If you haven’t seen this yet, your Friday is about to get better.
At the Women in Film gala the other night, Issa Rae was presented with the inaugural Emerging Entrepreneur award. During her acceptance speech, instead of being humble, she was …
I don’t want to say “not humble”, because that’s not the point. The point, as she explains off the top, is that women, when we do great things, when we succeed, we tend to downgrade our achievements, “dim our light”. Issa isn’t about that life. So, inspired by her favourite rappers, who have never dimmed their lights, she threw down some ego. And while, sure, this was in service of comedy, it doesn’t mean that she didn’t mean it.
Women are judged much more harshly for taking credit for their accomplishments. Women are expected to be gracious. Especially black women. Look at the sh-t they keep throwing at Serena Williams. Issa Rae isn’t here for that.
But how many of you, how many of us, would be comfortable doing this? Comfortable not leading with almost an apology for killing it, for being really good, for being really GREAT at our jobs? Never mind that, there were clearly people in the audience who weren’t comfortable watching her do this bit – that’s how conditioned we are about the “right” kind of way to own your wins.
Maybe the more we watch this, the more comfortable we’ll be? Carousel below. The video is split into 3 parts after the first photo. Don’t miss any section of it!
