Finally! A Show About a Beauty Mogul and Congressional Candidate

which was really interesting. So I had a lot of confidence for someone that never graduated and we're just kind of doing whatever they wanted to do. And began my business that I own now called Gby. That started with my business partner, Kendra Stutter, and we wanted to create a cosmetic line. So we were like, well, I'll be the best at doing eyelash extensions, and you're going to do the products, and we're going to create like a

line around that. So I would go drop my son off at preschool, go to cosmetology school, and pick my son up, work at this restaurant till like one in the morning, and then drive to work. It was so crazy, and learned how to do latch extensions. I'd advertise on Craigslist just so weird because that's like makes no sense, like I'll do your lashes. It's really weird, but it worked. And my first client was Joan Rivers, which is crazy.

I was managed in the salon and it was when Joan and Melissa had their show and he came in to do the show and they were like, well, we need people to do services, and I was like, I'll do it, and I really I saw how to do it, but I hadn't done it on that many people. And the good thing about Joan is that she doesn't know what she's doing anyways, and like she didn't know what

it was, so anything would have been greatmember. I was shaking the whole time and I did it and then never heard anything from her again, but was getting referred clients. And then in January twenty fifteen, we found our first location, which was just a room in this building I'm in now I know we've taken over the building. Years later. Thank you for calling TVY. How can I help you.

I was born in nineteen eighty two, so I was raised in Huntingdon Beach, California, until I was fourteen years old, and that's when I got sent away to boarding school. My family's very conservative. My parents met in church. I actually have on my mother's side, twenty three cousins. They all live in like a four block radius. So my grandparents were very upper middle class and had properties, so all their children live in those homes. And then we all just kind of grew up together in one big clan.

I don't know if that's the right word to reuse. And my parents got divorced when I was actually three years old. They weren't married that long. My dad was your typical you know, I'll come pick you up and then never show up. But the days that he did show up were very exciting and impactful and fun because it was such a departure from what I was living

as a child. I actually I found out when my dad was gay when I was ten, and I remember he was in We were in a convertible on the four or five freeway listening to the B fifty twos, and I said, are you gay? Looking back, I should have said this is gay? This is already all gay, But I said are you gay? And he said would it matter? Would you still love me if I was? Would it change anything? And I said no, and then he said, yes, I'm gay. That's how I found out

my dad was gay. I ended up in boarding school for bad behavior. So I grew up in a very conservative, strict home, even though looking back it's very inappropriate, like craziness, very much like arrested development, where it's just like so absurd, You're like, this isn't even conservative, this is just absurd. I got removed from my private school and went to a public school. Some kid asked me, like, on the second day of school, do you do drugs? And I

was like, I was just so terrified. I said yes, And I remember this girl in the bathroom saying, well, this drug makes you skinny. And my grandma would always get on me for my weight, so I was like, oh, I'll take it. I don't have to hear about it anymore. Essentially, at thirteen, I started doing speed like math, like bad drugs, and then got kind of just like snapped. By fourteen, I was on house arrest. Fifteen I was sent to residential treatment at Vista del Mar up in Los Angeles.

By like fifteen, still I used. My mother got remarried and they lived in such a toxic environment that I used to just not to hear the screaming and not want to be around it. I would just call nine when one and say I'm going to kill myself, just

so they would take me out of the house. And it got to the pot where the police knew me and they would say, your parents are having to fight again, and I'd say I'm going to kill myself, and like mandatory, they have to like take you, so they just At one point, I lived at College Hospital in Coasta, Mesa for a pretty good time until Orange County Mental Health said, well, we can't send this girl back home, like she's not suicidal,

but something seriously going on. And then I got sent to Montana Bailing's Montana and went to residential treatment there, and then from there they kind of got sick of me because they didn't know what to classify me as. They're like, you're very logical, but then you're just defiant. And at that point I figured out how to like get drugs in a way of like downers. Like I knew that if I freaked out, I'd get thorsine and

I wouldn't have to think about anything. So I would kind of manipulate the system and I would do this thing where if I didn't want to go to school for the week, I would You'd there were kids called run risks where they would like run and like they'd have to take their shoes because they were going to run away. I would just walk, so I was the only person on walk risk and they were like, we can't control her. She's seventeen. We have to get her

out of here. It's wasting our time. So then they put me in a place in Aurora, Colorado until I was eighteen, and that was very different because I was in a treatment center with girls that were probably more violent, and all of them I had to learn how to survive in my own way because I didn't feel safe

at home. I did, I didn't feel safe anywhere. And then on my eighteenth birthday, I was woken up by my therapist and Aurora, Colorado and was told I'm taking you to the airport because your father, whom I don't speak with now, did anymore, but he was trying to have me become a ward of the state in Texas till I was twenty three. And she picked me up and drove me to the airport and I got on the plane and I showed up with my parents at my mom's house and my grandparents. They were not expecting me.

