebody else's ideas of beauty power and success and my campaign it pushed me into public discourse and believe me people had opinions I cannot tell you how many times I opened my phone to comments and this is verbatim
like I miss the days when Australia sent tall white women to Miss Universe or trashy tabloids writing articles about you and suddenly it's gone viral and now for weeks on end you are getting thousands of DMs like kill yourself Deport her she's not even Australian see I didn't expect that and that nearly got me but I decided that I was not going to stay stuck in the idea that who I was was something to fix I did not go that far to buckle and so when people told me that my differences were why I was
not enough I told them my differences are why I need to be there and so that year the way I showed up as Miss Universe Australia was by writing and producing my own campaign videos and then I started to pitch opinion articles for free and those articles led to me being offered to National columns columns that led to my first book deal and after speaking up about the racism I was experiencing as Miss Universe Australia I was invited to guest on a major Morning Show and believe me I was scared I was scared it would
open me up again to more hate but I swallowed the fear and I did it anyway and it's led to the career that I have now and looking back at the start of this talk you saw my face when I was in disbelief because I just won Miss Universe Australia well when I ended up making the top 10 at the global Miss Universe competition representing Australia I didn't feel disbelief I felt this powerful guys I didn't realize that was a laugh moment but okay I'm Gonna Roll With It I felt powerful and to this day
the public doesn't see how many times I'm still told no or how hard you have to fight to be in a room especially when the further along you go there are less people like you in those rooms but I do it because I know that that kind of Courage is important and it's led to some of the bravest moments in my life including being that daughter of an ex-priest and coming out on National Television and so I do it because there is someone out there who might see themselves in me and I want them to
know that who you are is not a compromise to your ability to live a life beyond limits it is your fuel and I've learned that big change it happens because of cumulative moments every single day that masquerades as everyday decisions it's the moment you decide to throw away the skin bleaching creams or when despite all the odds you get up and you hit a dirt road just to get the job done or when faceless trolls tell you to kill yourself and that you should be deported it is every moment you block delete and you keep
being visible and heard because you don't change your life by waiting for a propeller moment you change your life when you realize that opportunities for greatness that don't always come across as great so stop wearing what other people say and instead tell yourself every day I can I am and I will thank you thank you thank you
