A few months ago I came across a YouTube channel called Soft White Underbelly. This channel was created by a photographer called Mark Laita, and is self-described as portraying “interviews and portraits of the human condition.”
These interviews are mostly with those generally considered outcasts of society – drug dealers, homeless people, murderers, addicts, prostitutes and more. The videos mostly take place in his studio in LA where the interviewee sits in front of a plain background, facing the camera and tells their story, spurred on by Laita’s questions. The channel is very successful, with 5.33 million subscribers currently as I write this and a collective 1 billion views. I entirely understand the allure of his channel; it’s absolutely fascinating and I was immediately riveted by these interviewees and their life stories.
A large proportion of the people Laita interviews are homeless people from Skid Row in Los Angeles. Laita has spent so much time in that area of the city that he is known on those lawless streets. I had a very limited understanding of the homelessness issue in LA but the Soft White Underbelly provided a great deal of insight into that area, the people living there and their circumstances.
Laita, when interviewed by YouTuber Peter Santenello in his 2022 video “Inside Skid Row – With Soft White Underbelly’s Mark Laita ”, gives his impression of the type of people typically found on Skid Row. He explains how the majority there have severe mental health issues caused by trauma (mostly from childhood) that is treated through drug use. The nature of homelessness in LA seems particularly unique. Because of the extreme wealth disparity, you can often find the homeless dressed in designer clothing because of either donations from the rich or dumpster diving. Alluring factors like climate and the vast size of the homeless community mean it is common for homeless people across the country to migrate to LA and settle on those streets rather than the colder, harsher streets of Chicago or New York City. The city officials are entirely aware of the severity of the homelessness issue in LA and so there are missions to help house them, yet Laita explains that this does not solve the problem. There are deeper issues that are much harder to fix than simply putting a roof over people’s heads – this merely provides a surface-level solution to the literal homeless problem, without addressing the reasons why these people are homeless.
Laita’s perspective on why people lead this lifestyle is particularly interesting because of how contradictory he appears. There is a state of dejectedness when he says “I think it’s a waste of money, ultimately, because if you wanna make a difference is to think long term. Maybe help their kids or their kids’ kids” and “I don’t think that trying to fix all these poor broken people on the streets is going to amount to any good”. This is because “a lot of people are addicted to the streets, they love it down here”. The lack of responsibility is “attractive, it’s the freedom” to not need to play the role that everyone in civilised society must play: the role of man, woman, husband, wife, an employee, an employer, a homeowner, a hard worker, a contributor, a conformer. It could be argued whether there is cynicism or realism in Laita’s belief that ultimately there are those who will and won’t succeed in life, regardless of intervention, that expresses an inevitability to homelessness, to those living in poverty with addiction and mental health issues on Skid Row. Yet despite all this, Laita describes himself as “eternally hopeful”, and it is this hope that spurs him to spend all the money he makes from the Soft White Underbelly on helping the people he interviews, even when he knows it’s a “waste of money”. As such, we come on to arguably his most popular interviewee, Rebecca.
It is Rebecca, whom Laita has consistently interviewed since March 2020, who drew me into this channel. The titles of his videos were enough to pique my interest: “Homeless Transgender Woman Interview”. As a young, trans woman of colour with drug and mental health issues, Rebecca hits the jackpot in the identity politics hierarchy of oppression. Moreover, she encapsulates the homeless scene in LA, possessing a Hollywood glamour and all the allure of a star despite her atrocious living situation.
In Laita’s first interview with Rebecca, audiences are introduced to a trans woman wearing a big blonde long hair wig that’s very tangled and messy (she says she found it in the trash, like almost all that we see her to wear), alongside a bold red lip and bangle on her wrist. Information about her past is not entirely reliable as Rebecca’s stories change from video to video, but it generally can be discerned that she is from Egypt originally and was born in 1997. She has been living on the streets since she was 16, she grew up somewhat within the foster system and has highly complicated relationships with her parents. She mentions having lived in various cities from London, Paris, New York and now LA and her drug of choice is MDMA. When asked how she makes money to live, she says sometimes sex work, sometimes modelling gigs and sometimes panhandling.
The Rebecca we first meet is very nonchalant about everything. She insists on her youth as a justification for her lifestyle, declaring “I wanna have fun”, “I have two good years of fresh young blood in me” and “I’m young and wild and free” currently and she will later, once older, get a job and move to the suburbs and be boring. This attitude, when taken out of context, is not unfamiliar in society. Typically, we assign our youth as the time in which to go crazy, try everything, drink, party, go wild. But there is a time limit for how long this is socially acceptable. There is an expectation that once you reach a certain age, you must give that life up and settle into the humdrum of adult life. Rebecca is not crazy for having this mentality, yet one may argue she takes this life mantra to the extreme. It is clear that this life is not as great as she makes it out to be – she casually brushes off “[if] you get raped, you get raped” to which Laita asks “You’ve been raped before?”. Her response of “Why not? Yeah, sure. I’m not a victim, people get raped” is so indifferent to this pain (Rebecca repeatedly says how much she hates pain) that one can easily tell her drug taking and lifestyle is a numbing agent, a distraction from the pain she has from severely traumatic experiences.
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