On Wednesday, Academy-award winning actresses, best-selling authors, activists, fashion designers, olympic athletes, politicians and executives are all uniting to give up control of their Instagram accounts to black women in order to magnify their voices.
Kourtney Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, Ashley Graham, Hilary Swank, Alex Morgan and Diane von Furstenberg are just a few of the celebrities participating in the #ShareTheMicNow campaign, in which white women with large followings are allowing black women to speak from their accounts.
“When the world listens to women, it listens to white women,” read the official statement of the #SharethemicNow campaign. “For far too long, Black women’s voices have gone unheard, even though they’ve been using their voices loudly for centuries to enact change.”
Conceived by Bozoma Saint John, Luvvie Ajayi Jones, Glennon Doyle and Stacey Bendet Eisner, the social media campaign will be led by black women sharing their stories and experiences on the Instagram accounts of the white women in the entertainment industry. The intention of the campaign is to magnify black women and the important work they are doing while furthering important activism relationships to create a network of distributors who know and trust each other.
Some of the black women who will be taking over high profile accounts include writer and activist Opal Tometi who will take over Ashley Graham’s account, fashion and beauty editor Kahlana Barfield Brown will take over Julia Robert’s account, businesswoman and marketing executive Bozoma Saint John will take over Kourtney Kardashian’s account and actress, businesswoman and transgender activist Angelica Ross will take over Hilary Swank’s account, along with many more.
“Today, more than ever, it is NECESSARY that we create a unifying action to center Black women’s lives, stories, and calls to action,” the statement added. “We need to listen to Black women.”
