‘Speak Like a Girl’ empowers audience with slam poetry
April 19, 2016
A feminist poet duo performed on Saturday at the Fred Meyer Lounge. In one corner of the lounge was a selfie station with plastic tiaras and bows to match the signs that say “Just because you hold the door doesn’t mean I’ll hold your dick.”
To open the show, Lacey Dykgraaf, ’16, presented a poem about her rage over Coby Brian, and Hannah Imrem, ’18, performed two poems about not wanting to be “Dainty” and the relationship between “Amplexus and Insecurity.”
Olivia Gatwood and Megan Falley were the two stars of the show under one name, “Speak Like a Girl.” They began with an unsettling business fact: if everyone stop buying cosmetics, the economy will collapse overnight.
The poem was an in-your-face, bra-burning, “bath bombing” war cry to end the wealth of men, ignore beauty tips and to believe in self-confidence.
Gatwood presented a poem for all the waitresses who went home after a long shift to raise their kids and looked good while doing it.
The women then went into dialogue about how rape culture has snuck into pop culture long before we were born. Pépé le Pú was someone who believed persistence would end in romance, “Baby it’s Cold Outside” was a reason for a woman to stay in a man’s home when she wanted to go home, and Mario was expecting Peach to marry him when he rescued her.
They performed a poem called “Princess Peach Speaks,” and she wants to let everyone know that she does not need a hero.
Gatwood then recited a poem about a little girl asking her mom if she had ever been raped before, which the mother had no true reply.
The ladies came back together to talk about the pressure of public proposals and slammed a poem for all the ladies who said no.
Falley educated the audience in what a “gold-star lesbian” and scissoring were as she proceeded with a love poem about her relationship with a transgender man. The poem that perfectly followed Falley’s was by Gatwood.
It was called “Science, I Got This.” This poem expressed Gatwood’s anger at how scientists didn’t “discover” the female orgasm until 2014. At the end of her performance and talk about the clitoris, and mentioned that their next performance was going to be at a strict, Christian school.
Falley performed another poem called “Fat Girl” after dissing media officials for claiming how “down-to-earth” Jennifer Lawrence is because she eats chips.
After sharing the mean comments people wrote on their YouTube channel, the duo recited the last poem of the evening that encourages women to take seflies (hence the selfie booth) and to share with the world that they are confident and feel beautiful.