On March 8, 2016 the world celebrated International Women’s Day, a day dedicated to the empowerment, support, and love of women of everywhere. That very day, UN Women kicked off their HeForShe Arts week with the help of their many advocates including Forest Whitaker and Chirlane McCray—and one of my personal role models, Emma Watson. In her speech, Watson addressed not only what it means to be a feminist and a woman, but also what it means to be a feminist and a man, and how gender equality is perceived in the arts (which is the purpose of this new initiative). She says, “I think about the performing arts and how we perceive masculinity and have rigid definitions and ideas of a leading man and what a leading man can or can’t do or how he should or shouldn’t act…Challenging these perceptions make the roles that each of us get to play more complex, more real, more authentic, they make our jobs more interesting and truthful.”
As much as Watson’s kind heart and powerful words get me fired up for feminism, there were still some who failed to see things that way. Using the hashtags #HeForShe and #IWD2016, I was able to follow the conversation worldwide. While most of the posts I saw on Twitter and Instagram were in celebration of this day, there were many that were so quick to find the “negatives” in our celebration. Choosing not to pay mind to those, I was filled with joy and passion and love and all things wonderful for women whom I’ve never met.
Reading these tweets and seeing the Instagram posts reminded me what exactly feminism is all about. Yes, feminism means believing in the equal rights of men and women, but it’s also about supporting and encouraging other women and men to be exactly who they are and the women whose voices I heard these past few days did exactly that. I consider myself a passionate feminist, and often times that passion is mistaken for something darker, angrier, but at the end of the day I embrace that aspect of myself, no matter how it is perceived and clearly women around the world feel the same.
Feminism is a powerful wave that is slowly but surely changing the world. Whether you identify as one or not (but it’s 2016, you definitely should), there is something magical about a group of minds banding together to make a statement. In my world, every day is International Women’s Day and this celebration never stops.