Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian-born women who is also a feminist. For many millenials, we learned about her, not from a published novel that our (usually white) literature professors assign us, but from a TED-Talk that was popularized by Beyonce where Adichie talks about the world-wide dominance of the patriarchal culture: the man is the head and women are to be submissive. Adichie believes women should not follow society's rules for how women should act or live. From young, we teach young girls to aspire to marriage, but we don't teach boys to do the same, as well as how we should dress, how to cover ourselves up, or act girly. Meanwhile, boys can dress however they want without the fear of being singled out or assaulted. These issues are only the start of asking to be treated equally as the next person, whether we identify ourselves as male, female, or queer.
Labeling usually upholds a gender binary according to the type of sex you are born as (male, female, or intersex--- intersex being someone who is born with both male and female parts. Adichie stresses however the importance of labeling yourself as a feminist and not having people turn it into something bad. At the young age of fourteen, her best friend had called her a feminist and she did not know what that meant, so she ignored it and made it her duty to go home and research the word. When she went home, she realized that her friend was not insulting her, but based on what it was that they were discussing at the time, the friend judged her views to be one of a feminist.
In her adult life, she began to fully embrace and use the term feminism as a positive thing, Not something to bash others with: “Of course much of this was tongue and cheek, but what it shows is how that word, feminist, is so heavy with baggage” ( Adichie, p.3), She describes a time when she first began giving talks as an open feminist and she would get ‘advice’ from other authors and speakers about how being feminist was a bad thing: you didn't like men, you didn't want to get married, you didn't like to shave,and all that extra stuff. The influence of these negative statements meant that she was losing herself. Though these same people told her how to act as a woman and that being feminist was not a part of African culture, she realized that there were people who knew nothing about what it means to be a feminist and that she would not conform to these labels.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie inspires me in a way to challenge myself beyond society's expectations. Not women, but everyone, no matter how you identify yourself, you should push past societies boundaries and become the best at whatever situation you take on. Feminism is about understanding that we are not limited to what colonialism, misogyny, and patriarchy tell us is acceptable.
Bibliography
1.Adichie, C. N. (2015). We should all be feminists. New York: Anchor Books.