Emma Watson has admitted that she was “very nervous” before she gave her groundbreaking speech on feminism at the U.S. Summit.
Watson’s powerful speech has seen her become the poster girl for feminism, and she was even deemed worthy to be the cover girl of Elle’s first ever issue on feminism. However, that doesn’t mean that she had her qualms about actually going through with it though. In fact, she even feared that she might have be ostracized because of her remarks.
That didn’t prove to be the case though. Watson’s popularity has only grown because of what she had to say but she was still quaking in her boots before she delivered her thoughts.
“I was very nervous. It wasn’t an easy thing for me to do. It felt like: ‘Am I going to have lunch with these people, or am I going to be eaten? Am I the lunch?”
Watson is now seen as an inspiration to young girls because of her thoughts and actions regarding feminism. And she puts her prominence in this field down to how she was raised. She went on to explain that, alongside her mother, she would also speak just “as loudly” as her brothers, while she also admitted that she was “lucky” to have been “raised to believe that [her] opinion at the dinner table was valuable.”
Meanwhile, she also explained that her activism work has helped to solve many issues that she has previously had with been famous. Watson of course shot to fame because of her role as Hermione Granger in the hugely successful Harry Potter franchise.
“Fame is not something I have always felt comfortable with; I have really grappled with it emotionally. And, in a funny way, doing this is my way of making sense of the fame, of using it. I have found a way to channel it towards something else, which makes it so much more manageable for me. And this is something I really believe in.”
During her speech at the UN Headquarters in New York back in September, Watson pleaded for gender equality to become the norm.
“It is time that we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals. We should stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by who we are. We can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.”
[Image via UK Today News]