Morgan Aloia, a twenty-two year old woman originally from Pearland Texas is currently living in a lovely little town called Ithaca in upstate New York among friends and found family. Just recently graduated from Cornell's undergraduate information science program with a focus in user experience design, Morgan has done a good deal of work as a freelance designer but now that she has her degree she is applying to find something more secure. She is an inspiration to so many with her ability to be uniquely and utterly herself.
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DISCLAIMER
**Must stay till the end to hear all of Morgan's beautiful journey, you WILL NOT regret it!**
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How did you decide on your profession?
I stumbled into the field of design while in college at a time when I was very unsure of myself, both professionally and personally. I had thought for a long time that I should study computer science, but as I got into it I started to be disillusioned with the objectivity mindset that accompanied that line of work. When I started studying design I found a lot of people asking and answering the same sorts of questions that had been shot down when I was in computer science, most importantly ‘why does this matter to us as people?’.
I was really lucky to have fantastic professors to inspire me. I’m incredibly thankful to one woman in particular, her name is Gilly Leshed, for fostering the love of the work that I do now. She’s a fantastic teacher and and even better designer, and her insights into the way people think really helped to shaped my own.
What is your favorite part of your profession?
There are a lot of reasons why I love design, one of the big ones is that every day I’ll be doing something completely different. The work is dynamic and necessitates growth in all aspects of my life, which is something I really care about.
That being said though, the number one best thing about my job is how much of it I get to spend just talking to people and getting to know them. So much of what I do revolves around making connections with people, especially people who are different than I am in all number of ways. My primary responsibility is to make sure that what they're saying about their lives and experiences are heard and reflected clearly in the designs I produce.
I love that I have the opportunity to learn on a daily basis from the people around me, and that my worldview has greatly expanded because of being a designer.
A good deal of women in particular really thrive in design because of the value it places on traits that are encouraged through femininity.
Subjectivity, emotionality, empathy, insightfulness. Despite what some people will say, these are skills that feminine people bring to the table, not detriments or defects.
Through them we can uplift the work we do as well as the people we do it for. Design is one of the few sections of our society which really promotes the value that femininity can bring to the professional world, and I think that's wonderful.
What does the Glam By Sam motto (“find your glamour within”) mean to you?
Finding my glamor within has to do with allowing joy into my life for its own sake. Being able to do things that lift me up and help me to feel good about myself and the world around me, while being conscious of the things in my life that are going against to that.
If something you do brings you pleasure, even if it's a waste of time otherwise, I think we owe it to ourselves to care for that spark of happiness and encourage it.
So to me, glamour is a goal. It's a mindset. It's something we can grow in ourselves and support in others that makes the world a much nicer place to live in.
Who is someone you get your fashion inspiration from?
I've always looked to the natural world as an example of effortless beauty. Taking time to really appreciate the aesthetics of all the little bits of nature is something that I've been trying to take cues from in both my designs and my fashions sense.The best thing I've been able to pull from that is the idea of wearing what fits.
The way that a fish's scales shimmer when it swims through the water is gorgeous, but those same scales look dull and slimy when the fish is pulled out.
The fish needs the water, and beauty needs context. Just because something is beautiful when it's standing on it's own doesn't mean that it will fit well in the kaleidoscope that is my style and outlook. Understanding that has really helped me to develop the way I present myself to the world and the way that I see my own aesthetic.
How do you find your glamour within on a daily basis?
I like to be really intentional with the aesthetics of my life. Placing myself in a beautiful setting can really make me to feel on top of the world, whether that be out in nature or some fantastic architectural space in a city just the decor of my bedroom.
By the same sort of idea, I really enjoy playing with my sense of fashion. Even through the quarantine that we're in now, it's still really important to me personally that I get up and get myself together like I normally would. By putting effort into the way that I look I'm putting out to the universe that I value my body and my self.
The way that I dress and the way that I present myself has as much of an effect on me as it does on the people around me.
During the COVID 19 pandemic, who or what do you turn to as a way to maintain positivity, clarity, and motivation?
