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Watch Michelle Obama and adolescent girls around the world discuss the importance of education live from our #DayoftheGirl #WhenGirlsGraduate live conversation:
由 Glamour 发布于 2016年10月11日
There are probably a handful of things that will stand out in my memory, decades from now, when I look back at the mental Hyperlapse version of my career. Undoubtedly, going to see the First Lady Michelle Obama speak on a topic close to my heart – education for girls – will be one of them! Thank you Maybelline India for picking me to go! Now here’s a list of all the awesome things I experienced on my very first trip to Washington DC to meet Michelle Obama! #tothemoon #WhoRunTheWorld
PS. Unfortunately they cancelled our White House tour last minute so I’ll have to go back for that! Here’s hoping there’s no carrot-top crazy person in power by then. #JustSaying
1. Because Girls Are Awesome.
I decided I would take Michelle Obama a little gift from India, but not the usual sari sort of thing (which I’m sure she’s gotten a ton of already). So I asked some of the girls I know (from various walks of life) if they would like to send her a message. What resulted was an absolutely adorable collection of cards, notes, dreams and pink hearts made of glitter. #HeartMeltingStuff
2. My Office In The Sky.
If you know anything about my life, you probably know that I’m always “on”. Which means having Wi-Fi in the sky is all kinds of awesome. Check out my mini pop-up HQ for the ride there and back on the massive Emirates A380 air bus! I got so much work done and, OK, I’ll confess – watched 4 movies and almost the entire 10th season of FRIENDS. (If you’re wondering what I watched: The Meddler (hilarious), Gone With The Wind, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (nostalgic) and a very interesting stop motion film called Anomalisa.)
3. Fall Fashion!
My favourite outfit from the trip was this one by Pero that my stylist Nelly Wadia picked out for me. If you’re a Bombay girl, you know that your closet craves to let loose those knee-high boots every chance you get to travel, so those are the only ones I took on this trip! (My boots are from Zara, you like?)
4. The Dry Bar, Baar Baar.
When it comes to hair and makeup, I always rely on my dream team Eshwar & Esther courtesy Elton Fernandez. But when I travel, I am left to my own devices. This is generally quite stressful for me, but ever since I discovered the Dry Bar I’ve been a happy camper! You’ll find Drybars all over the US, specializing in just blowouts; no cuts, no color. They serve you champagne or coffee and have chick flicks on loop. BTW, they call their loose curls blowout “the Cosmo” – here’s how you get it!
5. The Spy Museum!
When I got to DC I basically had the day free to explore, so I decided to check out the International Spy Museum, because who hasn’t wondered what it would be like to be a Secret Agent once in their life, right?! It was super cool and I feel like if I had one of these cigarette spy cams, I could get you A LOT of interesting footage from Page 3 parties. Excuse me, Mr. Bond, do you have one to spare?
I don’t think I could really commit to anything that required the tool kit below however. Nope. Nada. LOL.
Also discovered that the character of Dick Van Dyke was quite the master of intrigue, if you think about it, in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang… which is probably why I watched the movie again after 30 years!
My Bond car would have to come in pink, however…
Oh, and mega bonus: spying Shake Shack in the same building… so obviously THIS happened! Nomnomnomnom.
6. Forever 21 Shopping Haul!
As I was walking back from the Spy Museum I spotted one of my all-time favourite shopping destinations, Forever 21. You always get such cute jewellery there and bags and slogan tees – it’s awesome. Here’s what I scored!
7. The Eleanor Roosevelt Resurrection.
That evening we had our first dinner hosted by Glamour Magazine with all the bloggers/YouTubers and influencers from around the world (mostly USA, UK, Canada and me!) themed The Women in History Dinner.
They added a fun little speech by a woman dressed as Eleanor Roosevelt who recounted her experiences as if she was the former First Lady. Nice touch. 🙂 My favorite Eleanor quote of all time:
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
So true.
8. Meeting Cara Santana.
Cara Santana is an actress and the founder of The Glam App (which offers at home makeup services, which I also tried and loved! You go, girl!) I sat next to her and her adorable mom at dinner and thought she was perfectly delightful. So nice when you meet actors with no airs and a happy shiny vibe 🙂
Also at dinner, I met the stunning 20-year-old Tanzanian model Herieth Paul. I loved how all the girls were so friendly and interested to hear about each other’s accomplishments too! Nice vibe 🙂
The beauty vloggers from the UK Leyla Rose and Roxi were also super lovely and, as it turns out, @roxxsaurus is just your gal for Halloween inspire makeup awesomeness this year! Enjoy.
