Shes's a What? He's a Who!? #5 Pt. 2

[Q&A continued from above segment.]

Triumph: So Kasius, before this whole crazy world of go-see's, gig's, make-up, jet-setting- you know, the whole nine. Growing up I didn't know you but I can tell that you had this sort of 'tomboy' to you. With modeling so far-fetched to the tomboy nature, how'd you get into such a glamorous profession?

Kasius: Well, I was in high school, unhappy and I wasn't fitting into my new environment at all. My family and I had just moved from Germany so I was fresh to New York. Upstate, NY that is. And then in school I was one of the only black girls there and because I was educated and well traveled, the white girls would say nonsense like "Oh, I've never seen a black German, there's black people in Germany?' and 'how come you don't talk like the other black girls"? Then they would have the nerve to imitate them! Bopping their necks and snapping their fingers. 

Triumph: [Raised eyebrow] Wait, what? Someone actually had the audacity to ask you that?

Kasius: I know right! What these kids thought was cool was being something that they knew they weren't. Hanging out after school, smoking weed, smoking cigarettes and going to the gravel pit, having oral sex with one another and mad other crap. They were all trying to fit in with each other. 

Triumph: Whats the gravel pit? 

Kasius: [Disgusted face] The gravel pit was just like a place to hang out after school, I think it was like a dirt road that led to like a dirt patch where they all just sat around with their cars and sat around smoking and drinking. You know just like the movies, like the country kids do in the small towns! 

Triumph: But I always thought that was like some trailer park trash stuff or something they did out in the Midwest or California?

Kasius: Yea it was trashy but it didn't just reside from trailer park trash, it's anybody that's country. It's even black kids it wasn't necessarily just the white kids. It was even the Hispanics, it was anybody without anything better to do. If your not going anywhere, you smoke you drink and you have sex and that's all those kids were doing. I couldn't get with it.

Triumph: Living in America my whole life I can honestly understand any customary youth assuming that there's no blacks in Germany, but as far challenging your culture based upon how you talk, now that takes nerve! Now I'm from a chocolate city so things like that just didn't come up. There was a thick line between any other race challenging our 'blackness'.

Kasius: It was all just nonsense to me. I come from a place where 1 out of 3 people are mixed race. Black&Asian, Black&Philippine, Taiwan, Portuguese, Peru, Italian, American- everything! And I come into this new high school with all Caucasians that have known each other since elementary school, do all their small town stuff together and for spring break every year they go to Cancun and-- actually no, let me take that back, they don't even leave the country. They go to Virginia beach for spring break. All of 'em were small minded, they had no idea how big and integrated the world was. Uh, when I was 11 I was going to Spain and France for vacations. I didn't get in with those cliques at all. 

Triumph: How did you prepare for the move here[NY]?

Kasius: I was scared to move to New York. This may sound foolish but all I knew was the guns and gangs and violence and I wasn't trying to get stabbed up.[Laughs] We had gangs in Germany. So like the American's that go there they wanted to be all rough and tough because they didnt have anybody to regulate them so we did have bloods and crips- my boyfriend was a crip and hence my favorite color is still blue but it's just funny the way you're influenced. 

Triumph: Damn, gangland in Heidelburg.

Kasius: [Shaking head] America was such a culture shock to me though, Tony. I just needed a way to escape and express myself. 

Triumph: I presume that's where the modeling came in. Were you discovered?

Kasius: Kind of, but not exactly. One day I was riding along with my mom and one of those really exciting ads had spun across the radio. It was some sort of yearly competition, you know kind of like the IMTA which attract hundreds of people. Mind you I had no idea what modeling was but it sounded interesting so I figured why not try it out. So we went ahead and wrote down the 1-800 number and it gave us instructions to head over to a certain Ramada Inn with a date and time for my age group. 

Triumph: Oh geesh, one of those. And you went, huh?

Kasius: Yea we went, thankfully because I was picked. I was 1 of 30 people that they choose for the day.  Then I had to wait for another call back and I got it. Tony! I was seriously sitting there talking to myself like 'Me, a model'? I couldn't believe it. 

Triumph: Was that how you found your first agency?

Kasius: Yes, I ended up with Karin Models New York when I was 17. My first agency, 524 Broadway. [Smiles] 

Triumph: Major move! I remember Karin, they were a top agency. I think they're MC2 now. Ha, I remember my first agency's address too. As many times as I would pop-up and beg them for castings.[Laugh]

Kasius: I was a healthy teenager back then though, so they shoved me onto the plus size division. 

Triumph: And what do you call healthy?

Kasius: I was like a size six or seven dude. Sometimes when I'd go to castings the folks in charge would ask, 'Hey. Are you lost, because you must be in the wrong place'? 

Triumph:[Laughs] I can see why, a size six is not 'plus size'! I mean, it's too big for high fashion but it's nobody's 'plus size'. Geesh, my family would be so appalled. How did your family react to you modeling?

