Experience Paper

How Gloria Changed My Life

There are so many experiences from this trip I would love to write about it is hard to pick just one. One experience that truly changed my life happened on the very first day of the festival. I was still star-struck from sitting so close to Martha Stewart in the morning that I did not think my day could get any better. I decided to go to the AOL women’s seminar in the afternoon not thinking that I would have the chance to talk to one of the most famous feminists in the history of the united States.

I took a Women’s Studies course this past semester honestly because I heard it was an easy A. I did not know, however, that I would truly enjoy the class and become interested in the thought of feminism. I always had the idea of feminists being crazy, bra burning lesbians but I found out that most feminists just want equality for men and women both. They view each sex as equals and strive for equal rights that have still not been attained in our society.  You can imagine how excited I was to find out Gloria Steinem and the CEO of Lifestyle AOL (a woman) would be hosting a seminar at Cannes Lions this year.

Sitting in the very front row and listening to these women speak about women’s roles in this industry inspired me to become successful in my own right. They had created a movie titled “Makers” which describes the women’s rights movement in the United States as told by women who were key players in the movement. During the seminar they showed clips from the movie and the director of the movie also came out for a question and answer session that was particularly fascinating.  I felt that I learned the most information of the festival during this one-hour session.

 After the session ended, I mustered up the courage to flag Gloria down as she was getting off stage. To my surprise, she walked right over to a friend and me and kneeled down to talk to us. I was in complete shock. Here I was sitting face-to-face with one of the worlds leading feminists. I started out by saying “It is an honor to be speaking to you right now” and I truly meant it. I feel that women in my generation are losing positive role models to look up to such as Gloria. We then talked about women in commercials and the portrayal of the housewife still seen all around the media. She explained to us that she had actually just started a campaign to change a commercial for laundry detergent showing a housewife doing the laundry and her response was simply “Why not the man doing the laundry?” She talked until she was pulled off stage and I could not have asked for a better way to kick off the week of the Cannes Lions Festival.

Not many people get the chance to say that they met their idol but I am now able to say that I did. For the first time,  I thought critically about the role of women in advertising and was inspired to become successful and independent. It is not every day that you will have a chance to talk to a woman who made the future for your country a better place and I am so thankful I was given the chance to do so.