FEMINISM: Emma Watson unveils the perfect term for single self-partnered people during the holiday season.
By Clare O’Brien, Staff Writer
Twenty years ago, Emma Watson was cast to play Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter franchise, and now she is cast as one of the leading feminist speakers of the world. As her new movie, Little Women, is about to hit the screens, British Vogue interviewed her to celebrate her role as Meg. Within this interview, she was asked about how she feels about turning 30 in April. Watson revealed the anxiety she felt about the standards for women to have a home, family, and stable career at that age and claimed that after a long time she was able to call herself happy with being ‘self-partnered,’ throwing the word single out the window.
This term received mass amounts of attention, as some people found this term awkward, but still supported its sentiment and commended those who wished to use it. Many people became excited to use this term as they found it empowering and it did not have the shame that is often connected to the word ‘single.’ Once again, Watson has empowered women around the world which she has been doing for years with her speeches and organizations. Her most notable organizations are HeForShe, which fights for gender equality, and Our Shared Bookshelf, an online feminist bookclub.
Watson fights for gender equality so much so that she claims she “feels empty otherwise.” She works an activist for sustainability in fashion, reproductive rights, and intersectional feminism and utilizes her fame to spread her ideals in order to make a change. One of Watson’s most notable accomplishments is her UN speech in 2014 where she spoke about her HeForShe organization. This speech acted as her “coming out” as a feminist and through this speech people found comfort in the title of “feminist” as the word had been slightly tarnished due to the negative use of it.
The term ‘self-partnered’ empowers women not to conform to society’s standard of marriage for women and for them to live an independent life if that is what they want. Our world is so often filled with hate as more important issues, such as sexual harassment and gender equality, are being further brought into the spotlight. However, it is people like Watson that encourage the younger generation to fight for what is right and not what is easy.