Clarissa Burt, award-winning actress, Super Model, and leader for social change, joins Tonya Dawn Recla to explore about beauty and self-esteem. Her thirty years in the media industry cements her as an expert in her field whether in front of the camera or behind. She’s a seasoned professional having produced and directed award winning television and radio shows. Listen as she share her deep understanding about beauty and self-esteem.
Hello, everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert, and I have such a treat for you today. This lovely lady has quickly become one of our favorite people. She’s very near and dear to our hearts. She’s pretty impressive, folks. I’m not going to tell you a ton about her because it’ll come up as we talk about her life and the work that she does currently, but she definitely is, if not a household name, certainly a brand to be reckoned with, just in how she embodies the poise and the love and the energy in her experiences and the entwinement of just how to traverse the world in this larger than life way. She uses her superpowers in such a fantastic way, assisting girls and women and people, in general, to step into their space.
Today we’re going to be talking about beauty and self-esteem. We’re talking about that with the amazing, magnanimous Clarissa Burt. Welcome, Clarissa, to the show.
Hey, good morning. Well, thanks so much. You sure you were talking about me?
I’m positive that you are fantastic.
Oh, thank you, I’ll take that.
Absolutely. I was thinking about it and it was like, I’m sure you are a household name in a number of circles. Someone was asking us the other day, “Well, how do you know somebody’s famous?” I was like, “Gosh, what a great question.” It used to be cut and dry. It used to be a black and white kind of question, not anymore. There are so many subcultures and enclaves and all these other things that I think it’s neat to entwine things and to move people in different circles and to introduce them to different crowds, and also highlight just how high up the ladder people got in their own little sphere.
So, I’m excited to be able to talk about that with you-
Right.
… but first and foremost, we always ask, what are your superpowers?
The will to keep going when you don’t have much will.
Well, I was thinking about that this morning, and one of them for sure is tenacity, the will to keep going when you don’t have much will. Do you know what I mean? That whole piece where … especially in the last 10 years. It’s been a tough grind for a lot of us, for most us, you know? Since 2008, we all know what happened, and the trek back from there has been very difficult.
I was giving a speech. I was at Ken Courtright’s and Kerri Courtright’s Digital Footprint this weekend in Los Angeles, and I told people, it was really interesting to come from, and I illustrated, “Well, this is who I was, and then 2008 … happened.” By the way, I moved back from Italy, where I had lived for 30 years, and I worked in media. I’m, as you said, kind of a household name there. I came here, and I didn’t know my neighbors. My neighbors didn’t know me. I was just Clarissa again. It was great in one aspect, but it was … Now I’m in my mid-50s, you say, “What’s next? How do I get … How do I start up again?”
One by one, event by event, and I live in Phoenix, as you know, and so most of these events were out in L.A. or San Diego or Las Vegas. I can’t tell you the amount of time I spent pin money on the road, traveling and whatever to get, like we had said, pre-show, just one handshake at a time, one business card … exchange at a time, building up to what was going to be next for me.
When we were talking about self-esteem, that’s a really huge piece for me, because I came from a long line of women that I don’t feel had some of the highest esteem. I watched as women grew over these last 50 years from when I was a kid in elementary school, we weren’t allowed to even wear pants, and God forbid you had a pair of jeans. It just didn’t happen, so just watching the way women have evolved and grown over these last 50 years has been pretty amazing, and at the same time, and so timely too, with all the Weinstein stuff going on, and the Cosby and all of this stuff coming out, that women really still are light years behind of where they really should be.
A lot of that has to do with fear, and ergo, self-esteem. I really feel I’ve lived in a world of beauty, and modeling, and fashion, and glitz and glamor and paparazzi, and so I’ve watched so many beautiful women that you would take a look at, Tonya, and say, “Wow, she must have it all,” absolutely have some of the worst self-esteem ever, right? It was very interesting to me. It was this phenomenon that I really couldn’t quite understand, and then I realized, it’s just passed down from mother to daughter. It really is just passed down, and it’s passed down through society, and it’s passed down through media, and the expectations that … especially now, with Photoshop.
I mean, everybody’s perfect. Everybody … you can perfect anybody. There are apps now that you can put on your phone, take the picture, and it signifies you. It makes you 10, 20 … What do you want? 10 pounds less, 20 pounds less? There you go. And that’s the perception of perfection, which by the way, is totally unrealistic.
