Rowan Blanchard, 14, has very quickly become a person stuck on my radar, and she should be stuck on yours as well. Besides being the star of "Girl Meets World," a show that lets me relive my childhood, she has become a young feminist that helps channel the voice of the younger generation into the mainstream.
I grew up watching Disney Channel shows, and I was lucky enough to have shows like "That's So Raven," "Lizzie McGuire," and more. There were tons of women for me to aspire to be like, but I cannot remember for the life of me, being inspired by the person playing them to fight for equality. I don't even refer to "GMW" as a guilty pleasure show, because there is nothing guilty or shameful in watching it. Not only was it a continuation of a show that helped shaped my childhood, it has some very poignant moments that show exactly what it can be like growing up as a woman today.
Blanchard's character Riley Matthews lives through moments all young women know too well, from the anxiety of being liked, to the importance of staying interested in STEM subjects. The show is not afraid to touch on the complicated nature of going through adolescence, and instead of leaving you with pointless drama, you see the characters' time and time again fight for what they value as important, all while having a guiding hand of their parents.
But Blanchard's effect is bigger than just her show. In the last month, Blanchard was named Feminist of the Year with Amandla Stenberg. At the age of 14, she has achieved recognition for a movement that not even all women are on board with yet, which makes sense if you pay any attention to the words Blanchard says. Not only has she spoken at the UN about these issues, but has written a highly insightful essay about the matter on her personal tumblr.
Now, I have always considered myself a feminist, but at 14 I had a very narrow view of what that meant, which is how most start out. Now, being almost complete with my undergraduate degree, my scope of feminism has become as broad as I currently think it can be (but I am always willing to discuss further on the topic). I certainly was not as well informed as Blanchard is at 14. The part of that that makes my heart a little heavy is that when I was 14, which was only eight years ago, I didn't have to think of feminism all that much. I was idealistic, and the world was mostly scared of terrorism. Yet now, we live in a world where innocent people are being murdered, rape is still considered something women need to fix by not getting raped, and even things that we have been fighting for so long on like the wage gap between genders is still not fixed.
There is a part of me that believes women like Blanchard and Stenberg have no choice but be an adamant voice for their generation. They have to speak out often and be blunt with what they say in order to get the point across. They are speaking out for the thousands that remain silent for a multitude of reasons.
What Blanchard really drives home in her essay is why it is important to remember that feminism needs to be an intersectional conversation. That we are not fighting for just middle-class white women. This is a fight for every woman: trans-women, black women, poor women; every single one of them. As she says so brilliantly in an interview with Huffington Post "to treat it all the same or say all women are treated equally is not fair. The way that I experience sexist comments is different than the way a black woman experiences sexist comments."
She even went on to discuss the importance of recognizing privilege, one of my favorite social topics to discuss. "I think it all comes down to recognizing your privilege and recognizing how to help others. So obviously a white man is more privileged than I am, but I am still more privileged than somebody else." Nailed it.
Being true to her generation, she uses social media as her platform to reach people. And, oh, how perfectly she uses it to discuss issues of mental health after receiving comments about how she needed to smile in her Instagram photos.
