It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. Today's talk is a must listen about shame and identity,

something we can probably all relate to. It's a personal account from the author and drag queen,

Kristol Rasmussen, who grew up gay, plus size, and feminine, without role models who looked like them.

Rasmussen's journey to self-acceptance offers lessons for the rest of us, no matter which

categories were slotted into.

These days, I find it easy to look in the mirror.

This used to be the case too,

because I learned to be a drag queen alone.

Back then in the early noughties,

there was no cultural mirror for someone like me.

There was no chance of switching on Netflix

and finding someone who looked like you,

and Lily Savage never quite made it

to the Woolworth's bargain bin, if she ever made

it to the dizzying heights of VHS at all. So there was me and a mirror, and that's the only place

I saw myself for a long time. It would be over a decade until this part of me became more than a

mere reflection. And in that time, what happened would change my relationship

with that mirror. In that decade, I came out as gay at a Catholic state comp in the working

class Northwest, and I survived. But as with anything that unsmoods the edges of normal society,

that coming out brought with it a daily dose of judgment and they're in shame from almost everyone

around me, a shame that was heard and felt and internalized and often replicated by me.

Commonly, when we think about shame,

...