Badass Femmes is a bi-weekly column that I write on Crome Yellow about all the Badass Females in pop culture that has shaped my life.
We’ve all been there, overcome and desperately in need of that bright light of inspiration. I, for one, tend to look towards the women around me to find motivation, but also keep coming back to one of the first characters that encouraged me to embrace who I was. Surprisingly enough, that character was Elle Woods from Legally Blonde. Even though I was an angsty 13-year-old, like Elle, I too was labeled a supreme ditz with a disgustingly peppy attitude, a “blonde” who was not actually blonde. Sure, I wasn’t sporting her sparkly pink wardrobe, but her determination to be seen beyond a socially embedded stereotype ignited a power within me to basically embrace the “fuck the rest and do me” mantra. At such a young age where the odds seemed against us both, she was the light in my dark, long tunnel, proving once and for all, that women could have it all – brains and beauty. If Elle Woods could do it, then so could I.
