Actress Lena Headey, best known for her role as the conniving Queen Cersei on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” has written a letter to her unborn daughter and girls worldwide about the relative privileges of first-world femaledom and the entrenched and often harrowing gender inequalities across the globe.
The letter was written on behalf of Plan International USA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting children in 50 developing countries.
Headey’s post will benefit Plan’s Because I am a Girl/Safe Future for Girls project in Egypt. The initiative seeks to help 2,000 girls by offering savings and loans, leadership training for older girls, mentoring programs for younger girls, gender awareness training for men and boys and other services.
The letter begins with Headey acknowledging the unexpected scope of her platform: “I never expected to be in a position where I can connect on such an expansive social level with people — where I can hopefully encourage people to join Plan International USA and help raise much-needed awareness and funds.”
She continues, “Geography dictates my freedom as a woman, geography and the women before us who fought for our equal political voice. The inequality that is all too prevalent all over the world is so great and so frightening. We owe it to our sisters who have no voice, and no chance to be heard, to speak up.”
Headey is expected to give birth in six weeks, and “The Purge” star expresses relief that her daughter will have comparatively abundant options about who to be, what to do and how to live her life.
“My daughter will have freedom of choice,” Headey explains. “She will be free to dance, to sing, to be educated in the fields that spark her passion, to marry if she wants, to marry WHO she wants, to remain single, or to fall in love with another woman. She’ll be able to wear what she wants, put on lipstick, and read books that spark debate and expand her mind.”
Her daughter “will be loved, protected, respected, and celebrated.” Headey suggests that these promises to her daughter should be — and eventually will be — basic human rights.
Read Headey’s post in full here.
