Rosiah Bernier: Show Us How To Love Yourself

Entrepreneur, YouTuber, advocate and model Rosiah Bernier sat down with us to discuss pronouns, transitioning and more.

Introducing the wonderful Rosiah Bernier. At 20 years old, Rosiah has been creating positive, educational and uplifting YouTube content since he was 13 years old. With fitness channels and a clothing line, Beautiful People We Are, Bernier has been a trailblazer in so many different spaces.

On top of all this, Rosiah is a model of Container Love’s featured artists, Allie and Jesse, for our #VisibleLove series this year, in a gorgeous selection of photos. We are so proud and excited to put wonderful queer people like Rosiah to the front.

Visibility and representation are more important than ever. We asked Bernier what visibility and representation actually means today: “Visibility is the ability to be seen and understood by your environment, your peers, and most importantly yourself. Representation means accurate and intentional recognition in spaces that have a deliberate impact for the community.”

Rosiah has had various moments of being in the spotlight and proving us this very representation we need. His biggest moment of visibility was “starting my YouTube Channel and hitting over a million views on my transformation video. It showed that I truly have a voice and a space as a Haitian trans-man. People took interest in me and saw me to be an inspiration. This was exactly the hope I wanted to provide transgender folks,” he tells us.

“I remember being in the position at the age of 13 scavenging the web for transitioning individuals that resembled me so I could have an idea of what my future potentially held. I now am able to provide a visual and knowledgeable insight that I wish I had.” It’s a story that is endearing, relatable and needed for people in the trans community like myself.

Trans representation like Rosiah’s also ensures that people within cisgender (identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth), heterosexual identities learn more about important trans topics like pronouns and how to use them. Bernier elaborates: “Pronouns are the social gateway of acknowledging one’s chosen identity. For me, it gave me another sense of affirmation that I always sought out for. As I grew older and obtained more self awareness I realised that in another light they’re part of a social construct that we have the power to deconstruct or reconstruct if need be. We forget that we have the power to make anything we conceive to be malleable including language. At first, pronouns were everything to me but that varies per person. What’s important is respect.”

It’s a common misconception of cisgender people that all transgender people want to “transition” medically. Rosiah gave us more of an insight into what transitioning can actually mean. “Everyone’s idea of transition is different,” he tells us.

“There are many ways of transitioning; for me, it was socially, mentally, physically, and medically. For others, it can be one or more of those concepts. My gender affirming journey began when I was transparent with myself and learned that I desired a change in reference to myself. “He… him.. his…”  That was perfect and held power in projecting who I wanted to become in my future. The way how a person chooses to transition is completely up to their discretion and how they feel comfortable.”

Instead, people still regularly believe that trans people need to take hormones and get surgeries to be seen as valid – but of course this is hard for everyone to do, whether that be due to finances, transphobia in the medical industry or simply just not wanting deeply invasive procedures. 

Transitioning can also mean, as Rosiah says, socially and mentally transitioning which, although liberating, can also be hard. Bernier talked to us about his own personal experiences with family and acceptance: “The difficult reality for me is that the furthest family members were supportive, the closest ones were misunderstanding of my transition. It took years of forcing my authenticity to the world for everyone to digest my message: “I’m going to live my peace with or without you, but understand a life without you is a result of your own bigotry.” With time and internal soul searching some members came along.”

This is why safe spaces can be important for the queer community – a space where we can truly be ourselves and meet, learn and love each other. Rosiah says his meaning of a safe space is: “A safe space is where I feel the freedom of expression, receive respect and I am unconditionally loved.”

In addition, Rosiah comes with an important lesson, just like his video on YouTube, which is teaching others like him to learn to love themselves as their true, unique and trans selves. “People compare themselves to others in ways they wished that others would view them. I used to wish that I looked like Trey Songz. So I’d compare my beauty to his. Not understanding that I was never meant or born to look like him. So comparing myself to obtain a beauty that I could never achieve would trigger my depression. Not looking like him in reality didn’t make me ugly, it just highlighted how incomparable our beauties are.” He adds, “This holds true to transitioning as well. We’re all unique.”

We asked Rosiah what he loves about being queer and his response strikes true to us all: “Knowing that no matter what, you will always be true to yourself. You will always live for yourself.”

Check out his website and Instagram below for the latest updates as well as his YouTube where he keeps spreading the queer love!

Instagram