MAN CREATES HIS OWN SUFFERING. PEOPLE WHO HAVE MUCH LESS ARE WAY LESS MISERABLE. POSITIVE ATTITUDE IS THE KEY TO EVERYTHING.
A CONVERSATION WITH BIF NAKED
βHappy Monday!β Bif Naked answers the phone, her warm tone and bright personality transcending through the feedback.
Surviving breast cancer, kidney failure, heart surgery and a divorce, life has not been easy on Bif Naked. Nonetheless, her positive outlook and sunny personality aid her resistance. She is immersed in many creative outputs such as painting, choreography, and writing, all while being a diligent humanitarian, advocate, and vegan.
Bif Naked is now back with a new single:βI Broke Into Your Car Last Night.β Its catchy beat and synthy feel will be stuck in your head for hours, and you canβt help but bop to the rhythm. Itβsβa song about trying to get someoneβs attention, leave a memento of yourself,β she explains. βI think itβs funny. You know, breaking into someoneβs car β itβs just a metaphor of course. It was really fun to write and to sing.β
She is a well-known advocate for womenβs rights, often speaking out about misogyny, something which she has had her fair share of as a woman in the music industry.She speaks of her feelings when she got asked to join the feminine-centric Lilith Fair tour in 1999: βI felt really honoured when I was asked,β she recalls. βFor me to get added to some of those shows was very validatingβ¦ especially because I came from the punk/rock world [which] was very male-centred.β
Lilith Fair was very important for not only Bif Naked, but for women in music in general. It was a time where women could be put on the same bill as men and not be told what to do. It was revolutionary. It was a community of women that felt like a movement.
βI think itβs very diverse now what music is,β says Bif Naked.βIβd like to see more women come to rock, but womenΒ AREΒ in the forefront in pop music, hip hop, and urban. Women are really leading the way, and I think thatβs really incredible. It doesnβt matter what anyone thinks of Cardi B or Taylor Swift.β
βThese women β young women β are really leading the way,β she reiterates.βThey have platforms that can reach a lot of people, they all do charity work, theyβre very outspoken, and youth listens to them. I think weβre in an amazing time in music. I think itβs a fantastic time to be alive.β
Bif Naked offers an example of an inspiring woman in music, the late great Amy Winehouse: βThis girl, regardless of her personal problems, this young woman from the UK, can go into this style of music with natural talent and take the world by storm.β
βIt says a lot about the internet, and how incredible it is, and what a time we live in that we can listen to artists from South Africa,β she continues. βWe can have a girl like Grimes whoβs from British Columbia take over the world. And sheβs in the new Adidas campaign with Stella McCarthy. Itβs incredible to me what the potential is.β
Being a humanitarian and activist, Bif Naked has strong thoughts on the current state of the environment and whether humanity has a chance of turning its dark fate around.
βI donβt think the majority of human beings can,β she sighs.βI think thereβs a lot of people who are so gluttonous that they will never change. I donβt mean that as a judgement per say, I mean they just consume everything, like lots of gas.β
βThese people have so much shit!β she expresses.βItβs nothing I can comprehend, nothing I can relate to. Itβs so difficult now to imagine how some of those people in westernized, industrialized countries are accustomed to having so much. Itβs easy point fingers at other countries but the same is happening here [in Canada].βΒ
To illustrate her point, she explains how she was just reading up on βsomething so smallβ as the banana fungus. βFor us to eat bananas, they all have to be trucked up here, and theyβre coming from so far away, so they need to be sprayed with anti-fungus and ripening agent,β she explains.βItβs incredible the process it goes through. Things like that β things that arenβt local β it doesnβt occur to us. Between trucking costs and globalization,[there are] more reasons than ever to think of the environment.β
Bif Naked voices her environmental concerns, and laments that many people donβt know where exactly their food comes from: βItβs horrifying! People donβt know why they get cancer or kids have diseases. I donβt know what to do. It makes you feel hopeless.β
Itβs a constant uphill battle.βTake Canada Goose jackets. They know it kills animals to have the fur collar, they know itβs just a collar and serves no purpose, and they do it anyways. They buy $1000 coats for their children — give to charity!Buy a $200 coat!β she suggests.
There is, however, a bright light at the end of this tunnel. Bigger food industry brands are implementing plant-based burgers in efforts to encourage the public to be more conscious about the amount of meat they consume, and the effects that it has on the environment. βItβs sad that things need to become trendy for people to think about them,βshe states.
Despite all of this, Bif Naked keeps an optimistic outlook: βI have hope for the future.βShe shares the most important ideology sheβs learned along the way: βTo stay positive no matter whatβs happening in the world.β
βI feel like thereβs a lot of inspirational stuff on the internet, Netflix, blogs, Dalai Lama, local church congregations,β she explains.βUltimately people can stay positive if they want to. If you want to stay positive and think positively, live a positive life, and behave in a manner that uplifts people, itβs available.
For people who might struggle with staying positive, she continues: βIf you donβt know how, itβs available to you. Itβs simply a habit. And I think out of everything Iβve been through β the good, the bad β the thing thatβs always got me through is maintaining a positive attitude, an optimistic attitude.β
Her recommendation for a positive ideology is significant.βMan creates his own suffering. People who have much less are way less miserable.Β Positive attitude is the key to everything.β
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