The main idea of the ted talk that I chose was that you really can come from rock bottom and become something amazing. The speaker started her life living in a refugee camp and is now on the cover of British Vogue. Important aspects of the talk included a lot of inspiring success stories about how Halima Aden started feeling more comfortable in her hijab and once she gained self-confidence, that really turned her life around and got her involved with modeling. I definitely didn’t have a great understanding about minorities in modeling other than there still aren’t a lot of them, but this talk definitely increased my knowledge that the fashion industry is expanding to include minorities and in the speaker’s case, she was welcomed with open arms. I already had an understanding of the refugee situation in the Middle East, but hearing a story from someone who is actually there experiencing it first-hand always gives an understanding more depth which it definitely did in this case.
One huge strong point in this talk was the amount of credibility the speaker brought in about her career as a model and the hardship she went through to get to that place. I definitely think as a woman who doesn’t “cover up” or dress purposefully modest, it would be difficult for me to walk in a fashion show in a “Burkini”without my hair or my usual clothes, so I could completely understand how the reader struggled through that transition. One thing that I did find problematic was that the speaker didn’t go into a whole lot of detail about the barriers minorities face going into the modeling world because there definitely are a lot of barriers to break down. The speaker also does move a bit too much and maybe over does it with the hand gestures, but overall I thought it was a pretty good presentation.