Nine kick-ass girls and why we love them

MANILA, Philippines - I was talking about tattoos with a guy I met recently and expressed how I generally thought they were cool and wanted to get one. He insisted I don’t. Because you’ll regret it, he said. I laughed inside, thinking, Oh no, here it comes, another lecture from a guy. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m fully aware of the things I want for myself, more than he would think I did. And then later on, to confirm my suspicions, he admitted, it just didn’t look “sexy” to him.

And then he followed it up with, “Never mind. I still like you.”

Which I thought was ridiculous.

“You can’t say that,” I retorted. “You don’t even know me.”

My irritation of course stemmed from the fact that you cannot admit affection for me and then add a disclaimer, “but you can’t wear this anymore or fix your hair that way.” If you are going to say you like me, you are going to like me for who I am, and not a facet of “me” who will fulfill the fantasy of who you want me to be. There are many reasons to love a woman, and her sexuality should just be one of them.

For this issue of Young Star, we came up with a list of women we admire for many reasons. In fact, we love them for something that they don’t literally have… balls.

We selected women we think are awesome in their own ways, and who embody characteristics that many women wish they had. These are girls with a purpose, girls we hope younger girls should always aspire to be, and characteristics we feel that men should also find irresistibly attractive. 

We feel it was the stubbornness, courage, independence or talent that made these women truly sexy, as they redefined womanhood for a mostly patriarchal world. These are women who make us proud to be constantly underestimated, just so we can rub it in men’s faces that our main purpose on earth is not to be an accessory. —Kara Ortiga                                 

For this issue of Young Star, we came up with a list of women we admire for many reasons. In fact, we love them for something that they don’t literally have… balls.

Tavi gevinson

Tavi’s standout fashion sense has made her a blogging sensation by the age of 12. Fashion A-listers praised the teenager’s quirky style and writing, making her one of the youngest bloggers to sit alongside the likes of Anna Wintour in Fashion week.

Now at 16, Tavi is editor-in-chief of Rookie Magazine, an online magazine geared towards teenage girls that discusses mainly pop culture and feminist issues. Rookie Magazine includes guest contributors such as Judd Apatow, Miranda July, Lena Dunham, Paul Rudd and Jon Hamm.

Tavi shares that back in high school, when children would insult her for wearing something weird, the next day she would just wear something weirder.

This is why we love Tavi: because it really takes a hell of a lot to muster up the courage to just keep doing what you do.

We love Tavi for her courage to go against the pressure of what is normal in a very fire-breathing environment that is high school. And for being a girl who, once she realized the fame and following that she had, acknowledged this and geared her work to more relevant issues for the youth. 

Yasmin Ahmad

Yasmin Ahmad screams “love.” She shouts it as the moral of her internationally acclaimed award-winning films and advertisements. Known as Malaysia’s best storyteller, Yasmin Ahmad is a scriptwriter, filmmaker, and adwoman (former executive creative director of Leo Burnett Kuala Lumpur). Her stories are usually heartwarming, but highly sensitive in nature.

Yasmin’s inter-racial love teams didn’t sit well with the social conservatives of Malaysia. Some of her films were even censored in her own country, as she often portrayed relationships seen forbidden by hardline interpretations of Islam.

In Yasmin’s first film Sepet, traditional Malay beliefs are shaken as the protagonist who is of Malay race, falls in love with a Chinese.

In a series of advertisements for Petronas oil and gas company, Yasmin does heartwarming and adorable interviews with children who are not yet aware of racial issues (YouTube Tan Hong Ming In Love).

It’s ironic that Yasmin, whose main themes in her ads and films were of love, friendship and family, has become one of Malaysia’s most controversial filmmakers.

Yasmin challenged old ways of thinking for Malaysia, and she was not afraid of controversy. She believed in love. She believed in it so much that it became controversial, and even when it did, she carried on, paving the paths of open-mindedness for future generations of a very strict culture.

Miriam Defensor-Santiago

In some ways, Miriam Defensor-Santiago is a lot like Gossip Girl’s Blair Waldorf: you don’t have to agree with her politics to know that she is a certified badass.

Sure, people often find Miriam’s one-lined zingers on the shade of madness, but admit it, she does speak with a good measure of sense. She’s been working in the Philippine government for over two decades and doesn’t show signs of stopping. That is, unless you count her new stint as an International Criminal Court judge as a sign of slowing down.

If there’s anything to learn from Miriam, it is that what your enemies say about you does not matter; you just have to say something much more interesting about them.

Armi Millare

Hers is a voice imbued with passion, power, and control, one that glides across scales and registers, smooth as butter. Listening to Millare and the rest of Up Dharma Down is an exercise in stillness, an experience that almost begs for repose and quiet introspection — despite the usually sold-out venues and cheering plethora of fans.

The combination of singer-songwriter is a rare breed these days, not because there aren’t any, but because there’s too much singer and too little songwriter. Or rather, too much performance and too little substance.

