“This Is For My Girls” is your new girl-power jam, thanks to Michelle Obama

Sammy Nickalls
Updated

“This Is For My Girls” is your new girl-power jam, thanks to Michelle Obama

“This Is For My Girls” is your new girl-power jam, thanks to Michelle Obama
“This Is For My Girls” is your new girl-power jam, thanks to Michelle Obama

Today, First Lady Michelle Obama will give the opening keynote at SXSW about her Let Girls Learn Initiative, which aims to increase the number of adolescent girls educated throughout the world. And now, thanks to the First Lady and a bevy of female superstars, we’ve got a new girl-power anthem that will help these girls receive the education they so richly deserve.

With the support of AOL’s MAKERS, “This Is For My Girls” is written by Oscar nominee Diane Warren and features Janelle Monáe, Kelly Clarkson, Kelly Rowland, Lea Michele, Missy Elliott, Zendaya, Chloe x Halle, and Jadagrace. “This Is For My Girls” was released at midnight last night and it is available to purchase on iTunes. The best part? Proceeds will benefit Let Girls Learn.

“Diane Warren and this collective of powerful, talented artists have truly taken action in support of Let Girls Learn,” said FLOTUS in a press release. “I am thrilled that they’ve created this anthem for the 62 million girls around the world who are not in school, and that AOL’s MAKERS and iTunes joined them in their support.”

The First Lady’s address will include a discussion about girls’ education with Missy Elliot, the actress Sophia Bush, and Diane Warren, which will be moderated by Queen Latifah and streamed live. Chloe x Halle will perform the song live for the first time at the event today.

And that’s not all that the First Lady is up to! Michelle Obama also penned an essay for today’s Lenny Letter, Lena Dunham’s newsletter, explaining why girl’s education is such a personal cause for her.

Highlighting that 62 million girls all over the world are not in school right now due to various issues such as feminine hygiene and finances, she explained:

“[A]ll of this is true — but it also misses the fundamental point that this issue isn’t just about access to resources like scholarships, transportation, and school bathrooms. It’s also very much about attitudes and beliefs: the belief that girls should be valued for their bodies, not their minds; the belief that girls simply aren’t worthy of an education, and their best chance in life is to be married off when they’re barely even teenagers and start having children of their own.”

Michelle Obama explained that she “see[s] myself” in these girls and in their “ambition and determination to rise above their circumstances”:

“Imagine being a bright, curious young girl with all kinds of ideas about what you want to be when you grow up. And then one day, someone taps you on the shoulder and says, ‘Sorry, not you. You’re a girl. Your dreams stop here. You have to drop out of school, marry a man 20 years older than you whom you’ve never met, and start having babies of your own.'”

The First Lady gave a shout-out to the site 62 Million Girls, where you can pledge to support education for adolescent girls around the globe. Asshe wrote in Lenny:

“. . . [Y]ou don’t have to have a Grammy to make a difference here (I can’t even carry a tune). You can organize a fun run, a battle of the bands, a trivia contest, a cocktail party — anything you can dream up and execute is fair game (within limits, of course). You absolutely have the power to make a difference on this issue, and girls around the world are counting on you to step up and act. . . The least we can do is give them a chance to go to school, fulfill that hope, and become who and what they are meant to be.”

We applaud Michelle Obama, Kelly Clarkson, Zendaya, Kelly Rowland, and all the other incredible singers involved for their efforts on such an important cause. If you want to support the Let Girls Learn Initiative, you can pledge your support here, and you can purchase “This Is For My Girls” on iTunes. We’ll be listening to it on repeat!

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