For many people, the weeks since Donald Trump was elected president have been a time of mourning, organizing and figuring out how to make sense of it all.
The question on the minds of many people who write and/or care about beauty and fashion was how to keep pushing on in these fields when the challenges ahead of the country at large feel so much more important.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the beloved author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists and the new No. 7 brand ambassador (you might also remember her speech on feminism sampled in Beyonce’s “***Flawless”) just gave us all license to march forward, liquid eyeliners blazing, in an interview with Racked.
Asked her thoughts on the struggle publications might be having to cover fashion and beauty “meaningfully” in troubled times, Adichie argued that “sometimes just the fact that one continues to do what one is doing is also a way of speaking out for something.”
She also made an excellent point about the worry these kinds of stories are vapid or “frivolous” in Trump’s America.
“[F]or men the things that are considered traditionally masculine are not things that our culture dismisses as frivolous... I don’t think men who write about sports — and I’m using an example that our culture considers traditionally masculine — would necessarily be worried about appearing frivolous. Things that are traditionally masculine sort of have this patina of seriousness even when they’re not, in a way that makeup and fashion don’t. And I find myself questioning that more and more,” she said.
Above all, she summed the issue up best by reminding us it’s possible to be worried about the state of our nation while still maintaining our interests.
“I think America is at a strange place now,” she said. “But I think women still need to know what damn moisturizer works in the winter!”
Amen to that. Read more from the inspiring interview on Racked.