They were like, what are you doing here? And that's that was the end of that. It's terrible. And then when I was I turned nineteen and met a boy to skate park because that's what we did. And in November of two thousand and one, I found out I was pregnant with my son. I don't have a high school diploma. I've never been to junior college. So I was a person that really knew nothing about life. I'm a person that never would has a formal education. I

just kind of was. I feel like I was kind of thrown to the wolves growing up, and then even afterwards, like no one in my family was like, hey, you need to have these life skills, you need to have these things, and I just have to figure it out on my own. So when I found out I was pregnant, I look back at that time and it can't even believe it. I look back and I'm like, WHOA, that's crazy. Like I didn't know how to do that. I just figured it out. And now thinking about it, I'm like,

oh my god. If I think if I got pregnant nowadays, I probably would flip out and be like, oh my god, I'd be so scared. So I actually feel like I'm lucky in that way. I was, you know, and my son and are our best friends. We do everything together. Whatever my son needs, I'm going to figure it out, you know.

get disability. Like for the first like two years, I didn't really do anything would be a mom. And then when my son turned three, I started managing this juice bark at this restaurant called Mother's Market, where like all the cool kids worked, and it was there I think I was able to start implementing like my business acumen in a way where I was like, you know, managing

all these people. I didn't understand that I didn't. I felt like I had the most logic and I knew how to run this place and didn't understand how everyone else was kind of like not able to figure it out. But I think collectively growing up and seeing my grandpa run his business and then having to survive and residential treatment kind of made me a really good personality manager. So I was able to see things that other people were not able to see. Okay, let me move this

appointment for you already, we'll see it Thursday. It too, You're welcome. So these are all the supplies that I use for applying eyelash extensions, tweezers, removers, tint. I have over a thousand different lashes that range in length, thickness, and curl to give the client in each individual look. So I think that's one thing that we do differently. So that's why there's so many trays on this table and then on the drawers underneath. And yeah, so we

work on a lot of celebrities at GBY. The most cool and complicated was Lebron because he wanted a custom eighteen carre at gold gem of his logo, but he wanted it within like forty eight hours, so we had to figure out a way to find someone downtown to make it perfectly and they only were able to make one of one and that amount of time, which you think they'd be able to make a few. So we had one and her and I both went. The first time we did it was on the back lot of

Space Jam. So we both show up and we're like sitting in the car. It doesn't require two people, but we were both like, we're not missing this opportunity. We have to see this for it. And then the thing is too is that you don't know what his teeth are going to look like, and you don't know if it's going to fit, and then you have then it's so fragile. You have to bend it to the person's tooth.

So you know, if once we got into the trailer and saw its tooth, I'm like holding this, you know, miliscopic logo that fits on a tooth that has to now be bent to like to the curvature of his tooth. And it was like, if this falls in the trailer, it's gone, falls in his mouth, it's gone. If it

falls anywhere. It's so tiny. And at one point when I was doing it, he was leaning away from me and I just grabbed his face and I said, you need to quit leaning, and everyone was laughing because they were like, yeah, she's not afraid of you, and I'm thinking I'm not. I'm afraid of losing this more than I am, like I have forgotten who it was. Yeah, and then we did we did that, and then we did a crystal on him, and then he requested us

again two to for two other times. The reason we had to go back to Lebron's because his his diamond kept on popping off and we didn't know why. But then I saw him on the and I was in the airport and anything. He was on the screen, like on the TV screen in the airport, and I saw him with his mouth piece in and he was chewing on his mouthpiece, and I'm like, that's why the gym

keeps on like falling out. So when they email this again that I fell it, I'm like, tell him to quit chomping on his mouth guard and they laugh they were laughing. There was like I could see it from the television. He's chopping it out of his own mouth. So right now we are getting to the end of your service. I'm gonna lash it probably over three hundred I mean, whatever's on your own natural lashes I'm running for Congress in Oregon's first district. My platform is lowering

taxes on working families. I'm running as a Democrat. I do have to say I was always a registered independent, but to primary I had to claim a party. So growing up with a gay father, I found myself in political activist scenarios as a child. First, my father's his one boyfriend had HIV and my dad being gay would leave me with friends that were drag queens and just

people in the community. So when my dad would have to work on the weekends, I would be going with his friend Sean at the time, and we would be you know, canvassing and passing out flyers for AIDS Project Los Angeles and Cole Porter musicals that were gonna, you know, raise funds for the Gay and Lesbian Center. So I was always in this world. And I also never could

understand why I would be in this world. And everyone was so fun and creative and like, I'd have so much fun, and then I'd go back to Orange County and be at Calvary Chapel Coasta, Mesa and be told that the gay and secular people of the world are going to hell. And I was like whoa, how could that be? Because you guys seem really mean and these people seem really happy. So growing up just very confused.

