There is a special place in my heart for documentaries about women.
Nina Simone, Martha Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor.
There is something about biographical documentaries that makes them so very special to me. They capture the most intimate and vulnerable side of people we would otherwise hardly be able to see. The stories of these shinny figures who smile, act, and entertain us, remind me of Julia Robert’s famous line in Notting Hill: “The fame thing isn't really real, you know? And don't forget, I'm also just a girl. standing in front of a boy. asking him to love her.”
I think biographical documentaries bring us closer, they give us a chance to acknowledge our similarities, despite the million layers of artificial barriers we, ourselves, have created between one another. If we could just silence all the noise, listen carefully, and allow us to get to know one another on a deep level, we would see ourselves reflected in everyone else. We would realize we are all mirrors and portals at the same time. We are all connected to one another. That’s why when we fully love and care for ourselves, we wholeheartedly love and care for everyone else.
I have watched many biographical documentaries in the last months, all leaving me feeling changed, and healed in many ways, but the ones that resonated with me the most, are those telling the stories of women; 3 in particular: Eunice Waymon (Nina Simone), Martha Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor. From the outside they may seem very different, but in a profound way, I think they are very similar.
Eunice Waymon (Nina Simone)
“I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: No fear.”
Eunice changed her name to “Nina Simone” early in her music career to avoid upsetting her mother and family for playing "the devil's music" in an Atlantic City bar after being rejected at the Curtis Institute of Music, in Philadelphia. I won’t go on and write you her whole life story, because this documentary does it in a beautiful way, but if you can learn something about her today, in this few lines, may it be this: She did not created her new name for marketing or promotional reasons, nor she entered the artistic life for pleasure and fame for that matter. She did it because it was all she thought she was good at doing, and all she had done since she was a little girl. She played piano out of survival and then she started singing because that’s how she could land more jobs to support her family.
I’ve always thought the best way to know someone is by knowing their “why”. Why anyone does anything, for me, sets the foundation for everything else. Eunice later on, wrote and performed songs for her African-American community, for her bothers and sisters who were facing one of the most devastating moments in history, during the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X, and others, who she knew, and with whom she became close friends. Her career went down, as many of her albums were boycotted by the government due to her political views and strong opinions, but she didn’t care. She took a stand for what was right nonetheless.
"I choose to reflect the times and the situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty. And at this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don't think you can help but be involved.
Young people, black and white, know this, that's why they're so involved in politics. We will shape and mold this country; I will not be molded and shaped at all anymore. So l don't think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?"
Martha Stewart
“Change that garden if you don’t like it. Rip it out and start all over again.”
I knew nothing about Martha Stewart apart from those occasional videos that would pop-up on my feed of her and Snoop Dog cooking together. Now, after watching this, I had 3 realizations, mainly:
1- Martha, like many iconic women in history, was way ahead of her time.
2- Trying to control how others perceive you is a complete and utterly waste of time and energy. The soonest we set ourselves free of superficial appearances, and social expectations and standards, the happier, fullest, and more expansive our lives will be.
3- Don’t let anybody tell you what dreams you can or can’t accomplish, nor how they should or shouldn’t be accomplished. Create your own path, in your own terms and be unapologetic about it.
Elizabeth Taylor
“…people have a set image they want to believe. And if you try and explain, you lose yourself along the way."
Elizabeth Taylor may be the perfect example to embody the phenomena where women’s romantic life is constantly pushed by society as being the core center of interest and conversation, overlapping any other aspect of a woman’s life: her talents, gifts, values, dreams, and motivations; or as Joe March said it: “Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition, and they've got talent, as well as just beauty. I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I'm so sick of it.”
I think Elizabeth was sick of this her whole life too, having her love life hijacking her attempt to do what she wanted to: be taken seriously as a talented actress. Which she actually was.
I guess at the end of her life, those last years, she felt truly free. She devoted herself to a life of service, by founding the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to help allocate more resources to direct-care for people living with HIV, and parallelly, contributing to the eradication of the strong stigma that surrounded it for years.
“Now, I find life so exciting. There's so many things to do now, so many things to learn. And I'm doing that now. If I want to go someplace, I go. If there's something I want to study, I'll study it now. I'm not under obligation to anyone but myself. And to thine own self be true. That's all I have to do.”
In real life, we are all souls with layers of love, grief, and hope, and even if we may all have our own particular ways to navigate them, we still are in the end, navigating the same beautiful and chaotic human experience we were gifted with.