 Kasius: Moms was supportive. She tired her best to keep me happy. 

Triumph: When did you finally start booking jobs?

Kasius: Well it took me over a year to finally groom myself into the model that I needed to be as opposed to the usual six month crash course. I was commuting back in forth from Bermington, which is upstate, NY where I lived. I would have to get up by 5am every couple of mornings to catch a 7am bus so that I could be to Manhattan by 10 and go straight to my go-see's. 

Triumph: Your kidding right? Homie, you just took me back! I ran through that same scenario back in 2006. I was commuting from Baltimore every week before I finally convinced my mom to let me move here.

Kasius: Yea, it was crazy. As soon as my bus would pull into Port Authority, I would literally be in sweatpants running for a place to change my clothes. And that was the worst experience- actually trying to get cute inside of a public bathroom. 

Triumph: [Laughs] Been there done that as well. The Starbucks bathroom was my best-friend back in 2006. [smile]

Kasius: Ha, so my very first job was for The View. It was a hand modeling job and my booker made it clear that I needed to get a manicure. But mind you I was new to this so when I sat down to get my manicure I ended up getting all sorts of french tips and glued on extensions. 

Triumph: Oh no, they had you pulling the ghetto girl twist.

Kasius: I woke up the next morning in so much pain. They had filed down my cuticles way too low and with all the glue from the press-ons it was unbearable. I showed up to my job looking at all the other chicks like, "what the heck, they don't have all this crap on their fingers!"

Triumph: Geesh louise, Kasius. *Laughs*

Kasius: I knew nothing about modeling when I started dude. No Naomi, no Beverly Johnson, no Beverli Peele, no role models, no America's Next Top Model, nothing. 

Triumph: Not even Beverly Johnson, your twin!

Kasius: [Shaking head] Nah. I didn't even have girlfriends to school me. I had no idea what a model was, top-model wasn't even out yet. 

Triumph: You've clearly got the hang of it now Ms.'Jetsetter'. As air-headed as your first job experience makes you sound, your actually a very earnest and assertive woman. You stand strong behind your personal beliefs and opinions. Now let's take this time to flashback to LA, four months ago. We were riding in your car leaving Target when I cracked a joke involving the "N" word which in return landed you into a tyrant- a respectable one, but still indeed a tyrant, about why the word 'nigger', excuse my french, should be abolished. Can you elaborate on that for me? 'Cause honestly I don't believe I fully grasped your feelings that night.

Kasius:[Charming smirk] Ok. Someone can't just sit and tell me that some people can use the word but others can't. That's buffoonery at it's best. I feel like if everyone can't say it, then it can't be said- straight-up! And it's not only that it's a derogatory term, it originated as a negative thing. It was never a positive word from the beginning. So to try and change that and turn it into a word with a double meaning is stupid. 'Up' can't mean 'down' and 'left' can't mean 'right'. And for such a negative, hurtful word to be suddenly switched into a term of endearment- I think it's all bullshit. 

Triumph: I wont clarify any specific races but I do notice other non-black, ethnic races using the 'N' word, especially in New York. How do you feel about that?

Kasius: In terms of not all persons being able to use it how can you say that one person can use it but others can't? Which vocabulary in freedom of speech supports this? It doesn't make any sense. And then, when is it called for? When is it necessary? Like saying, 'Oh what's up my 'n-word'' and then, 'Oh fuck you 'n-word'! No, it doesn't make any sense. 

Triumph: Like a double negative?

Kasius: Exactly, a double negative. I feel like black people, and especially with hip-hop, as influential as we are as a culture we do have the power to change it and not use it. If kids in Asia are trying to sag their pants and children in Europe and India are spitting lyrics by Jay-Z and Nas and whoever else that they don't even understand you can not use the word and make a difference. 

Triumph: Rap was originality intended to educate, but over the past decade there's definitively been a mirage of all sorts of ignorant lessons. At this point I think that everyone knows that the smoke is dying off on the educational bandwagon of hip-hop. So you just named Jay-z and Nas, would you say that some of the hip-hop legends were ignorant to their own culture?

Kasius: It's definitely ignorance because the rappers are the main ones who need to expand their vocabulary's. There are other words that rhyme with what you have to say. But it's also family too because the rappers had to learn it from somebody just like their fans. It starts with family. If it's not already a normality then it will be more of a shock when people use it.

[I notice Ms. Loren getting itchy with the time]

Triumph: Alright just one more quickly and I'll let you go 'cause I know you have to catch a flight. It's a pretty generic question, where do you see yourself within the next five years?

Kasius: [Thinking smile] Wealthy, having kids--- and embarking on my deepest dreams. 

-Interview conducted especially for A Triumphant Discovery. 

*Triumphant Discovery's: Obligations or endearments that were discovered in the process of creating their business. Things that they would have never known without undergoing the process of this creation.

Peace and Discovery,

Tony Triumph