“Fragrance is important to me because of its emotional dimension. I feel like fragrances are able to transport, stir emotion, and bring up memories. You can wear makeup, you can dress yourself up, but fragrance gives a powerful aspect to how you can present yourself that you can’t necessarily get any other way.”
― Hari Nef
“There’s something very noble about the bowling shoe. It has very little pretense, and it’s kind of naughty. You have to share them with a bunch of other people, which is so kinky in a way that I like. What other shoes would you actively share with other people?”
― Hari Nef
“Trans folks are going to rise up for their moments and their money!”
― Hari Nef
“Sexuality is who you want to be with. Gender identity is who you want to be in the world.”
― Hari Nef
“Visibility is not, in itself, always a good thing, but when it is in the hands of those who need positive visibility, it can be.”
― Hari Nef
“In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to change my body. I wouldn’t have to do all this stuff. I wouldn’t have to be pretty or ‘feminine,’ and people would respect that.”
― Hari Nef
“I don’t feel comfortable with the idea that my only gateway into doing what I love to do is auditioning for other people to give me the green light and say that I’m allowed to do it, or that I’m allowed to play this role, or that I’m allowed to be in this movie. I would feel much more comfortable making those opportunities for myself.”
― Hari Nef
“When you’re a teenager, everything is amplified because everything is a first. The first time you feel othered, the first time you feel rejected, the first time you fall in love… it’s the first time, so it’s so vivid, and everything feels like the whole world almost, because it is your whole world; your world is small when you’re a teenager.”
― Hari Nef
“I used to think I was a gay man with this idea of a muse in my head, like a woman that I thought was inspirational or aspirational. But the woman was actually me.”
― Hari Nef
“I feel like so much of mainstream feminism springs from the second wave, which was essentially a discourse spearheaded by white, cisgender, upper middle class women. I feel – especially as I’m trying to negotiate this new female space with the feminism that’s available to me – there are a lot of places where I’m disenfranchised.”
― Hari Nef
“If anyone says that American socialism isn’t possible, point them toward the bowling shoe.”
― Hari Nef
“A pink sneaker is like walking down the street at five miles per hour with a Starbucks in your hand. Nobody is getting in your way.”
― Hari Nef
“My first boyfriend was a fashion designer. He was a junior in high school, I was a freshman.”
― Hari Nef
“I travel a lot, so I don’t have a morning routine because where I wake up tends to be inconsistent. But I’m always really, really hungry when I wake up, so breakfast is important.”
― Hari Nef
“People make fun of me because I’ve been known to eat lunch things for breakfast. I’ll eat a good salad. I’ll maybe have some tempeh or kale in there. I try to make breakfast a lavish meal because, one, my body tells me to, and, two, that’s what carries me through the day.”
― Hari Nef
“I keep a very cold apartment – I tend to crank my AC just about as low as it can go. I sleep with a big, warm comforter, even during the summer, and just burrow underneath it.”
― Hari Nef
“If you don’t know somebody, whether you’re inquiring into their sex or their gender, it’s invasive.”
― Hari Nef
“Whatever surgery someone wants to get is none of your business.”
― Hari Nef
“My experience with ‘Transparent’ has completely spoiled me because it was the safest, most transpositive set ever. I didn’t have to worry about all the usual things – like when people have a vision of your transness that you’re not comfortable with. When they don’t know the correct gender pronouns by which to refer to you.”
― Hari Nef
“I was romantically socialized as a gay man, and now that I am, for most intents and purposes, a heterosexual woman, I have to learn how to talk to straight men, which is the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”
― Hari Nef
“Being a woman means that my male privilege seeped out of my body.”
― Hari Nef
“I think that often my work is obscured by my gender identity.”
― Hari Nef
“My identity will always inform my experience and shape my perception. But I am an unremarkable person.”
― Hari Nef
“For me, Instagram had become a place where I could image myself the way I found myself.”
― Hari Nef
“If my body can fall into the background for just a second, maybe people will start listening to what I have to say.”
― Hari Nef
“I prefer men who are queer. Not gay men, but queer men – guys with an open mind. Bisexual men, because they’re able to understand the different elements of the body without judging that I don’t conform to a certain ideal.”
― Hari Nef
“I feel like my transition, in a broader sense, began the second I left home and came to New York. Because all of a sudden, I opened myself up to options about how to be.”
― Hari Nef
“I feel like the most fascinating parts of a trans life take place after the decision to transition. They take place when you’re in this new body, in this new life, and you start realizing things.”
― Hari Nef
“To see a trans body in this ideal space – on a cover, in an ad – these are spaces that have immense cultural power to dictate what is beautiful, what is glamorous, what is aspirational, what is sexy, what is clean. That can be very powerful and helpful in the de-stigmatization of trans bodies.”
― Hari Nef
“I’m teaching myself how to screenplay write.”
― Hari Nef
“I would like to produce, and eventually, I would like to direct.”
― Hari Nef
“I’m really into the way sound works in film, and I did a little bit of sound design for theater in college.”
― Hari Nef
“When I saw that Laverne Cox was on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine, I totally lost it. It was a coup for the girls!”
