Ashley Judd has been an activist possibly longer than she’s been an actress, but on Saturday, she really stole the show. The Double Jeopardy actress took the stage at the Women’s March on Washington, where somewhere around 500,000 protesters gathered, more than double the amount of attendees than was reportedly expected to show up.
When Ashley Judd took the stage, Michael Moore was still standing up there. The controversial filmmaker smiled as she introduced herself to the crowd.
“My name is Ashley Judd, and I am a feminist.”
Judd was one of the main speakers on Saturday at the Women’s March on Washington. She quickly became the star of the event after taking the stage to deliver a poem written by 19-year old Nina Donovan that was first delivered back in December.
“I’m a nasty woman,” Ashley Judd recited, “I’m not as nasty as a man who looks like he bathes in Cheetos dust. A man whose words are a diss track to America. Electoral college-sanctioned, hate-speech contaminating this national anthem.”
Donovan’s poem talks about racial injustice and what seems to be a resurgence of racism in the United States. In it, she focuses the beginning of her poem on black lives and the way minorities have been treated as less than their Caucasian counterparts. She goes on to talk about the neo-nazi movement that is sweeping through the country.
“I am not as nasty as a swastika painted on a pride flag, and I didn’t know devils could be resurrected but I feel Hitler in these streets,” Judd read to the crowd. “A mustache traded for a toupee. Nazis renamed the Cabinet Electoral Conversion Therapy, the new gas chambers shaming the gay out of America, turning rainbows into suicide. I am not as nasty as racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny, ignorance, white privilege … your daughter being your favorite sex symbol, like your wet dreams infused with your own genes. Yeah, I’m a nasty woman — a loud, vulgar, proud woman.”
“I am not nasty like the combo of Trump and Pence being served up to me in my voting booths. I’m nasty like the battles my grandmothers fought to get me into that voting booth.”
Nina Donovan’s pointed poem about many of the ills that America is currently facing goes on for about 800 words, describing many issues that liberal citizens of the United States are currently trying to correct. In addition to women’s rights, which was the prevalent theme for the Women’s March just one day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, “I Am A Nasty Woman” also talks about gay rights, civil rights, and the way the entire election cycle was handled.
While it was previously discussed that the Women’s March on Washington should be more about equality for women than taking shots at Donald Trump and Mike Pence, Ashley Judd used her time on the stage to take a couple of jabs at the newest president and vice president of the United States.
“Half my life I have been zipping up my smile hoping you don’t think I want to unzip your jeans,” the poem continues while paying homage to some of the highest profile women in history.
“I am unafraid to be nasty because I am nasty like Susan, Elizabeth, Eleanor, Amelia, Rosa, Gloria, Condoleezza, Sonia, Malala, Michelle, Hillary!”
The full transcript of Nina Donovan’s poem “I Am A Nasty Woman” can be read here. Also be sure to check out Ashley Judd as she gives the speech to an enormous crowd on the National Mall as part of the Women’s March on Washington.
[Featured Image by Theo Wargo/Getty Images]