9. Effervescent Eva Chen.
So Eva Chen is the head of Fashion for Instagram (which is a pretty killer job title in itself!) and was such a charming host to kick off the day’s panels. She shared her experiences with social media and told us about two pretty stellar Instagram accounts…
1. @jessronagrooming – where you get to watch slow motion videos of dogs getting their hair blow dried and quite clearly loving that ‘air in the face’ feeling! (Which is hilarious AND amazing).
2. @petesouza – Chief Official White House Photographer. He basically follows around President Barack Obama and documents his life. How awesome must that be?!
Eva also hosts her own little series called #bigquestionssmallroom which is totally genius and kind of like Sex In The City meets Alice In Wonderland. What’s not to love?!
10. Madison Beer.
Madison Beer – who rose to fame when Justin Bieber posted a link to one of her singing videos on Twitter – performed. She was FAN-TASTIC! Really cool in fact how the whole program was curated to appeal to millennials in an entertaining yet informative way. (I wonder what they’ll call the next generation BTW, after millennials! Any guesses?)
They even had Disney star Rowan Blanchard introduce the various countries who were Skyped in and the girls in the room went NUTS.
11. Michelle Obama!
And now the pièce de résistance. Glamour magazine’s editor Cindy Leive welcomed on stage Yara Shahidi (Iranian-American actress and model, best known for playing Zoey on the sitcom Black-ish) and First Lady Michelle Obama, to have a conversation on the importance of education for girls and take questions from girls literally around the world! BTW, 16-year-old Yara held her own with poise and confidence next to the First Lady and blew us all away. Girls like that WILL rule the world!
Glamour’s #DayoftheGirl Live Conversation 2016 was amazing, and you can see all the social media action if you follow the hashtags #DayoftheGirl, #WhenGirlsGraduate, #PinkPower and #MakeITHappen. The full stream is at the top of this post, but here’s my most favorite thing Michelle Obama said…
We can all rise together, OK, we can all win. And we’re sometimes taught in our societies that we have to compete, we have to hold each other back in order for one of us to succeed but THAT IS NOT TRUE. We need each other. And all over the world we have to be a team of women and girls who love each other, and value each other and cherish one another. Because if we don’t cherish each other, no one else will. So lets start there and start working together and find a way that we are going to lift up some other girl in our lives. Maybe its a little sister, a neighbour but you can be a mentor today. So do that, do that work now. Get in the habit of that. You all with me?
Damn straight we’re with you FLOTUS, because you’re AWESOME! I kid you not, we all left the room inspired and in awe of Mrs. Obama for her down-to-earth nature, positive energy and absolutely laser focus on uplifting the lives of women and girls in her lifetime. She also said she is very optimistic about the future. Because it is WE that will parent the next generation of girls and boys. And it’s up to us what values we teach them, what lessons they learn. Boom. Kinda makes you want to have children now so you can set things straight, right?
12. The Capitol Tour
Eat your heart out, Hunger Games, I took a tour of the real Capitol! It was pretty awe-inspiring, although I felt a bit squeamish knowing that almost the entire thing had been built by slaves (as, I suppose, sadly have most iconic historical monuments at one time or another…) There’s a lot of history and architecture there and a very cool phenomenon where, if you whisper at one end of the chamber, you can hear it loud and clear at the other end!
Oh and honorable mention to our Swedish intern-guide who was all kinds of hilarious. He was kind of a cross between Mr. Bean and Where’s Waldo and adorably unequipped to handle 30 girls and their tendency to ask a billion questions.
13. Goodies!
The Maybelline goodie bag was amazing. Usually the actual “bag” part is a plastic toss-away but this one is exactly the kind of sleek little back pack I’ve been looking everywhere for! Yay! And they filled it with makeup love which is always #winning, thank you, Maybelline!
*BFF Bonus
And by total serendipity, my oldest friend in the world happened to be in DC for work and came to see me for breakfast before I left for home. It was amazing to see him, he’s a piece of my heart and you won’t believe how we are EXACTLY the same. Both left-handed Geminis whose parents were in the foreign service. Crazy, right?!
So there you have it. My trip to the Girl Project in a nutshell. Pretty amazing, if you ask me. Definitely take the time to watch the live stream below. Michelle Obama says some pretty legendary things that everyone needs to hear and carry in their hearts. xoxo
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Watch Michelle Obama and adolescent girls around the world discuss the importance of education live from our #DayoftheGirl #WhenGirlsGraduate live conversation:
由 Glamour 发布于 2016年10月11日
This post is in partnership with Maybelline India