Top 10 TED talks for women

When J.J. Abrams asked someone for advice on what to say during his TED talk, he was told to “just say something profound.” If you’ve watched a TED talk, you know that generally, that’s what all of them are: profound pieces of advice and/or anecdotes that are meant to inspire a group of people.

The best thing about TED talks is the variety of topics. From video games to domestic violence, there is not a subject left unturned in the thousands of videos archived in the TED database. Even better? TED has hosted numerous special events across the country not only focused on female empowerment, but also headlined by powerful, successful, and inspiring women.

The following is a list of only 10 videos that every woman, young or old, should see. From the way women are represented in the media to the way we perceive ourselves, these 10 TED talks are sure to empower, inspire, and encourage you to become your own success story.

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10. Megan Kamerick: Women should represent women in media

Megan Kamerick is a journalist, first and foremost. And as a journalist, she feels that a story should be written in a way that pushes the truth to the front and center of the story, something an audience should appreciate. So, imagine how she felt when she read about the case of the 11-year-old girl who was gang raped by a group of men in the Times.

When she first read the story, she read about how the community couldn’t understand how these boys were “drawn in” to commit such a heinous act. She read about how this girl wore clothes that were “old” for her and that she wore makeup. She read about how these boys would have to “live with this for the rest of their life.” She read the byline: written by a man.

Three months later, the Times revisited the story after much controversy. This time, Kamerick read about a family forced into poverty. She read about a girl who was growing up and maturing and making different choices with her wardrobe but still sleeping in a bed full of stuffed animals. She re-read the byline: this time, it was the same man and a new writer - a woman.

This anecdote opens up Kamerick’s powerful talk about how women should be representing women in the media. When you leave their representation up to a man, they’re pushed to the back. In fact, at the time of her 2011 talk, women were only making up 23 percent of the content in the news even though they’re roughly half the population. Kamerick takes this issue and discusses ways to fix it, making it an encouraging push for women to start representing and talking for themselves.

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09. Cameron Russell: Looks aren’t everything. Believe me, I’m a model.

Cameron Russell is brave. If there’s one thing you’re not supposed to discuss, especially as a model, it’s the fact that if you’re pretty, you’re pretty much set - but Russell does just that. In her 2012 TEDx talk, she discusses how her life as a model (and as a pretty white girl in general) has helped her in more ways than getting free shoes and her hair and makeup done often.

Russell discusses how image is important but image is not just your looks, it’s a construction made by other people. She takes the images of herself in magazines and juxtaposes them with herself with her grandmother days earlier or with her friend at the beach later, the hair and makeup and glamorous clothing gone.

But it’s not just the fact that her looks get her in magazines and down runways. It’s that she’s inherited a genetic lottery and came from a legacy of perceived beauty and both ideals need to be knocked down. This talk is a powerful discussion of not just racial profiling but of the power of image and perception.

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08. Courtney Martin: This isn’t her mother’s feminism
When women hear the word “feminist,” their first reaction is either to launch into a diatribe in support of the movement or to scoff at it. In Courtney Martin’s 2010 TED talk, she discusses the stigma of “cultural hipness” that surrounds being a feminist along with three paradoxes our generation faces when choosing to either accept or reject this notion.

But more than discussing feminism itself, Martin shares her stories of how she came to be a feminist outside of the idea of shoulder pads and her mother’s “women’s group” and how she came to realize that feminism wasn’t such a dirty word anymore.

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07. Jane McGonigal: The Game That Can Give You 10 Extra Years of Life

A game that gives you extra time? Sounds unrealistic...and game designer Jane McGonigal agrees with you. It’s not that she wants you to spend more time playing video games just because she makes them. After spending over 30 straight days in bed after a traumatic head injury, McGonigal spent the entire time wanting to die...until she started thinking of it as a game. Using her game design background, McGonigal got herself past that difficult time in her life and wants to help encourage others to do so.

But...”won’t you regret all that time you spent playing video games when you’re on your deathbed?” McGonigal addresses the No. 1 question she’s asked and hits the nail on the head with her response, making this TED talk a must see.

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06. Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are

Women have heard time and time again that body language is a big factor in how they’re perceived - which is true. In Cuddy’s 2012 TED talk, she shares several reasons why body language is important, including an example of a study where 30 seconds of nonverbal video shown to groups of people decided whether or not a doctor would be sued.

