While Lena was great on the Main Stage at Cannes Lions, the real talk happened at her other appearance on Twitter Beach. The talk focused on Diversity and Inclusion. During her conversation, she spoke about people having issues with Progression. In her opinion, people are still going through a new transition with the election of the new United States President. As the conversation moved on, the topic of Wonder Woman came up and the flack she is receiving for her role. To Lena, this is nothing new, because she feels as a woman of color and being in the LGBT community, she goes through this on a daily basis. She lives to challenge the mindset of others, so that there is a paradigm shift in the way we view and connect with each other.
Where the conversation became interesting was when a question was posed to her and the panel, when do we stop focusing on young versus older and what were solutions to the divide and conquer mindset sweeping the world? The entire crowd became most engaging in such a powerful way. We all loved her response. For her, she gave the example that her mother was born in the 1950’s during the civil rights era, where you do what is necessary to get along. She is born in the 1980’s where that is not the trend. So, of course, they will not necessarily perceive things in the same way. So understanding that people are born in during different time periods and will have to adapt a learning curve in learning from one another was her point. The audience member’s response to her was simply that this would always be the case; and that a child who is 12 years old cannot understand the maturity of Lena’s age. It was quite a brilliant discussion where she felt that she could learn from a 12 year old. And this seem to mimic the audience member’s point, while we can all learn from each other, we will always be born during different times and we cannot force young people to age quicker than they need to. A young person by psychological standards does not mature until between the ages of 21 and 25 years.
Lena continued, Inclusion of all levels was important. And she would continue to challenge the status quo, not as a woman of color and in the LGBT community, but being a human being. This year’s theme for me was “The Creativity Road to Authenticity”. We need more conversations for solutions like this, rather than just having dialogue that leads to more about the situation than the actual solution.
