Tag: TED

Iceland And Women’s Rights

bike and door Recently I was fortunate to be invited to attend a conference in Iceland.  What a fascinating place. The conference was terrific also: called WE2015, the conference was founded by Halla Thomasdottir, a wonderful and powerful person whom I met when we both spoke at TED in 2010 (here is my talk about women and humor).   The conference was a series of fascinating discussions about closing the gender gap, and the importance of including men in our fight for equality around the world. Geena Davis was the keynote speaker, and she could not have been more inspiring as she spoke about her Institute On Gender In Media.  I live tweet drew the conference as well as some of Iceland.  Statistics show that Iceland is the best country for women to live and work, and they celebrated their hundredth anniversary of women’s suffrage while I was there.

I wrote about my trip for NewYorker.com, which you can read here.  The post includes more drawings that I did on my visit to this alluring country.

Blue Lagoon

 

Rendering the Unspoken: My TED talk

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKdvdNU7AmU

Two weeks ago, I was fortunate to speak at a TEDx in the Bay Area of California, called TEDxBayAreaWomen (TEDxBAW). The conference was a day long gathering of men and women who spoke about the International Entrepreneurship of women, and I learned a lot about business and micro-finance and global trade. It was fascinating. I chose to speak about something that all women have in common: our bodies. As a cartoonist, I deal in bodies, and my thinking was that no one else at the conference would speak about this in the way I chose to. My talk begins humorously, personally, but then I take the audience into the more serious subject of freedom for women’s bodies. We may be doing amazing things around the world–and women are–but many of us are not able to truly be ourselves or truly succeed because of restrictions on our physical presence. I discuss the appropriation of our bodies by culture, but also the violence against our bodies. I hope you enjoy.

Drawing Bodies

I am excited to have the opportunity to do another TED talk, and to speak at the TEDxBAW event next week. I have been at work on my talk over several months–it is a long process to craft something using images and words into a coherent 18 minute message.  And know it so I don’t use notes.

The talk is about women’s bodies. Drawing bodies of all sorts and genders is my bread and butter; and in the talk, I explore many of the funny and serious issues that confront my own, and all women’s, embodiment.

The cartoon above is one from the talk. I also created a video, but cannot show it to you until the talk is delivered. Stay tuned!

 

Video of My TED Talk

Last December, I delivered a talk for TED. In fact it was the first ever TEDWomen and was a great event. I met  many amazing, dedicated men and women whose work is to help women around the globe. The editors at TED just released the video of my talk.

Writing the talk took over a month. It began as long  speech, and I spent weeks pairing it down to the six minutes I was allotted.  I also worked with a very talented coach, Trisha Bauman, who helped be understand many new (to me) key elements for successful public speaking and performance.  While I have given numerous talks over the years, this was the first one that I felt I should memorize. In fact,  memorization really frees you up, and allows you to connect with the audience and with what you are saying much more naturally.

The audience at the conference was wonderful. In fact you can hear me laughing with them because I was so taken aback by their loud spontaneous laughter. It was great. Many of the other  talks were (rightfully) serious, and I sense that the audience was looking for relief, which I provided. While many of the other speakers were serious with touches of humor, I was humorous with an underlying note of serious.  My favorite way to be.

TEDWomen Conference

I met Pat Mitchell, head of the Paley Center, last year. She is a  warm, engaging, creative powerhouse, and I am so pleased to have become friends with her. She invited me to participate in the first TEDWomen conference she, The Paley Center and TED are producing December 7th and 8th in Washington, DC. I am curating an exhibtion of international cartoonists on the subject of women, tenatively called: The Folly, Fun and Flexibility of Women. I also am scheduled to give a short talk in the first session.

Here is an interview with Pat on Huffingtonpost.

It’s about ideas. It’s not an exclusive event for women!