Instagram is changing – and for the better. Recently there have been more active voices on the app rather than selfies and mindless posts. Scrolling through your feed you now see more people utilizing their platforms to educate their followers about racism, injustice and drastic world events that have previously not been talked about enough. Our generation is on the rise, and fighting for justice, equality and peace.
Amongst this increasingly politically active generation is 21-year old Dronme Davis, who frequently campaigns to her 31k+ followers about women’s rights, Black rights and body positivity. Each issue she speaks about is extremely close to her heart, thus being a powerful and impactful voice of change.
Dronme Davis began speaking up and advocating for change due to a strong desire to see a world where equality is ensured for all. This may come as a surprise to many due to her strong and confident persona, but she wasn’t always like this to begin with, and rarely voiced her opinion in the past. Throughout her life she has struggled with body insecurities, an eating disorder and racism. These struggles brought Dronme down, but ultimately made her stronger and her experiences compounded to make her the strong-willed activist she is today.
Dronme Davis grew up in the small town of South Lake Tahoe, California, where she was raised by her biological mother and stepfather, who were both white. She was the only Black student in her elementary school and was living in a town where people hung confederate flags in their front lawns. This hostile and cruel behavior gave Dronme’s parents all the reason to pack up their belongings and relocate to Sacramento.
In Sacramento, Dronme enrolled in a small school that had only 100 students, where she was once again the only Black student. Dronme put up a façade and became someone she wasn’t in order to fit in with her white peers in her new setting. “I became the cool, chill girl, who kept quiet, straightened her hair and wore Abercrombie & Fitch.”
On top of this all, Dronme began struggling with body dysmorphia from a very young age. During her grade six summer break, Dronme experienced a quick and drastic body change, as she went from an A-cup to a DD-cup in breast size. At just 12-years old, Dronme became extremely sexualized because of her large breast size, which warped her idea of what her body was really for. “Suddenly my body became this thing to live on this stage for men on the street to stare at, or for teachers to comment on.” She was not happy with the way her body looked and wanted to change her appearance. Shortly after, she developed anorexia and struggled with this eating disorder for a long period of her life. There was nothing blissful or rewarding about losing a drastic amount of weight for Dronme. “On the other side of weight loss, I thought I’d have friends and go to all these parties, but once I fit into a size two, I was more miserable and lonelier than I had ever been.”
At school, Dronme experienced many derogatory comments made towards her body and race, but she would simply let them slide because she knew the countering would cast her as a stereotype. “If I speak out about this, I’m just going to be the angry black girl.” She found racist slurs written around the school and was told that Treyvon Martin deserved to die because he was dressed like a ‘thug’. All these unfortunate events sparked something in her to tell her parents. They were outraged and suggested moving to another city once again, but Dronme denied her parents’ suggestion. “I have the great financial privilege to be able to move when I don’t want to live in a specific place anymore, but for some reason this time I felt like I wanted to stick it out.”
Dronme began to learn how to stand up for herself in her final year of high school. She needed to let go of what she was inaccurately becoming and instead fall into the woman she was destined to be. “I was exhausted and tired of who I was trying to falsely be, so right after the 2016 election I began talking about how I felt.” This meant, letting her body be what it is, speaking up for herself when racist comments were made and educating her fellow classmates about inequality and injustice for Black people. She began this process by wearing a ‘Black Lives Matter’ shirt to school, which resulted in some impactful conversations she was able to have with fellow classmates. “Pretty instantly I became way less afraid of myself and of the world because I was finally able to have a voice in it.”
Since then, Dronme has developed a strong backbone and began speaking up on her social media, where she is constantly educating her followers about the realities of this tragically unkind world. Dronme has dealt with sexual assault, an eating disorder and derogatory comments made towards her body and race. This has only served to further fuel her fire in speaking up loudly about how she will not stand for these issues any longer. “The more I started doing this, the more people started responding well to it. I’m not alone, and a lot of us are going through the same thing.”
Attending an all-white high school and being raised by two white parents made Dronme feel alone at times, but since actively speaking on her social media, she has been able to find a community that she deeply relates to.
But Dronme Davis isn’t just an activist on her social media, rather, she extends action beyond the digital realm every chance she gets. One experience Dronme specifically recalled occurred in the spring of 2018, after 22-year old Stephon Clark was shot and killed by two police officers in his grandmother’s backyard while talking on the phone. Dronme, along with many others, banded together to protest in Sacramento, the city where Stephon was killed. In the midst of the protests, Dronme and 80 others were arrested by police. She was escorted by five white male police officers with guns to the station, where she was handcuffed for five hours and had her fingerprints and photos taken. “In this moment they could do anything to me. I’ve never felt more small, vulnerable and terrified in my life.” Despite the traumatic event, she did not stop there and has become even more of an activist since.
She will continue to grow as an activist by protesting, posting, researching and studying on the daily. She is expanding her knowledge by studying African American and women and gender studies at UCLA in the upcoming fall quarter.
Keep up with Dronme Davis on her Instagram, where you will find her frequently posting positive reminders that we are all unique and different. Therefore, we must be accepting of all. What keeps Dronme motivated to speak up always is a quote by Audre Lorde that she lives by: “your silence will not protect you.”
