Alok Vaid-Menon (born July 1, 1991), also known mononymously as Alok (often stylized in all caps), is an American writer, performance artist, and media personality. Vaid-Menon is gender non-conforming and transfeminine, and uses singular they pronouns.
Vaid-Menon's work addresses violence against trans and gender non-conforming people and critiques what they consider constraining gender norms. They advocate for bodily diversity, gender neutrality, and self-determination. Vaid-Menon has performed in over 40 countries.
Vaid-Menon grew up in College Station, Texas. Their father is a Malayali who was born in Malaysia and worked as a professor. Their Punjabi mother Jyotsna Vaid worked as a health care executive; she grew up in Punjab and immigrated to New York in the late 1960s when Vaid-Menon's maternal grandfather Krishna Baldev Vaid got a college job in the United States. LGBTQ rights activist, lawyer, and writer Urvashi Vaid was Vaid-Menon's maternal aunt.
Growing up, Vaid-Menon was bullied for their race and gender expression. They said they felt unable to come out on their own terms because as a gender non-conforming person, they did not know they were different until they were punished for it and told who they were. They developed their art practice at a young age in response to this harassment. "Making art gave me the permission to live. I needed somewhere to put the pain." They began to use poetry and style to interrupt other peoplesâ assumptions, challenge shame, and declare themself on their own terms. Because they were not able to express themself visually for fear of safety, they began to share their art online and received supportive responses.
After leaving Texas, Vaid-Menon attended Stanford University where they graduated with a BA in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies and comparative studies in race and ethnicity, as well as a masters in sociology in 2013.
In 2019 Vaid-Menon returned to College Station to host a Pride celebration with the local LGBTQ community in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
From 2013 to 2017, they performed with former Stanford classmate Janani Balasubramanian as a slam poetry collective named DarkMatter, engaging in queer South Asian themes.
In 2017, Vaid-Menon released their first book of poetry, Femme in Public, about harassment against transfeminine people. They toured the show internationally, partnering with local trans artists and organizations.
In 2018, they participated in a roundtable on beauty and discrimination published in WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly alongside Patricia Berne, Jamal T. Lewis, and others, stating: "As a gender non-conforming, transfeminine person, I am often told that I am ugly."
In 2019, they completed an artist-in-residence at The Invisible Dog Art Center, performing "Strangers are Potential Friends" and hosting a "Valentine's Cry-In" to explore public grief and alternative forms of intimacy. They have facilitated "Feelings Workshops" internationally.
In 2020, they published Beyond the Gender Binary, writing: "The gender binary is cultural belief that there are only two distinct and opposite genders: man and woman. This belief is upheld by a system of power that exists to create conflict and division, not to celebrate creativity and diversity."
In a 2019 interview with Business of Fashion, Vaid-Menon advocated for the complete degendering of fashion and beauty industries.
Vaid-Menon has designed gender-neutral fashion collections, which are known for their color and celebration of skirts and dresses as gender-neutral. Fashion design became a "materialization of the life that [they were] living," a way to encapsulate what they were writing and thinking. Their designs were at first inspired by imagining what they would wear if they didn't have to fear violence. In their latest work, they are using fashion to challenge what kind of aesthetics are seen as natural and what are seen as artificial.
Vaid-Menon has walked for several fashion brands for New York Fashion Week including Opening Ceremony, Studio 189, and Chromat. They have modeled for several brands including Opening Ceremony, Harry's, and Polaroid Eyewear. They have appeared in fashion magazines and editorials including Vogue, Vogue Italia, Bust magazine, Wussy Magazine, and Paper magazine.
Vaid-Menon's work addresses transmisogyny, violence against trans and gender non-conforming people, and TGNC representation. Writing in Vice, Vaid-Menon said: "The majority of people still believe that trans is what we look like, and not who we are. We are reduced to the spectacle of our appearance." In The Caravan, they said: "There is a long history of trans-femme bodies being reduced to metaphor, to symbolâ¦and seen as stand-ins for ideas, fantasies, and nightmares." They have argued that gender non-conforming people, despite being the most visible in public, remain the most neglected by the mainstream LGBT movement.
Their performance style incorporates stream-of-consciousness, soundscapes, political comedy, and an emotional range. They have said their style, like their identity, is in constant flux and refuses easy categorization, and that performance is one of the only spaces where people can actually be real. They have described performance as "world-making" with "a commitment to vulnerability, play, interdependence, and magic." They have said the power of performance is that it is ephemeral and can never be done the same way twice, and that they use it to teach "theories and histories that have been submerged." In a 2018 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Vaid-Menon said: "The problem with a category is that you reduce something as celestial as a human being into a word. Words only approximate truth, and art is where we go when we actually want truth."
Vaid-Menon has spoken about what they call "the international crisis of loneliness," and has sought to create public spaces for processing pain and establishing connection. They have written about using technology as a conduit for intimacy.
Vaid-Menon's practice spans photography, writing, clothing design, and video. Scholar Ace Lehner analyzed Vaid-Menon's work in the journal Refract, arguing that "trans offers a compelling challenge to photographic discourse." Lehner noted that Vaid-Menon photographs trans people and has discussed the difficulty of representing gender through visual art.