Ashley Judd Looks Back On Her Iconic Women's March Speech: 'I Cherish My Memory of the Roar'
January 21 marks the one-year anniversary of the Women's March, the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. All this week, Glamour will be spotlighting the stories, people, and issues that framed the March, as well as where we go from here.
The night before I spoke at the Women’s March, I chose to sleep on the floor of a house I’d rented with friends in Washington. I’m a backcountry backpacker at heart, and I knew I needed to simulate being in my church, the cathedral of the woods. There was a sense that something sacred was building from the moment we arrived.
The next morning, right before we left for the march, I asked to be alone. In a bedroom with hardwood floors, where I thought the acoustics would help me practice the projection I would need, I boomed out the poem I was planning to read, “I Am a Nasty Woman” by Nina Donovan. It electrified the entire house for all of us. We were crying, and we hadn’t even left yet. That was the first whisper of the roar.
Backstage at the march, standing in line for the porta-potties, I bumped into Callie Khouri, my director from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. I recited some of the poem for her, and she began to weep too. At one point I hopped onstage to look out over the vast crowd, staring out at that gorgeous sea of pink. I pulled a technician aside and asked if I could do the poem for him. He cried and said, “Thank you.”
I knew the poem would be unifying from the moment I’d heard Nina, a 19-year-old from Tennessee, recite it at a performance by youth poet laureates a month earlier. Her words seared into my brain that night. She slayed me. I bawled my way through Nina’s time onstage as she said, “I am not as nasty as racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny….” I hadn’t even been invited to speak, yet I knew I was going to bring this poem to the march. I knew “Nasty Woman” belonged to everyone.
When I stood in front of thousands of people in Washington, D.C., there was a collective gasp at the first words: “I am a nasty woman.” And then the roar went totally quiet. The more I let loose Nina’s poem, the quieter it got. In that silence I could feel the parts of the poem that resonated in very specific ways: “I am not as nasty as a swastika painted on a pride flag.” And then later: “I am not as nasty as…electroconversion therapy, the new gas chambers shaming the gay out of America, turning rainbows into suicide notes.” I heard grief in that silence.
Then it really started, a 360-degree rumble from way, way back in the crowd. I knew I had only a few minutes to speak, but I had to pause now and then because of the roar. And at the point in the poem that talks about bloodstains and tampons and pads being taxed while Rogaine and Viagra are not, the crowd went nuts. They couldn’t believe that finally, in this huge public space, on all the television channels from C-SPAN to Fox, we could talk about menstruation. Of course, I was wearing white because that’s the color of the suffrage movement. And I did that thing we do when we turn around to see if we’ve seeped through our clothes. It was amazing. The roar was a rumble, a wave, a crescendo, an aria. There was a visual element to it as well. I could see the crowd react physically just as I could feel myself throwing my body into the performance. That roar was personal, political, and spiritual. It was special.
The crowd went nuts. They couldn’t believe that finally, in this huge public space, on all the television channels from C-SPAN to Fox, we could talk about menstruation.
After the march I would take a beating for my rendering of Nina’s poem. I would be called mentally ill on Twitter. But it was worth it. Far more of us, I know from experience, believe in equality, social justice, collaboration, and peace. I heard this with my own ears. I saw it with my own eyes from that stage.
From the moment I first heard Nina’s poem that night in Tennessee, I started to cry. The shattering grief I’d experienced after the election came flooding back up. Listening to this powerful young woman was both devastating and cathartic: She was so lucidly naming what was going on, and her youth gave me such fierce hope. The roar was my signal that the poem had felt that way for others too. A very young woman came up to me at the airline counter after the march and said, “‘Nasty Woman’ changed my life.” It changed mine too. I cherish my memory of the roar.
In the year since, and especially now as we find ourselves in the midst of a reckoning about the treatment of women, I’ve felt an incredible deepening in my sense of belonging, and in my safety and security in society. I feel more deeply known in my soul. I’ve shared my most intimate self with incredible numbers of people—emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually—and it feels extraordinary. Even as girls and women remain at risk for sexual and gender violence, it’s clear that our society is changing at a breathless pace. This phenomenon is very dear to me, and I feel exponentially empowered by it. Let the world hear us all.
Ashley Judd is an actress (currently in Epix’s thriller Berlin Station), activist, and U.N. Goodwill Ambassador. This essay is adapted from Together We Rise, a new book by the Women’s March Organizers and Condé Nast, publisher of Glamour, which is available for purchase now.
Related Stories:
