A global feminist icon, Helen Reddy, has left us.
I had just turned 12 when Helen's most famous song I Am Woman made its journey to the top of the charts.
The soundtrack of your youth always becomes the most special part of the soundtrack of your life. Years later, you can sing every word.
But I Am Woman has stayed with me for more powerful reasons than that.
For so many women, across decades, the song has given full-throated voice to our fight for gender equality. The lyrics capture how we like to think of ourselves — strong — and our movement — invincible. This anthem does not shy away from the tough, complex stuff; that there is pain and a price to be paid in the struggle for gender equality.
Overwhelmingly though, the lyrics are positive and generous of spirit, a spreading of "loving arms across the land". This is an implicit rejection of the regular caricature of the women's movement as divisive and doctrinaire.
I have three indelible images of Helen Reddy imprinted on my mind
The first of the youthful Helen, her strong, straight shoulders visible in her pink halter top, delivering with pitch precision and smiling warmth the bold lyrics of I Am Woman. You were carried away by her power and potential as she sang, "you can bend but never break me, because it only serves to make me more determined to achieve my final goal".
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The second of the aged Helen, on stage in the US at one of the enormous Women's Marches that marked President Trump's inauguration. Here she is small, grey-haired, much nearer to the end of her life, yet there is still power in the punch she throws into the air as she sings "I am strong".
These two moments teach us what it is to be sustained by a cause; that the power of purpose comes both with the vitality of youth and the experience of age.
Perhaps it was only the older Reddy who could fully understand the beauty of the line "Oh yes, I am wise, but it's wisdom born of pain", which she had written so many years before.
Remarkably, the message of I Am Woman perfectly fits both moments. Every word is still relevant, no message has dated, including that we have "a long, long way to go".
Does that tell us about the strength of Helen's work or our failure to have achieved a gender equal world almost 40 years later? Perhaps both.
Mostly I hear the song in my head not because I am being sentimental, but to help me get ready for the next feminist battle.
I dream of the days we will only sing it when indulging, over glasses of wine, in reminiscences of times long gone.
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The third is her on stage at the 1973 Grammy's accepting the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance Award for I Am Woman, thanking God for the award because "she makes everything possible".
Back home in Adelaide, not yet in my teens and still a regular attendee at Baptist Sunday School, this was a moment that shocked but became one to savour.
The life of Helen Reddy was broader than one song
I, of all people, know what it is like to have your career told constantly through one frame, in my case the misogyny speech. I do not want to make that error here.
Helen made us proud time after time as she created hit songs in her Aussie accent, ultimately selling tens of millions of albums worldwide and becoming the first Australian to make it to the top of the US charts.
We saw her headline American television shows, appear in stage musicals and star in movies.
Memorably she appeared as a singing nun in the air crash disaster movie, Airport 1975.
Her performance was lauded by the critics. For years afterwards my sister and I would joke that if you saw a nun with a guitar boarding your plane, it was time to run for the door.
All this was achieved though she battled health conditions across her life, having a kidney removed at the age of 17 and then being diagnosed with the rare and incurable condition Addison's disease at the height of her fame.
Helen would go on to become patron of the Australian association dedicated to raising awareness of this frequently misdiagnosed condition.
Undaunted, she would speak about how she lived with the condition and did not let it hold her back.
During her long life, she loved and lost and loved again, marrying three times. She raised her two children and became a grandmother.
Her family, to whom she meant the most, will be feeling her loss acutely and deeply. To each of them, I offer my sincerest condolences.
More than seven decades after she appeared in vaudeville as a four-year-old, she has exited the stage for good. Like all legends, she has left her audience applauding and calling for more.
Former prime minister Julia Gillard is the chair of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiVGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTEwLTAxL2hlbGVuLXJlZGR5LWktYW0td29tYW4tanVsaWEtZ2lsbGFyZC8xMTgxMDU0NtIBJ2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvYXJ0aWNsZS8xMTgxMDU0Ng?oc=5
2020-09-30 19:12:00Z
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