Heroines of Our Time: From Zaha Hadid to Tavi Gevinson
We regularly talk about women from different professional fields, that inspire us with talent, lifestyle and dedication. These are our bold and energetic contemporaries, and heroines of the past. In this material we have collected 17 fascinating stories about the life journey of famous women: singers, architects, lawyers, actresses, politicians, journalists and more.
Amal Alamuddin: Rebranding the idea of "wife"
Amal is exactly the same star in her circle as Clooney is in her: she takes on blockbusters and political dramas, only in the field of international advocacy, and sparkles on the covers, only next to celebrity under investigation. Looking around her biography, where Assanji and Tymoshenko were completely, one inevitably regrets that in order to complete the image of the modern super-successful woman, a trophy husband from Hollywood is needed.
to read
Frida Kahlo: History of overcoming, full of contradictions
It is customary to tell about Frida’s life through the story of overcoming physical pain, however, as is usually the case, this is only one aspect of a complex and multifaceted path. Throughout her life, the artist wrote, starting from her own internal contradictions, complex relationships with independence and love, telling about who she knew best of all - herself.
TO READ
Anita Sargsyan: Crusade against sexism
Sargsyan has become known for a series of videos about how women are portrayed in video games. Despite the huge number of angry messages, attacks from gaming journalists and gamers, she continues her work and is not going to give up ideas that she firmly believes. We talk about a woman who has become a symbol of struggle with misogyny in the gaming environment.
Kim Gordon: Woman in a group and without her
30 years of joint music and 27 years of marriage later, Kim Gordon and Turston Moore went their own ways. "Miss me. Don't dismiss me," Sonic Youth ended their last gig in history. Shortly before the tour in South America, they started talking about how they were leaving, but they promised to play everything planned. Gordon never felt as lonely as at that moment, but perhaps it was then that she finally found true freedom — not just in music, but in life.
to read
Björk: Revival Man
Since 1993, only the most faithful could stay with Bjork throughout all her mutations. Through all her records and experiments, the listeners were led by a voice leading into a half-trance state from which it is so difficult to get out if you once gave in to it. Many who were interested in Bjork in principle were paralyzed or annoyed by the same timbre - in general, they were touched not by the strings that are required for love.
to read
Greta Gerwig: Miss America Independent Cinema
Greta Gerwig says that she is not very similar to the heroines she plays, but she understands and knows the people from whom they are written off. Those who are wandering around the big cities in search of lost time and opportunities, in some days shy away from their own shadows and pack their things for escape, while in others they become the center of the party and the role model.
Tavi Gevinson: The Future of Journalism
Tavi does not hide his love for old music, "grandmother's" outfits, and "Sex in a big city," and she does not associate anything with her so-called current agenda, except for situational addictions and sensations. At the same time, her taste and the success of her endeavors are somehow on the verge of “classy” and “strange”. Once James Franco at a meeting asked her a question: is she a freak or a geek. Of course, Tavi chose both.
to read
Zaha Hadid: Architecture Superstar
The architecture of Hadid is “water”, it lives in a world without gravity, and its conditional spaces without floor and ceiling flow into each other. There is something oriental in this, as if Hadid recalls his native culture and draws projects as Arabic calligraphy. Is it original? Highly. The problem is that, becoming a mass, this architecture becomes predictable in its unusualness.
Angelina Jolie: Victim of Hollywood hypocrisy
You can be a UN goodwill ambassador, visit all of Africa, adopt a billion children, give millions to charity, remove your breasts to reduce the risk of breast cancer, but you will still be treated like a mediocre person and actress without great roles, your Oscar and three Golden Globes you can shove in your ass.
TO READ
Rihanna: The path from good to steep
In 2016, it is even strange to realize that this Rihanna is the same girl who made the whole planet sing a song about an umbrella. In fact, of course, in ten years Rihanna has changed. Her stormy life, not just becoming the property of unscrupulous tabloids, also left its mark. The singer more than once mercilessly changed herself, continuing to earn titles and becoming one of the most successful musicians in history. However, behind all this hype, it seems, Rihanna managed the most important thing - not to forget that in this world is really important.
Scarlett Johansson: From sex symbol to superheroine
She began acting at ten, by the age of thirty, her filmography has about fifty films, but, oddly enough, with full confidence that the time has come Scarlett Johansson, it has been possible only recently. The time has come to rethink this familiar voice, this magnificent femininity and these camel eyelashes - because now they are not what they seem.
Susan Sontag: More Than a Writer, a Thinker, and a Symbol
Sontag lived a long and hectic life: one marriage, one child, four art books, hundreds of articles on art, film and society, three deadly diseases, nine long novels. Not speaking openly about her sexuality and romantic relationships, she accepted her bisexuality without hurling and learned to take on her own body all her life.
Hillary Clinton: Mrs. Candidate
The personality of Hillary Clinton is always discussed much more hotly than her traditional Democratic political views: the path of Clinton to the presidential chair is of interest, first of all, not ideologically, but humanly. The press and voters constantly ask the same questions: is she a feminist or not? How much prudent cynicism in her ideology, and how much sincere faith? Why is she worthy to become the first woman - the US president and how did she manage to come to this?
Lana Wachowski: The Path to Yourself
A transgender female director in Hollywood made a public coming out at 43, seemingly without the slightest effort: she just changed her pants to her skirt, dyed her hair, and began to smile. Exactly the same in the beginning of the 2000s, plucking up courage and talking to her parents, Lana came to the set of "The Matrix" in a dress - as if nothing had happened, she didn’t show with a single facial muscle how many years of fear, deception and bitterness .
Amy Winehouse: Personal tragedy, frozen in music
The stars of her level usually looked like goddesses, descending from Olympus to get a sip of ambrosia to the audience. Amy can rather be compared with Edith Piaf, who ascended to this Olympus during performances, and in the life of an ordinary, sometimes self-doubtful woman, “not magnificent enough” for a diva and easily trapped in her own passions.
Nina Simon: Fighting jazz icons with yourself and the world
The rise of Nina Simon was not without stimulants, which she took to be in shape and constantly give concerts, and without a slap in the face from her husband, with which he "brought her to her senses" before the performance or stopped up during long quarrels. Nina Simon’s daughter recalls how papa could give mum the slap in the middle of a conversation in order to insist on her — Nina Simon used the same technique ten years later in disputes with her grown-up daughter when she began to educate her on her own.
Taylor Swift: Pop Star for All
For Swift, the reputation was fixed not so much of a girl from a high society, as among an alien one. Her songs, filled with sentimentality, youthful bitterness and everything that can be imagined after the words "you" and "we" in a situation where you are alone with your "I", have never been a thing in themselves, but on the contrary - they invited and contained accents solely on universal experiences.
Photo: cover photo via Clinique