What Millare manages to do, however, is deliver both. She writes songs that don’t feel contrived, that are raw and haunting, and most of all, poetic. In Filipino and in English. Listeners have no choice but to read between the lines, to peel back the layers of each metaphor and turn of phrase, which, at the end of the day, make for an infinitely more sophisticated listening experience.

The band has just released their third studio album to popular and critical acclaim, after four years of celebrating new beginnings, as well as new endings.

Indeed, celebrate, because Millare is here, and she’s here to stay.

Amy Poehler

Amy Poehler may be a real jokester, but there is nothing funny about her dedication to her craft. It really sucks that she doesn’t get as much credit as her BFF Tina Fey does for disproving the general belief that men are funnier than women. Amy can play a gum-chewing dishwater blonde Brooklynite on Saturday Night Live and be just as hilariously convincing as bright-eyed, local politician Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation. Admiring her comedic prowess would take all day, but it’s really just because she isn’t afraid to look goofy or downright ridiculous in order to deliver a great punch line. If you ask us, the world definitely needs more cool chicks like Amy.

Malala Yousafzai

At age 15, the only thing that should fill a girl’s diary is worries about who to take to prom. But Malala Yousafzai’s diary entries carried a more harrowing story.

Writing under a pseudonym for 10 months for BBC, Malala detailed her life in a blog of what it was like to be a young girl living in Swat Valley, Pakistan, during the Taliban rule. In 2008, the Taliban had started to ban girls from attending school, and Malala watched as her classmates dropped out one by one, forced away by fear. Malala spoke openly in her blog about girls’ rights to proper education, and depicted the effects that the ban had on her and some of her classmates who would still continue to attend school.

In one entry, she talks about nightmares she has had of a Taliban attack, and the paranoia she encounters while walking home from school, fearing for her life. When her identity was revealed, her rise to prominence made her an outspoken activist for women and education, and an instant target of the Taliban. Late last year, the 15-year-old Malala was shot in the head and neck.

Malala reminds us of many late, great heroes. At 15, you wish she were more preoccupied with issues of puberty instead of trying to figure out and survive the series of events surrounding her. But Malala proves that you are never too young to have a voice, and even to make a dent in the world.

Lisa Simpson

While there are loads of other fictional female characters to admire — Hermione Granger, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Powerpuff Girls — these girls had extraordinary powers. Lisa Simpson, on other hand, managed to be awesome by being her unapologetic, yellow self. Sure, she’s annoyingly brainy, but who can blame her? She’s nothing if not a go-getter: aside from being an accomplished saxophone player, she takes a stand on serious issues like environmental protection and she actually does something to prove her case. Even through her smart girl worries, she manages to be nice to her crazy family (and with a dad like Homer, we all know that can be a handful). Have we mentioned that she’s only eight years old?

Dewi Lestari

Consider this: the best-selling self-published novel in Indonesia’s history was written by a female pop singer, one who talked about homosexuality, prostitution and sex. This, in a predominantly Muslim country that still cleaves to patriarchal ways of thinking, and in a country which for three decades operated under the state ideology of female domestication that consigned women to the home.

Supernova: The Knight, the Princess, and the Falling Star is Lestari’s first novel, published over a decade ago but just recently made available to us in English. Her novel was the product of laborious typesetting, many trips to the printer, a drained bank account, and a break from singing. But what started out as a 2,000 copy print-run sold in university campuses and market stalls became a 100,000-strong bestseller by the end of the year.

While talking about the very real, very cloistered issues of the young, urban, Indonesian woman, Lestari also manages to weave in such concepts as the theory of co-evolution, bifurcation and Schroedinger’s cat into her tale. The ideas are highfalutin, but the manner in which it was written remains consciously popular, and most of all, considerate of her readers.

Lestari’s work may be considered Indonesia’s version of chick-lit, but one which breaks the bounds of stereotypical, Sex and the City-esque fiction.

Not bad for a pop singer who’s never before had a byline to her name.

Katrina Stuart Santiago

To describe this woman in a word? Brave. Inexplicably brave.

Author of the blog RadikalChick, Palanca winner (irrelevant, according to her), workshop convener, award-winning documentary writer, polemicist, proverbial thorn in the side of our literary elite — Santiago is everywhere, and yet nowhere where it seems to count. That is, within the academe and the folds of mainstream publishing.

A bright teaching career was derailed on the grounds of her being “too critical,” too critical meaning that she dared excoriate one of our own literary giants.

In 2011, Santiago drew the ire of many with her scathing review of the first Manila International Literary Festival — lambasting the slew of self-important young writers, the unprepared panel, and the system of patronage still very much at large in our literary scene.

The next year, Santiago followed up with an article published in the April issue of Rogue magazine, more or less sealing her fate for the rest of 2012. The good writing gigs stopped coming, even as the backlash started to descend.

But through it all, Santiago remains unflinching, standing by what she has written, providing the one dissenting voice in a sea of parochial-minded consumers and producers.

She’s everywhere but inside the hegemony of institutions, and we’d have her no place else.