"Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou

I was listenig to a song, and I listened to a part that says:

What a feeling.

Bein's believin'.

I can have it all, now I'm dancing for my life.

Take your passion

and make it happen.

Pictures come alive, you can dance right through your life.

Now I hear the music,

close my eyes, I am rhythm.

In a flash it takes hold

of my heart.

       (Flashdace, what a feeling - Irene Cara)

I know it might not sound anything related to the Phenomenal woman poem, but as I listened to it, it caught my attention for the way I instantly realted it to the poem. This is like the explanation I could give to the poem with another one. What Maya Angelou is proud about is for the fact of being herself, the feeling she gets about her. 

There is still so much discrimination against women all over the world. They are not taken into account in political decisions, they are used as means of pleasure, according to a misinterpretation of religion. Ancestral traditions, even since primitive people, women stay at home, men go to work.   Having made so much progress in human thinking, in human perspective, there are still many things to be aware of. Like these. Women's situation in the world. This song is what every woman should think, want to think and still want to be. 

It is achieving a high position with ourselves, defeating what others think and having all at the palm of our hands. It is fighting for the right to be free: "Take your passion and make it happen. Pictures come alive, you can dance right through your life". It's a matter of being proud of what we are, not taking into account what we must be. Women and men are not the same, but it is that special characteristics, that "secret that lies inside us" that make us so special, but not so "discriminable". Human beings after all. "Close my eyes I am rhythm. In a flash it takes hold of my heart." I believe that is a beautiful image. A woman closing her eyes feeling the pride emerging, knowing that she is worth it, and then she feels it all over her heart. 

I believe Maya Angelou is quite right about feeling proud of being a woman, and to feel everything that define us as our identity, as our common factor that make us indispensable in the world. But what is more, is that she feels very deeply great for her being African American, which was difficult to bear in those times. She was a very brave woman that clearly shows us that definitely, a world without women would not be the same.