We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigeria’s speak, a hard man.īut by far the worst thing we do to males, by making them feel that they have to be hard, is that we leave them with very fragile egos. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability. Masculinity becomes this hard, small cage and we put boys inside the cage. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. We are doing grave disservice to boys in how we raise them. Here’s a longer quote from the talk ( transcribed by Sugandha Banga): “Flawless” is a slice of a broader feminism that Adichie is trying to articulate via her TEDx talk, which focuses heavily on how we raise boys as well as girls. sex and marriage.īecause here’s the difference between a 4-minute song and a 30-minute talk: in one version, you just don’t have the time or ability to go deep into theory. But it also weirdly limits feminism within the same old patriarchal framework of what’s pertinent to a woman’s life, i.e. Because one thing that’s been bugging me about “Flawless” is the fact that it cuts a quote about sexuality and marriage with Adichie defining the scope of feminism. Actually, watch it even if you don’t really have the time. It’s a beautiful talk, so do watch it if you have the time. This is from Adichie’s 2013 TEDx talk, “We should all be feminists”: We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.įeminist: a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. We raise girls to see each other as competitors, not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think could be a good thing, but for the attention of men. Now marriage can be a system of joy, and love, and mutual support, but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage when we don’t teach boys the same? I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is most important. Otherwise, you would threaten the man.”īecause I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. We say to girls: “You can have ambition, but not too much. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. The most-quoted passage comes from around the 1:30 mark, spoken by Adichie: My first impression of this song was via several all-caps posts on Tumblr, declaring “Flawless” to be the new feminist anthem that we’ve all been waiting for. Especially track #11, “***Flawless”, which features Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I thought: I am a writer and I have been for some time and I refuse to perform in this charade that is now apparently expected of me: ‘Thanks to Beyoncé, my life will never be the same again.’ That’s why it didn’t speak about it much.Can we talk about Beyonce’s new album? I think we need to talk about Beyonce’s new album. “I thought: Are books really that unimportant to you? Another thing I hated was that I read everywhere: Now people finally know her, thanks to Beyoncé, or: She must be very grateful. Literally every major newspaper in the world wanted to speak with me about Beyoncé. “I was shocked about how many requests for an interview I received when that song was released. The Nigerian novelist felt that Beyoncé’s “type of feminism is not mine.” “I think she’s lovely and I am convinced that she has nothing but the best intentions.”Įven though Adichie was OK with Queen Bey using her statements on feminism in her song to promote awareness, the fame that came along with it was a different story. “Of course Beyoncé asked permission to use my texts, and I did give her permission,” she said. In an interview with Dutch publication de Volkskrant, Adichie shot down any speculation that Beyonce had used her TED Talk without permission.
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