Boss Babes ATX painted the Drag yellow for their celebration of International Women’s day at Space 24 Twenty on Thursday.
Attendees were encouraged to wear yellow to the event, called “Yellow Hour,” as a form of reflection on the feminist movement and in solidarity for the journey still ahead, said Maureen Nicol, Boss Babes projections and operations lead. The color yellow relates back to earlier feminist movements and represents female power, Nicol said.
“International Women’s Day is really just me every day — this is my existence,” Nicol said. “But today I’m just gonna be a little more extra. Yes, I am a woman everyday, but today I’ll add a little bit more and I’ll tell the women in my life how much I love them and how I wouldn’t be where I was without them.”
Nicol described Boss Babes as an organization for women, about women and run by women. The event was a follow-up to last year’s Unity in Color project, an international movement in which women in different cities wore yellow in a photo shoot as an artistic response to feminism, Nicol said.
Boss Babes also invited mixed media painter Kwanzaa Edwards from San Antonio to create a painting of women at the event, which will be fully unveiled in April and displayed at future events.
“In order for us to create change in the present, we need to look to the future and think of futuristic and speculative places, and that’s what Kwanzaa’s work does,” Nicol said. “It’s otherworldly and it’s hope for what is to come.”
Edwards said she views International Women’s Day not just as a celebration of successful women, but as a celebration of womanhood itself. She said she was giddy when Boss Babes asked her to paint for the event.
“I want to show that view of strong women and powerful women by not making them look weak or dainty, because strong women are what I grew up with,” Edwards said. “I want my viewers to have a feeling of strength when they see my work. I don’t want anyone to feel sad, but to feel like they are the person in the painting and that they can relate to the feeling of the piece.”
Clarissa Camarillo, public health junior, said International Women’s Day is about women supporting each other.
“It’s a day about women building each other up,” Camarillo said. “A day about fixing each other’s crown and not knocking them down.”