I really enjoy writing in my free time, mostly short fiction, but since the pandemic started I've been really proactive about journaling. It's felt really good just get my day-to-day life out onto paper. Keeping a journal has been a great way for me to keep focused on the things in my life that are important to me, and to take notice of the ideas and emotions that are passing me by.
When did you learn about the importance of self love?
My journey towards self love was long and difficult, and mostly rooted at the beginning in self hate. I'm a trans woman, and while growing up as a boy in Texas all the messaging I heard around trans people was that they were insane, perverts, or both. I didn't really know I was trans when I was young and impressionable and being exposed to all of these stereotypes, I just knew I felt awful, but even still when I did come around to figuring myself out that messaging had already seeped into me. I knew that I wasn't Buffalo Bill, but the fear that other people would view me that way if I were to transition kept me in the closet for years, even after I had accepted for myself that I was a trans person. This internalized transphobia is something that still creeps up in my thoughts occasionally today, and it's something I feel like I'll be working on for a long time to come.
It took me a lot of work through therapy, reflection on who I was as a person, and moving to just about the farthest place away from Texas that I could think of for a little while to be able to come to accept myself for who I am.
The silver lining of it all is that by and large, my effort towards self love have been so so fruitful. I've gotten to a place where I feel confident in myself as a woman.
So much of that was because of my transition and coming to see myself in a body and social role that fit my internal perception. One of the things I'm most thankful for in my transition is that it really forced me to confront the question of whether or not I love myself, and motivated me to be active in answering YES.
How do you encourage and promote self love to others?
I've really made a big push to share my experiences with other trans people, especially those that are younger and earlier on in their transition. Being able to mentor other trans people is really fulfilling for me, because I can see a little bit of the way that I used to be in them.
You know, there are skills that are required to move through our society as a trans person and as a woman that you don't just have at the start.
You don't instinctually know how to handle being harassed, or the effects that hormones will have on you, or how to dress in a way that flatters you.
They're things that we can learn to make our lives significantly easier, and for most of us we just stumble through the dark until we find them and fall a lot along the way. Being able to pass along the insights that sort of stumbling gave me has allowed me to encourage self love in the people around me in a way that would have been invaluable to me at the time.
That is probably the single thing that I love the most about the queer community, is that there is such a solidarity between us and a willingness to help each other in the face of a world that we do not cleanly fit into.
Has there ever been a moment in your life where you felt unworthy, what was it?
There were a lot of times in my early transition when I absolutely felt unworthy. The first few months into your transition are just awful. It's so self conscious, and unstable. You're adjusting to a totally new way of being perceived by society, and for the first bit of it you basically fit everyone's stereotype of a man in a dress.
The only thing I can say to people who are in that place right now is that it will pass, you will grow out of it, and from my own experience once you've moved on from it every day can get better than the last.
If you could share one message to females everywhere about self love, what would it be?
One thing that I'd like to share with women about self love is that we should all be good friends to ourselves. That idea was something that really helped me to move towards self love. If you're engaging in behaviors or patterns of thought that aren't serving you, think about whether or not you would treat your closest friend the way that you're treating yourself. A lot of the times, the little sacrifices of self-love we make in our minds are things we would never do to someone else that we love, but our brains trick us into thinking that it's okay to do to ourselves.
So be a good friend to yourself.
"Reason is, and ought only ever to be, a slave to the passions." -David Hume
I've been thinking a lot about this quote lately, and it goes back to what I was saying earlier on in the interview about women in design. Everything that we do is influenced by the feminine side we all hold, the side of the passions. This applies to all of us.
To deny that is to miss a key portion of what it is to be human.
By embracing it rather than repressing it, we can see the world in all sorts of amazing lights and hopefully come to understand one another in more meaningful ways. Femininity has a unique capacity to bring joy into the world.
We need to learn to value femininity, to value glamour, for the amazing thing that it is.
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Thank you Morgan for sharing your self love journey with us and the world, you truly are amazing✨
XOXO,
Sam💋
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