Inspiring Women Past and Present
By Amanda CarungiHappy International Women’s Day, Dolls! We wanted to share five, badass women who span the globe and inspire us to challenge the status quo, dismantle the patriarchy, and be our authentic selves.
Khutulun
We’re going way, way back to 13th century Mongolia for this one. Khulutun was a triple threat - princess, warrior, and wrestler. The great-great grandaughter of Ghengis Kahn, her father’s kingdom encompassed present day Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and part of northern China. She often rode into battle with her father and he sought her military advice and political support over her fourteen older brothers.
When it came time for her to marry, she insisted her future husband beat her in a wrestling match, but anyone who lost owed her one hundred horses. Soon after, Khutulun had no husband and 10,000 horses.
And while she eventually did marry, historians know he didn’t beat her in wrestling. Our girl Khutulun was undefeated her whole life. She eventually became a general in the Mongol army until she died, probably in battle around age forty-five.
Jacinda Ardern
If you’re reading this in the United States - it’s already tomorrow in New Zealand. Which means our next inspirational woman is already leading her country into the future. Jacinda Ardern is the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand and was the world’s youngest female head of government when she was elected in 2017 at the age of 37. She also became New Zealand’s first prime minister to give birth when she welcomed a daughter during her first year in office.
Ardern led the country through the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019. She enacted stricter gun control laws within a month of the tragedy and implemented a successful gun-buy-back scheme that summer.
And if women successfully governing a country is your thing then get ready - Ardern also directed New Zealand’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Under her leadership, she immediately put the country on lockdown and regularly communicated with citizens through interviews, social media, and press conferences to keep them informed. As of today, New Zealand has had 2,600 cases of COVID and 26 deaths. In December 2020, up to twenty thousand people attended the nation’s largest music festival, Rhythm and Vines where ticket holders were not required to social distance or wear masks.
Aredern won re-election in 2020 and continues to be a world leader who proves that empathy, activism, and belief in science are qualities we should all look for within ourselves and our governments at large.
Michaela Coel
It’s okay to walk away from things that don’t serve YOU. No one fits this mold more than Michaela Coel. Coel is the creative mind behind HBO Max’s critically acclaimed series - I May Destroy You - a poignant, fictionalized retelling of her own sexual assault.
She first spoke about the assault while serving as the keynote speaker for the Edinburgh Television Festival. A spot usually reserved for Murdochs and other grossly wealthy media moguls - Coel was the first Black woman speaker in the festival’s 42 year history. And she read them to filth. She shared her experiences with microaggressions and racism on the set of her first show - Chewing Gum - another show she created, wrote, and starred in. It was this speech that lay the groundwork for her need for collaborators to be more transparent.
That need for transparency allowed her to walk away from Netflix and their $1million offer for I May Destroy You after she discovered she would not retain creative control of her own intellectual property. Coel furthered that transparency by firing her US agents when they pushed her to take the Netflix deal because they would receive more money in a backend deal).
Coel ended up working with BBC and HBO for I May Destroy You and as a result, was voted in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential people of 2020 and named a breakout star for film. And even though her work was overlooked by the ever-so-white Golden Globes, Coel is a force to be reckoned with and when it comes to her impact on film and television - she’s just getting started.
Angela Morley
Try to find someone who’s never heard “The Imperial March” from Star Wars (aka Darth Vader’s theme song) and you’ll end up looking under rocks. John Williams is the creative mind behind the world’s most beloved film scores. Jaws, Star Wars, Schindler’s List - these memorable orchestrations are tattooed on the hearts of millions of moviegoers all over the globe. It is no easy feat, scoring a feature length film - it takes a village of collaborators. And one of Williams’ most trusted and most utilized collaborators was transgender conductor and composer, Angela Morley.
Born in the United Kingdom, Morley was a mostly self taught sight reader and musician before leaving school to tour in a band at fifteen. She became the musical director of The Goon Show for eight years and ended up writing songs for the UK’s Eurovision Song Contest in the 1960s. She withdrew from public life from 1970 - 1972 to privately undergo gender transition. But she still found time in those two years to study clarinet chamber music at the Watford School of Music.
Morley continued her work in film, orchestrating, arranging, and aiding in the composition of the score for The Little Prince in 1974. Her work garnered her an Academy Award nomination and she flew to Los Angeles to attend the ceremony. She was the first openly trans person to be nominated. She followed up this nomination with another for The Slipper and the Rose in 1976.
It was through a mutual friend in the 1970s that Morley was introduced to John Williams and the two worked together for twenty years. She arranged for the Boston Pops Orchestra under Williams’ direction and worked on films such as Star Wars, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook, Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Los in New York, and Schindler’s List. Morley was nominated six times for Emmy Awards for composing and won three for musical direction - two for Julie Andrews television specials.
Morley later relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona with her wife after a prosperous career in the film and television industry. She passed away at the age of 84 on January 14, 2009, but her contribution to the world of film and television lives on.
Amanda Gorman
If you watched Biden’s inauguration, then you know Amanda Gorman stole the show. The country’s first National Youth Poet Laureate, Gorman read her poem ‘The Hill We Climb’ on the world’s stage to international acclaim.
A Los Angeles native, Gorman was raised by a single mom along with her two siblings. She has an auditory processing disorder, is hypersensitive to sound, and also had a speech impediment during childhood. She became a member of the non-profit organization WriteGirl - a Los Angeles based group that promotes creativity and self expression to empower girls.
In 2014, Gorman was named the inaugural Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate at sixteen and published a work of poems The One for Whom Food is Not Enough the next year. Her activism and art focus on issues of feminism, race, oppression, marginalization, and the African diaspora. She was the first youth poet to open the literary season for the Library of Congress in 2017, the same year she was named National Youth Poet Laureate.
Gorman went on to receive a scholarship to attend Harvard where she was chosen as one of Glamour magazine’s “College Women of the Year.” On being selected she said: “Seeing the ways that I as a young black woman can inspire people is something I want to continue in politics. I don’t want to just speak works; I want to turn them into realities and actions.”
Four years ago, Gorman said she intends to run for President in 2036 and at President Biden’s inauguration, Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for her aspirations. We personally cannot wait.
Gorman is also front and center for the start of our monthly series called Herstory: Books & Beyond. These monthly digital meetups will be our community space to talk about a range of selected stories/poems/creative writing all vetted through our team. We are starting with Gorman’s inauguration poem, “The Hill We Climb.”