More than that, Cuddy discusses how body language conveys (and can maybe even create) a dynamic of power. Even when you’re not feeling powerful, Coddy claims that just pretending that you are and standing like you’re in a position of power can make you feel more powerful. “Our minds change our bodies but do our bodies change our minds?”

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05. Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids

At just 8 years old, it’s tempting to throw away the ideas presented by child prodigy Adora Svitak the same way the publishers she contacted did. How could she, at 8, know more than you? Well, that’s exactly what she talks about. In eight short minutes, Svitak address the biggest issue in the relationship between adults and children: the lack of communication and respect. It’s not that adults don’t listen to children, Svitak claims, it’s their general apathy towards their ideas. Children “don’t think about limitations,” she says. They just do it.

So, while we might not need to still be thinking of a bacon man with meat vision, there are some things adults can learn from kids and one of them is the desire and drive to dream big and without stopping. Kids don’t think about the ways things can’t be done, they just think about what they want done and how it can happen. It’s this kind of no-holds-barred kind of thinking that adults need to go back to.

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04. Meg Jay: Why 30 Is Not The New 20

There’s a chance that you’ve probably read a magazine headline in the last few years that has announced somewhere on it’s glossy pages (or it’s online text) that “30 is the new 20.” Meg Jay, a psychologist specializing in twenty-somethings, disagrees. This entire decade of growth and change has been trivialized and Jay believes that it’s time all twenty-somethings start living life instead of waiting for things to settle around them.

Jay shares anecdotes from her own clients as she hopes to motivate the 50 million, or 15 percent of the population of the United States currently living in their 20s, to stop wasting time and start jumping on the bandwagon. She also shares her top three pieces of advice for twenty-somethings today, including the tip to “forget about an identity crisis” and to “invest in identity capital instead.” Hoping to inspire a generation of “kidults” to start creating investments in themselves that further help their growth, Jay’s talk starts a conversation that many twenty-something millenials have yet to hear: that we can prove to be the most successful generation yet.

[new page = Leymah Gbowee]

03. Leymah Gbowee: Unlock the intelligence, passion, greatness of girls

Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee shares two powerful things during her 2012 TED talk. The first are some scary statistics about the living conditions of young girls in poverty, specifically in Africa. She talks about the villages she visited and the women she met, the two women she had to turn away because she could barely take care of herself. She talks about how girls are so desperate for an education and for money to support their families that they’re being pushed into teen prostitution, forced into sexual relations with older men because they helped them get into college, how little girls are being raped continually because they can’t protect themselves.

The second thing she shares is how these same girls are powering through their experiences and becoming powerful women in their own community. How, desperate for an education themselves, they’re helping other women get one when they can’t themselves. She shares how a girl’s center she’s opened up has helped women with no interest in getting through high school have found themselves gaining a thirst for education. How just pushing these young girls to succeed has unlocked a passion and greatness inside them they never knew they could possess.

This chillingly beautiful talk expresses the necessity of encouraging our fellow women, even if they’re still young. Especially if they’re still young.

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02. Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability

Researcher Brené Brown learned something interesting during her study of human connection and it sent her on her own downward spiral that ended with understanding herself better. While she admits that the idea of being vulnerable on purpose made her uncomfortable, there’s something profoundly powerful about putting yourself out there.

Brown discusses what we’re afraid to do: how we, as a society, have become so content with numbing everything. Because we cannot selectively numb feelings, we’ve numbed everything as a whole, including happiness and joy in an attempt to disguise fear of not being worthy enough for connection. In a society where image is everything, how about we try being genuine and honest and vulnerable for a change?

[new page = Sheryl Sandberg]

01. Sheryl Sandberg: Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders

2013 brought us the incredible “Lean In” movement, led by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. The idea behind “leaning in” was to promote more women leaders in the workplace and Sandberg’s TED talk “Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders” was the prologue behind her eventual book.

In her talk, Sandberg discusses her three points of success for women staying in the workplace (though they can be slightly applicable to men as well), which are to 1) sit at the table, 2) make your partner a real partner, and 3) don’t leave before you leave. Her accompanying points and anecdotes are engaging and even if you’re not thinking about starting a family just yet, they’re still the right amount of encouragement for any woman looking for her place in the male-dominated business world.

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