A Quote by Whitney Wolfe Herd

I didn't really understand the concept of feminism until the media started to talk about it surrounding my name. — © Whitney Wolfe Herd
I didn't really understand the concept of feminism until the media started to talk about it surrounding my name.
The media is such a huge piece of how we understand feminism, particularly celebrity feminism, and I really do think that so much of how that stuff gets filtered through can be either finessed or really stymied by how media talks about it.
When I grew up, feminism wasn’t something that was really talked about. There’s a really negative stereotype about feminism in the media. That really plays badly for young women understanding the movement. Maybe people don’t want to identify themselves as feminists because of the label. But people need to understand what feminism means and educate themselves before they reject it.
This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.
As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism or if they do they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.
I think the media has got into this Enquirer mentality. Years ago, legitimate press didn't really concern itself with sordid details of people's personal lives. That wasn't the focus. But also a lot of celebrities were bullied into revealing this breakup or tragedy or divorce or problem. They started to talk about it and the press just started to talk about people's private lives. That just seems to be the norm.
The concept of why is already in the vernacular. It is now a noun. "That company doesn't know their why." "They need to learn their why." "That politician needs to understand his why." We talk about it as a noun. That never existed prior to 2009. That never existed prior to 2006 when I first started articulating it. This is the most amazing thing to me. It has now become a concept. It's part of the way we think about businesses and transactions and decisions.
For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept... Whenever people bring up feminism, I’m like, god. I’m just not really that interested.
People have accepted the media's idea of what feminism is, but that doesn't mean that it's right or true or real. Feminism is not monolithic. Within feminism, there is an array of opinions.
I think feminism has always been global. I think there's feminism everywhere throughout the world. I think, though, for Western feminism and for American feminism, it not so surprisingly continues to center Western feminism and American feminism. And I think the biggest hurdle American feminists have in terms of taking a more global approach is that too often when you hear American feminists talk about international feminism or women in other countries, it kind of goes along with this condescending point of view like we have to save the women of such-and-such country; we have to help them.
I started posting on my social media super-young. I didn't really understand what it was. When I was about 15, I started posting behind-the-scenes of shoots, little things of me holding up the color corrector, cute things, me in a bikini. It was just all innocent and fun, and I saw people really starting to respond to it.
I had a real come-to-Jesus a couple of years ago when I started to see the direct line between feminism and everything else - feminism and climate change, feminism and poverty, feminism and hunger - and it was almost like I was born again and started walking down the street and was like, "Oh, my God, there are women everywhere! They're just everywhere you look. There's women all over the place!"
I started on Vine when I first started. My parents were pretty confused about it. They definitely weren't like, 'Don't do it,' but they also were definitely parents like, 'you have to go to college.' So they didn't really understand what the whole concept was and what it could possibly turn into.
Don't label me before we get a chance to talk about it. Talk to me first and see what kind of person I am. That's what I like to tell the media: Come talk to me, let's sit down and talk about what's really going on.
I started freestyling with friends about eight or nine years ago. I started writing also around the same time, but didn't meet blockhead until about '94. I started making beats not until about '96.
As I started to think about how I can claim feminism while also acknowledging my humanity and my imperfections, 'bad feminism' simply seemed like the best answer.
People always talk about media ratings, but you really consume media in so many different places.
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