Interview with Deborah Frances-White of The Guilty Feminist

The Guilty Feminist isn't afraid to speak her truth. Deborah Frances-White is an icon to women all over. Her smash hit podcast The Guilty Feminist is currently touring. Ahead of her exciting visit to Birmingham next week, I was lucky enough to chat with her about what it means to be a woman.

After the past couple of years, we've had I asked if she was excited to start touring again, and particularly if she was looking forward to coming to Birmingham. She responded, saying she absolutely can't wait and that she's had such incredible times in Birmingham and that it's one of her favourite places to perform. But on a more general note, it's lovely to be able to travel again, and she called it a ‘biblical miracle’, like a rising from the dead. She loves being able to connect with her audiences, who are always writing and tweeting her. So being able to interact live is just a wonderful experience again, something that she appreciates now more than ever. A live audience means we can get that instant crowd reaction, which then fuels the conversation and makes it a much more thrilling experience onstage.

Deborah is a champion of intersectionality. She believes that it is the way forward to create a more progressive society and that we should all acknowledge the privileges that we have and consider others that are less fortunate due to their identities as this is something that they could not choose. For the world to become more inclusive and accessible to everybody, these intersectional differences need to be considered and addressed. She notes, if one door opens to me, then what does that mean for me, how can I open that door for other people, and how can other people open the door for someone else? Because without acknowledging that we are all different and that we are intersectional, we're never going to progress to a place where we are all-inclusive, and every door becomes open to everybody.

It is these very open and honest conversations that Deborah has on the podcast with people that have made women feel it is okay to be themselves. Society often places stigmatisation on women, leading to feelings of shame. This makes them feel they need to apologise. But what The Guilty Feminist does is celebrate all the quirks and flaws that women have and say that they can still be empowered and still be everything they want to be. There is no limit to what a woman can do. Of these live shows, she says they are a place where people can come and refill their tanks because it is joyful, and you can laugh a lot and you're going to experience all the emotions and be able to express yourself and get ready to go and fight because we're going to need a lot of resilience in this world as we've seen recently over the past few years. When you are trying to also battle with your identity and your place in the world, whilst there is everything else going on, it can be a struggle and you do need that environment where you feel like you are being championed. So, these live shows are places where you can be your authentic self.

I will be on the panel in Birmingham discussing my dissertation on the commodification of race of women of colour in ballet. Deborah speaks about upcoming guests in the interview at the following link https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0c4rgpt

The Guilty Feminist tour continues across the UK tickets can be found at the following link. https://guiltyfeminist.com/2022-live-uk-tour/

The show is coming to the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham on 27th May, and there are limited tickets available for this date. https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/the-guilty-feminist-live/the-alexandra-theatre-birmingham/calendar/2022-05-27