Although the ‘celebrity’ concept has often jarred with me, there are three women who, although not yet household names, are for me all that a female role model should be. They inspired me to write, read and speak up for what I believe in.
Amy Poehler
“It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for.”
Having starred in hit American TV shows like Parks and Recreation and Saturday Night Live, comedian Amy Poehler is probably the most prominent name on my list. Although I am a cult fan of Parks and Recreation and Amy’s infallible character Leslie Knope, it was only after reading her autobiography Yes, Please is less of a coherent memoir and more a scrapbook brimming with unconventional life tips oddly relatable to women at all stages of their lives. As a comedian, she has had to survive in what is very much a man’s world and her struggles navigating it are indicative of her strength of character. She splits the book into three bold sections entitled “Say Whatever you Want”, “Do Whatever You Like”, and, my personal favourite, “Be Whoever You Are”. Sage advice is sprinkled haphazardly between childhood anecdotes and brief windows into the darker realities of Hollywood. . She takes no prisoners and assures her readers that life is no smooth incline but her attitude and pearls of wisdom, from self image to the power of the written word, are pragmatic and brilliantly sincere. My personal favourite: “nobody looks stupid when they’re having fun”. It’s well worth a read !
Sarah Kay
“If I should have a daughter…“Instead of “Mom”, she’s gonna call me “Point B.” Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me”
I first saw Sarah Kay’s Tedtalk, ‘If I should have a daughter’ on a chance Youtube binge. I procrastinate by watching Tedtalks because I’ve talked myself into believed that because it is at least slightly intellectual, it’s not quite as bad as falling into a Netflix abyss. After watching her poem once, I watched it a second and then a third time. She speaks of hypothetical hopes and dreams for her future daughter. She says, “I want her to know that the world is made out of sugar, it can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick out your tongue and taste it”. The language is both comforting and effortlessly clever. As a performance poet she travels around the world as part of ‘Project Voice’, which she created at the age of 16, visiting schools and inspiring young adults to write. I was lucky enough to be in one of her workshops when she came to my school to visit. I started by insisting that I was absolutely hopeless at writing poetry and assured her I was most certainly a lost cause. Unsurprisingly, I feel like she got that a lot and started by asking us to forget about writing and just make lists. Lists were her secret weapon, her way in. She asked us to think of an emotion then list how it sounds, smells, tastes, feels and looks like. Regret became ‘duvets and pillows’ and ‘the silence that follows the catching of the lock’. The abstract became recognisable and an emotion became tangible. I have not stopped writing since.
You can watch the video HERE.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“We teach girls to shrink themselves to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, You can have ambition but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful otherwise you will threaten the man”
Chimamanda Adichie is a Nigerian author most celebrated for her novels Purple Hibiscus and Americana. Although I enjoyed her books thoroughly, it was, once again via the medium of TedTalks that her words truly struck a cord within me. We Should All Be Feminists is at its heart a very personal account of a woman’s experience in Nigeria but also a wider exploration into the socialisation of gender and what it means to be a feminist given the endless trail of connotations that it has managed to leave in its wake. She emphasises the sad reality of living in a society that allows girls to “grow up to be women who have turned pretence into an art form” – a truth that I think few women can deny the world over. She redefines the feminism to be a “man or a woman” rather than who believes in equality of the sexes. Indeed, it’s not just me she has managed to inspire: Adichie’s words were sampled into Beyonce’s 2014 track Flawless. We Should All be Feminists is certain to make you think about how you define gender, feminism and by extension yourself.
You can watch the video HERE.
I don’t think it’s always easy to inspire people but the words of each of these women, whether it be brought through talks or on a page, touched me from afar and changed the way I approach situations and the dizzying myriad of people around me.