There's no two ways about it, it's the only explanation for how I could have missed something like this - last year's TEDxEuston talk 'We should all be Feminists', by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie...what the fudge?!
Flashback to this time last month and the world seemed to gasp a collective OMFGWTF! in response to Beyonce's eponymous 5th album drop. In between all the chatter and hyperventilating (yep, hands up, I was feverishly trying to get a glimpse of the new material too), I came across 'Flawless' on which Queen Bey samples extracts from 'We should all be Feminists'.
My knowledge of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was limited. I knew that the Nigerian author had been nominated for and won a bunch of awards for her writing, but that was it. Then, I remembered co-blogger Karla tweeting me a link to an interview of Chimamanda's last year but, I hadn't read it. My bad, I should have!
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| A still from the Flawless video |
At this point consider my face poked out from under my rock, head cocked ready to listen, my interest was piqued. In We should all be Feminists Chimamanda talks about her experiences as a feminist and how equality between genders (good ol' feminism) is beneficial to us all. For me her speech is spot on. In it she references issues like the gender stereotypes that we impose on our children and how these unnecessary pressures can go on to hinder our development as adults and as a society as a whole. Discussing the preconceptions she's faced as an African woman outside of her home country and a woman at home in Nigeria, Chimamanda manages to be funny and engaging.
In the past Beyonce has received a lot of flack for not being a 'good' feminist role model. Everything from her appearance to the content of her work and the fact that she's not an intellectual have been dissected to add weight to this critique. Despite some previous apparent hesitance to identity as a feminist Beyonce's recent body of *work isn't leaving us guessing about her feelings towards the F word. Either way I think it's pretty awesome that she sampled We should all be feminists. Being featured on the fastest selling album on iTunes to date can only help bring the talk and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to a swathe of people who may not have seen it first time round. And if it leads to more people engaging in the gender equality debate, this can only be a good thing in my humble opinion.
*UPDATE - Last Thursday (9th Jan) the latest Shriver report by Maria Shriver and the Center of American Progress was published with contributions from the likes of Beyonce, Hilary Clinton and Jada Pinkett-Smith, all penning essays in support of gender equality. You can download the report in full and read the essays HERE for free until 15th Jan.
Kanika x
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