― Hari Nef
“I’m grateful to be in school developing my practice as an actor. In that process, it’s difficult to say that you’ve definitively ‘learned’ something.”
― Hari Nef
“I could have hidden in Boston and lived at home for three years, gone through my transition, taken voice lessons to make my voice more feminine, gotten gender reassignment surgery, and spent time to complete my transition, but I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to be in the world.”
― Hari Nef
“There are no trans roles, and if there are, they go to Jared Leto or Eddie Redmayne or Elle Fanning… Will there ever come a point where I could play a woman in a realistic, naturalistic drama and have there not be the word ‘trans’ in the script?”
― Hari Nef
“It’s time for the aesthetics of upwardly mobile feminist respectability to make room for the aesthetics of survival, particularly trans survival.”
― Hari Nef
“Brands like RMS Beauty and Kat Burki are my skincare heroes.”
― Hari Nef
“I get a facial maybe a couple of times a year.”
― Hari Nef
“I like to let my skin breathe, I don’t like to stress it out. I don’t like to put it through very much.”
― Hari Nef
“I think the skin is the most important part of a strong makeup look, and if you take care of that, the rest will follow.”
― Hari Nef
“I liked playing video games because I felt like I was inside of the story in a way that I didn’t feel when I was just watching something. Any chance I could get to step into the shoes of another person, I would take. I couldn’t get enough of stories.”
― Hari Nef
“I think it’s an oversimplification of somebody’s worth to ‘cancel’ them. We’re so quick to cancel but also so quick to lift somebody up as ‘the queen,’ ‘the mom,’ ‘the dad,’ ‘the god.’”
― Hari Nef
“There have been moments where I’ve had to question the way I’ve used social media and change it. Not because anything was wrong or right but because my needs had changed, and my perspective had changed.”
― Hari Nef
“I think people get stuck in a cycle with social media sometimes and don’t know how to make adjustments that are personal.”
― Hari Nef
“I want to start the trans mafia one day.”
― Hari Nef
“What we really need to look at is gender fluidity and the idea that gender can be customised however you want.”
― Hari Nef
“I don’t want the same trans story to be told over and over again. I don’t want people to get stuck on this very western idea of what it means to be transgender.”
― Hari Nef
“I’m a much better actor as a girl than I was as a guy.”
― Hari Nef
“If you’re going to make a film about rage in 2018, 2017… If you’re going to make a film about revenge and anger, I feel like that has to be a film about women. I don’t really want to watch a film about angry men. I’ve seen way too many of those.”
― Hari Nef
“Fashion gave me my start, and that will always be my home. I’ll always be so grateful for all my collaborators and friends I’ve made there, but I’m so excited to dive head first into just being a working actor.”
― Hari Nef
“I’m very conscious and weary of the hype economy and the way people build things up just to tear them down.”
― Hari Nef
“Expectations are kind of lethal for art, I think.”
― Hari Nef
“When you’re making an independent film, there is no guarantee that anyone is going to see it, ever.”
― Hari Nef
“Fashion gave me the platform that has made this transition from fashion to Hollywood, from East Coast to West Coast. Fashion gave me the platform that has made this easier than it is for a lot of other people. And I will always count fashion as the industry that was first to welcome me and embrace what I could do.”
― Hari Nef
“My desire to be an actor or a model precedes my identity.”
― Hari Nef
“What’s infuriating is when cis people think celebrating me is celebrating transness.”
― Hari Nef
“Dysphoria will always be a painful place.”
― Hari Nef
“When we say ‘trans is beautiful’ or ‘being trans is the best,’ that is a truth we created for ourselves that’s clearly not true in every signal we get from the world around us.”
― Hari Nef
“I think that it should be every woman’s choice, depending on how she feels comfortable. I can’t think of any objective reason why you should wear makeup unless it makes you feel good.”
― Hari Nef
“I think that you need to balance a critique of feminine, patriarchal beauty ideals while simultaneously understanding how they can make you safe, and they can make you feel safe, and they can open up certain doors for you that would have been closed.”
― Hari Nef
“I like shows for atmosphere. I don’t know, I think a plot-driven show is so boring and masc4masc and gross.”
― Hari Nef
“I got the Fire Stick as a gift at the Amazon Emmys after-party in 2015, and because I haven’t lived in a house with cable television since I lived with my parents as a child, I’ve just streamed everything. I can afford cable. I have a television. But I only stream things.”
― Hari Nef
“I live in a little studio apartment, so I try to keep the space super clean at all times.”
― Hari Nef
“Leaving the house in a pair of flip-flops in Manhattan is disgusting to me, no shade.”
― Hari Nef
“People feel emboldened to say things on the Internet they wouldn’t in person.”
― Hari Nef
“If we didn’t desensitize ourselves in some way, every day would feel like its own tragedy.”
― Hari Nef
“Ariel is the most boring Disney princess.”
― Hari Nef
“I always think I look dead, but I never actually do.”
― Hari Nef
“I was really into emo and scene culture in middle school.”
― Hari Nef
“I was never good at being a boy, but I was always a good student.”
