FEMINIST FRIDAY: Singer Kacy Hill’s Sexual Fluidity Makes Her Feel “Like A Woman”

Welcome to another edition of Feminist Friday – our weekly column where we do something a little different and share a handful of our favorite videos right now. This week we’re checking out menstrual hygiene brand Always’ latest #LikeAGirl video, as well as an important short documentary outlining the difficult reality of making safe, legal and regulated abortion hard to obtain in Texas.

First up, singer Kacy Hill is taking us on her journey to self-acceptance and female empowerment by embracing her sexual fluidity. We’re living at a time when conversations around gender are being expanded and challenged like never before, and it can be very freeing when artists and public figures speak openly about living life outside the restrictive sexual norms that have always dominated society.

If you haven’t heard of Kacy Hill, now’s a good time as any to get familiar. Her debut album, ‘Like A Woman’ was released on Kanye’s G.O.O.D Music label according to the Huffpost, and although the 23 year-old model-turned singer never intended her work to be focused around female sexuality, she felt great about addressing her sexual fluidity which she had avoided in the past due to growing up in conservative Arizona.

“More people are realizing you don’t really have to be married to, ‘I am straight and only attracted to people of the opposite gender!’. The last year was an interesting journey for me in discovering ‘Oh, I have feelings for women, and I have feelings for men.’ It’s OK to have all of those things,” she said.

Her message to listeners and fans, (hell, even critics), is that she’s not here to please you, but be authentic to who she is – a message that certainly resonates with us!

“I got to a point where I do not care any more what you feel. This is who I am, and I feel good about what I’m doing…I don’t need you listening if you’re uncomfortable with it.”

Our second video was recently featured on female-driven digital platform Blue Fever (which we highly recommend subscribing to and getting the best and latest female-created content directly to your inbox!), and initially aired on BBC 3 in the UK. Reporter India Rakusen traveled to Texas in the first half of 2016 to expose the barriers women faced when it came to accessing safe and regulated abortion.

The underlying focus was centered around the controversial HB2 omnibus bill, which contained 2 major aspects designed to essentially target abortion clinics and have them shut down. As many of us know, the Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt Supreme Court Case thankfully struck down these provisions mid-2016 which many reproductive healthcare advocates hailed as a major victory for women’s healthcare.

While the law is now seen as unconstitutional, women in Texas, like 23-year-old Eliza featured in the documentary below, still can’t access clinics due to many of them already having shut down since HB2 was first implemented. DIY abortions have risen, statistics estimated up to 200,000 women carrying them out in this state alone. There are also interviews with pro life protestors who don’t seem to recognize that making abortion illegal doesn’t actually help women or stop abortions at all.

Eliza chose to cross the border into Mexico, buy medication abortion pills and administer them herself. America, we HAVE to do better than this for women and look at the underlying socio-economic factors, rather than attacking safe, legal and regulated abortion access.

Our final video comes from a brand that has successfully managed to disrupt pop culture and flip a well-known sexist statement on its head, all in the name of female empowerment. When Always debuted its first #LikeAGirl video in 2014 (which was shown during the Super Bowl the following year), it became a turning point in the wider conversation around gender equality.

Since then, they have released a string of videos centered around the same message that doing anything “like a girl” should be seen as empowering, not weak. Their latest video, titled “Keep Going”, is all about embracing failure as fuel to build confidence, instead of seeing it as an excuse to stop doing something.

“At puberty, 50% of girls feel paralyzed by the fear of failure, with 80% of girls feeling that societal pressure to be perfect drives this fear of failure. This leads to girls avoiding trying new things because they’re too afraid to fail. But the truth is, failing is a good thing! It helps us learn, grow and ultimately build confidence,” said a description of the video on Youtube, citing stats based on a 2017 study among US girls aged 16-24.

It’s a perfect video to end on this week, and is pretty much an evergreen message we wholeheartedly embrace. No matter what life throws at you, no matter what people may say, KEEP GOING!