In October 2015, towards the end of the final presidential debate, Donald Trump leaned into his microphone and called his political rival Hilary Clinton, a “nasty woman”, as millions watched. One of the people watching was nineteen-year-old Nina Donavan and she quickly composed a response to it, an angry ode to being a “nasty woman”.
“The second [Trump] called Hillary [Clinton] a nasty woman, I said, ‘Oh man, I’ve got to write a nasty woman piece,’” Donovan told The Tenessan. “I reclaimed it.” Only 20,000 people saw it on YouTube, but it resonated with many. One member of the audience during her original performance was actor Ashley Judd, who is known as much for her acting prowess as for her political activism. Judd, who is from Franklin, Tennessee, the same city as Donovan, sought the teenage poet’s permission to perform it.
And on Saturday, January 21, Donovan got to see the “physical form” of her poem as Judd gave an impassioned performances (above) of Nasty Woman, a beat-poem-cum-political-rap at a march in Washington.
“I am a nasty woman,” begins the poem. “I’m as nasty as a man who looks like he bathes in Cheetos dust. A man whose words are a distract to America. Electoral college-sanctioned, hate-speech contaminating this national anthem. I’m not as nasty as Confederate flags being tattooed across my city.
Judd gets angrier as the performance goes on.”I am not as nasty as racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny, ignorance, white privilege,” she yells listing out all of Trump’s failings. “...your daughter being your favourite sex symbol, like your wet dreams infused with your own genes. Yeah, I’m a nasty woman – a loud, vulgar, proud woman.”
The video below is of Donavan’s original performance.
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