So, I created a book called the … a book and a workbook called The Self Esteem Regime. This is a look good, feel good, be good, and greater good concept, and it’s really not anything brand new under the sun, but it’s something that I really feel is sorely needed right now. Everybody wants to look good. We just do. I don’t care what you say, we want to feel good about ourselves externally. Internally, how many of us are really taking good care of our health? I mean, truly, really good care, everything we put into our body, and, by the way, everything we put on our body.
Because I can’t tell you, I’m a big advocate and fanatic for non-toxic cosmetics. I go to every beauty show, and I make sure that keep up on all that. I promise I’m going to let you ask me a question sooner or later, but the whole beauty aspect, non-toxicity, I want women to know what’s going on. I want them to know that in the top 10 most toxic products on the market, you’ll find Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. That’s a really important part for me.
The Be Good aspect is your relationship, it’s leadership, it’s inspiration, it’s motivation. It’s who are you listening to. It’s really being really good about everything that you bring in to … all that positive energy that you bring into your life, and how. I always, for example, I have beautiful music going on in the background all day long, beautiful, soft lounge music. I’ve got my diffusers, with essential oils going. I’ve got my incense when I could open the doors here in Phoenix. Incense. I just create a zen kind of atmosphere in which to work. Just important to me.
I think that’s so powerful. I really want to get into how. How did you come from a world that, as you outlined, is so consumed with appearances, almost to the detriment or to the extreme, if you will, in some cases, of a person’s well-being, what is it that you attribute to your perspective, and why is it different?
I think it’s, for the most part, I was in a business that I absolutely loved from a very young age. I was told that I was vaccinated with a phonograph needle. Go figure. So, I was Mary Poppins in the kindergarten play. They had asked me to be Dorothy in the third-grade play, so I was one of those kids that were always a little out there. Didn’t have much support from home, so I wasn’t allowed to be Dorothy because I had to be home doing chores and taking care of my mom’s kids, my brothers and sisters.
I wasn’t able to do what I really wanted to do for so many years, and that might have, I don’t know, maybe it put things in a different perspective, but by the time I was able to do what I really wanted to do, and I was on stage and live television, in Italy, and doing what I wanted to do, I was already of an older age. I was already 24 when I started to model, and 30 when I finally got on the TV. I think that the age might have had something to do with it, and plus, I’m not really one of your party girls.
I was never a casting couch kind of gal.
I’m not, I was never a casting couch kind of gal, and that was really, I think, I was, maybe in that, a little more grounded, and I realized that modeling is only going to last as long as the looks were going to last. I’m not going to say I wasn’t consumed in it for a while. I was. I mean, I was really caught up in the whole beautiful aspect of being a 20-something-year-old, but I think a lot of girls at that age are.
I attribute a lot of the grounding, if you will, to life’s hard knocks, to the ups and downs, to more than one clinical depression, because this is another thing that we don’t talk enough about is mental health. I’ve fallen victim to depression more times than I would like to admit, but I’ve started to come out about that too and talk about it because it’s really important because nobody talks about it, and I really feel as though, that depression was another very grounding. It really brought everything into … because before, I thought I was superwoman, and when I had my first depression at 26 years old, I was in that for about two years.
No drugs, by the way. I never took any anti-depressants but did it all through my own internal search. If you look at my library, Tonya, I don’t have a lot of other things to read that aren’t coming directly from the self-help section in the bookstores. Everything that I ever read was all about self-help, and how to, and where to, and how to get yourself into a better place and a better space.
I think that’s also why I’m so good, I’m so … well, I guess adamant is a good word, on the greater good piece of what I do, and what I call taking the charge for charity. That’s a whole ‘another piece that I have in my shop, and I help charities. I’ve helped … For a moment, it was what got me to have two private audiences with Pope John Paul. The Vatican called me in because of all the social work I was doing. They caught wind of it, and when the Pope calls, you … it was a fabulous moment. It was one of my crowning moments.
I’ve always had, even when I was a kid in school, I always took the underdog under my wing. I didn’t hang with the cool girls. I was never part of a clique, but I always felt really sorry for the person that was emarginated. I just would like to think that, albeit I’m not perfect, and far from it, I do feel as though I have a good heart. I think I’m … and not always. Even then, I’m not always a 10 there, but I really do try, you know? I really do.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Very cool. We’re going to take a quick break. Before we do, where can people go to find out more about you?
You can go to ClarissaBurt.com for sure, and definitely Clarissa Burt on every social. Facebook is Clarissa Burt Official.
Awesome. We’re talking with fashion phenom, Clarissa Burt, about beauty and self-esteem. Stick with us, and when we come back, we’re going to talk ways that you can enhance your own self-esteem and feel really confident from the inside out, so stay with us, and we’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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