― Hari Nef
“If I get too glam and polished and pretty, people are like, ‘Hari, why aren’t you speaking up about issues?’ And if I start speaking up about issues, people are like, ‘Why can’t you just be an actress?’”
― Hari Nef
“I love ‘Heathers.’ I love ‘Spring Breakers.’”
― Hari Nef
“I’ve certainly been in situations where I’ve been rejected and endangered and had my humanity put in question – just as almost every woman on the planet has.”
― Hari Nef
“I couldn’t remember when I’d stopped willing to be trans and started wanting to be trans. If there were a difference, I’d forgotten it.”
― Hari Nef
“I search my name on Tumblr more than I Google myself, and I Google myself every day.”
― Hari Nef
“I’m a different girl almost every time I look in the mirror.”
― Hari Nef
“Being a woman is an option, being trans is an option, and they’re options that appeal to me. We need to listen to people – not labels, not semantics.”
― Hari Nef
“When I don’t wear makeup, it’s not because I’m lazy, but it’s me making this radical bid for the feminization of my body and being confident in that.”
― Hari Nef
“I don’t want to say that women who do use makeup or get breast implants or have fake nails are insecure. They’re entitled to that, and they should do that if that’s what they want to do. But for me, there are no answers. It’s just a matter of preference and choice and fetish.”
― Hari Nef
“If I ever called myself an activist, I regret it, and I was cornered into it by an industry who couldn’t justify me taking up space without saying that I had some kind of radical political agenda because they saw my participation as a radical political thing. Which it was not.”
― Hari Nef
“I’ve gone from the edgy girl to the girl you call for H&M and L’Oreal, which is something neither I nor the myriad agencies that rejected me when I tried to get signed could have predicted.”
― Hari Nef
“When it comes to modeling, I always feel like my body is a myth or a story that is told by other people, and no one knows what my body really looks like.”
― Hari Nef
“I see a Reiki healer from time to time. She sits on my bed, and I lie in her lap. She puts her hands on me for about 45 minutes, and she reads my energy. Whenever I’m having a hard time, I call her. I also go to weekly therapy, and that has been invaluable. Also, getting on medication for my ‘neural atypicalities,’ I guess we might call them.”
― Hari Nef
“Sometimes it feels like people can’t wrap their head around the notion that an ‘androgynous’ trans woman with shorter hair could be beautiful.”
― Hari Nef
“Fashion has always captivated me because, like I said, it has the potential to create narratives about what’s beautiful, aspirational, chic, masculine, feminine, glamorous, etc. Generally, this power is dispatched in useless ways.”
― Hari Nef
“I want to play Lady Macbeth. I have a big chip on my shoulder about Lady Macbeth. People usually play her as this cold, Greek witch, but there’s no evidence of that in the text! I think her intentions are pure.”
― Hari Nef
“When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I ‘do things in front of people.’ I don’t know why I do what I do. I’ve tried working behind the scenes. I felt left out!”
― Hari Nef
“Trans-dating is hardcore, and it’s really scary. And that’s coming from me, someone who couldn’t be dating in a more open-minded Manhattan pool of artsy boys and creative folk. Not saying it all sucks. I’m just saying it’s not easy.”
― Hari Nef
“I had family who exposed me to all sorts of different media involving actors – films, theatrical productions touring through Boston. My grandparents, particularly my mother’s parents, were huge fans of all the arts, and they took me to these shows and exhibits at a very young age, so I was just immersed in it.”
― Hari Nef
“I majored in drama and theater arts at Columbia and was always in acting studio, but that was a liberal arts degree, not a bachelor of arts degree, so I didn’t have a traditional conservatory training. There was a lot of reading and a lot of writing involved, and only about 30 percent of my classes were directly theater-related.”
― Hari Nef
“I admire actresses who are willing to jettison the easy route toward exposure and commercial success as an actor in favor or a slow burn, choosing projects carefully, and building an artistic practice over time that feels specific to who they are as artists.”
― Hari Nef
“I’m not so fascinated by these ingenue roles. I tend to gravitate towards women in plays or shows or films that are more chaotic or have something dire going on.”
― Hari Nef
“Whether you’re a woman, a transwoman, a person of color, I feel like Instagram is really important for the creation and framing of the self.”
― Hari Nef
“If you’re anything other than a white, cisgender, able-bodied dude, people are going to project narratives, imagery, and context onto you that you might not necessarily see for yourself.”
― Hari Nef
“I’m fun, ruthless, articulate, impatient, maybe a little cavalier. I’m a woman and a feminist. I’m transgender. I’m an actress, a reluctant writer, occasionally a potato-shaped model.”
― Hari Nef
“I identify with anyone who logged online in elementary school and never logged off.”
― Hari Nef
“I identify with Sad Girls.”
― Hari Nef
“I want to see definitions of what’s beautiful, compelling, palatable, marketable, sexy, and prestigious open up to a wider range of bodies, identities, and backgrounds.”
― Hari Nef
“I can say with confidence that my trans/transfeminine identity emerges as the most heavily problematized aspect of my lived experience. My transness is not a problem on its own but problematized by a society that reviles it, hates it, fails to understand it – or does not wish to.”
― Hari Nef
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