Earword of the Week: Empowerment

This article was originally published in the Daily Post Athenian in Athens, Tennessee on January 20, 2018.

There are earworms and then there are earwords. Don’t try to use that second word in Scrabble, but the first will pass. I’m a student of literature with a fondness for words and a tendency to wax philosophical within the confines of my own mind. So, “earword” is a term I’m using to describe a personal phenomenon.

I start to muse on an idea - generally one I’m trying to gain a deeper understanding of - and I get stuck on a word. Like a melody on loop in my brain, the word flashes neon in my mind.

The most recent word of the week: empowerment.

The genesis of my hyper-focus on the word, I believe, is an attempt to reconcile my own character with the one I’m to play in the upcoming Athens Community Theatre musical. This character is antithetical to me in every fiber of her fictional being. She’s a floozie. I’m a feminist.

The show is a lampoon and sexism one of the satire’s prime targets; however, I still find it challenging to make peace with the lines I am to deliver and receive. More on that later.

The point of this anecdote is that in my musings I’ve been particularly focused on the commoditization of “empowerment,” especially for young women. Buy this and you’ll feel empowered. Wear this and you’ll be empowered. Stand on stage in fishnets and a lace dress and you are empowered.

I’m not sure I’m buying what they’re pedaling.

Let me acknowledge that as an educated, white, middle class woman it is my privilege to worry over notions like what empowerment means, when there are people experiencing real suffering just down the street. But that’s what I was doing Saturday afternoon in my office.

I was hiding there, seeking a quiet place to work. What that silence brought was space for that word to sneak up on me again, gnawing at me, tapping at the corner of my mind in time with the computer keys’ click.

Then the phone range. Katie Bragg was working the front desk but, for some reason, I answered. It was my friend, Beth Mercer, who had attended AACA’s concert “Sisters Two” the night before and was calling to see if tickets were available for the second and final show that evening.

“Yes ma’am. You coming back?”

“I am.” I heard her quietly confident smile. “And I’m bringing my dear friend Jane Chastain. I don’t know, Lauren, it was so wonderful last night, I just felt so…empowered.”

She probably didn’t realize what she had done for me.

Sometimes I get lost in my own interior monologue - or the trappings of social media algorithms - and forget that most things, in their essence, are pretty simple.

During the intermission of Saturday night’s “Sisters Two” I sat to the side of the stage chatting with Angel Hardaway.

“That’s why I’m glad you all are joining us on stage during ‘I’m Everyone Woman,’” she said of the final number she and her sisters Ashley and Abriel would sing, ending a thought on how music inspires unity.

“Wait, what?” I hadn’t heard this change of plan.

“We’re holding that song until last,” she explained, “and everyone is going to sing with us.”

Angel went on to explain that she and her sisters thought all thirteen of the singing sisters should share the stage for “I’m Every Woman” to convey the meaning of the song - and this show - that all of us, regardless of age, ethnicity, education, profession — share the common bond of womanhood. She didn’t use the word empowering, nor did I, but I think our mutual nod signified our common understanding of the importance of this gesture.

We were using our gifts of music and our public platform to communicate a simple truth.

We are all one.

It was during the penultimate refrain I believe, when Abriel Hardaway grabbed my hand.

I know what empowerment means. Sometimes I just need a friend and a song to remind me.