I always say I got the best parts of my self esteem from drag queens because they looked every different way, like from physicality to race, and they wad all these costumes and they could go on stage and make people laugh and make people feel loved, and it was a

community where they just wanted to be happy. And at home in Orange County, I was suffering from really bad self esteem from like the way that I was told that I looked and I should look like this, and my grandmother just telling me it wasn't the epitome of like your blonde Orange County girl. So I also feel like the gay community has really made me what I am today in terms of like activism and also my businesses.

So growing up with activism and then living in a conservative world and then you know, going to treatment centers, and then coming out and being a single mom, and then going through the programs of you know, my family said we're not helping you. So being on welfare, so go into like, you know, we welfare classes in Santa Ana.

Because when you get benefits. In certain counties, you have to sit in on classes to prove that you're doing something through with your day, meeting women in those programs, being on Wick and just kind of growing up in

like these both polarizing environments. I do think it's time that I think we're seeing more of this, that someone of the working class represents the working class and can speak on the issues that are are affecting people daily and with real true discernment and can mention and experience versus like people like you know, Matt Gates or the incompaned I'm running against. No one really knows too much

about her, you know, working families party, very docile. She has one of the lowest ratings in terms of international relations in terms of the Middle East, so I my detest for her is triggered. And also she's only past seven pieces of legislation in over a decade. And she sits on committees that she has no business on, which is the Elderly Gay Community, which is my seat, and she sits on the Culture and Arts Committee, which is

definitely my seat. So she needs to get out of these seats because she's not doing anything for anybody except for taking lobby money. I believe two months after I announced my congressional bid, nu with me were leaked on to Reddit from when I was a dominatrix and I was looking at photos of me that didn't live on the internet for years. So we have some theories on

who linked them. But Playboy has now decided to support me in this and sending out a press release and helping me kind of turn the narrative into my favor. And that's who we're jumping on the call with. Hi, how are you. I'm well. Thank you so much for meeting with me again. I really appreciate it. We're so excited to have you, Like I can't even put it into Where's your story? Is incredible? So many of your

values really aligned with ours. I love that you're using your platform to bring attention.

the business. And I was like, well, I'll just you know, New York is open, I'll just be a dominate trix again. Like I honestly don't care. I've no qualms with sex work. At the dungeon I was working at in Midtown Manhattan, there's a website, and on the website, all the photos of me were blocked out, like my eyes right, But there was a two days where the photos of me were not blocked out. Then I said, you know, maybe I should block these out. I don't know, maybe my

face shouldn't be on here. And I was only on the website for two weeks because I'm not good at my job. And so I announced my candidacy three years later, and two and a half months into my congressional campaign. Somehow those photos that once lived online all this, all of a sudden were being DMed to my congressional account. And then I had to recall in my head, like did I send these out to? Anybody? Who would I

have send these out to? And started seeing Reddit threads in my because I have a lot of press from like the humanitarian work that I've done in my business, and if I scrolled down far enough there were red there were like full Reddit threads, and the reddits threads would say or and you can actually still look at them up even though they've been reported and deleted, They're still there. So I don't know what that even does.

The photos are gone, which is great, but the threads are like in like forums called like Joe Biden not my President? One was would you vote for Dominate Trix in Congress? So the thing the concern became of it once then like oh I don't care. People know it was, you know, is all the work that I've done ever in my life going to now be overshadowed by the headline that reads dominate Trix runs for Congress with a photo of me? In twenty nineteen, I ran for business

co chair in Silver Lake and got it. It's like you get all you rally all the businesses together and you see what they wants, the needs are, and then if there's an issue with like you know, a developer coming in and you kind of like put it on the docket for the neighborhood council to review. And then COVID happened, and then silver Lake Council was up for reelection and someone said, you know, you really should run

in your district. You can run as a stakeholder even though you don't technically live here, you have a business, You're a stakeholder. So I ran for region for Representative and one, and then I sat on the neighborhood council for about six months and then was asked if I wanted to co chair silver Lake and re Region four and I did. But during this time, in these meetings during COVID, people would, because I was the coach here, would ask me what we should be doing for COVID,

like prevention, And I'm thinking, how is nobody organized? How again? How am I the person that is the smartest person in the room. This is really concerning, and Courtney, should we do this? Should and the things? Again, logic was all out the door. We can't be open, but if you want to try something on, we'll let you. And I'm just like this is I feel crazy? So I found myself in another position where it was like, how is the city business? O just silver like asking me

what they should be doing. I'm not, you know, a CDC doctor. I don't know. I give you my advice, but then I'd give my advice and it wouldn't be taken. So I was like, okay. It made me feel absolutely insane.

I can make a change. I hope to carry that belief in the next throughout my campaign, and again I think a lot of my I don't know if ignorance is or whatever, but you know, it's like I'm also a businesswoman, right so it's like if you guys can't figure this out, who's running the show. So I was like, whoa. If this is going on in Congress and I get elected in I could be really great at this all right, by I have a good day, good night. Oh, I am now finishing my day. Finally, seven oh two pm.

And I've been craving this meatball all day. So I'll be ye eating and working and watching in these final hours of my day.