She spoke about the many opportunities available to women now.After introducing herself to a room full of students, actor Meryl Streep said, “I have pretended quite proficiently to be successful, or the other way around. As have many women here, I’m sure. Women, I feel I can say this authoritatively, especially at Barnard where they can’t hear us, what am I talking about? They professionally can’t hear us. Women are better at acting than men. Why? Because we have to be, if successfully convincing someone bigger than you are of something he doesn’t want to know is a survival skill, this is how women have survived through the millennia. Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending or acting is a very valuable life skill and we all do it all the time. We don’t want to be caught doing it but nevertheless, it’s part of the adaptations of our species, we change who we are to fit the exigencies of our time, and not just strategically, or to our own advantage, sometimes sympathetically, without our even knowing it for the betterment of the whole group.”

She, however, added, “Men are adapting — about time — they are adapting consciously and also without realising it for the better of the whole group.”

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Speaking on the current situation of women, she acknowledged the hardships while reminding them of opportunities.”This is your time and it feels normal to you but really there is no normal. There’s only change, and resistance to it and then more change.”

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