As in the song "La Rabbia Non Ti Basta," believing in your dreams can make all the difference. During the Sanremo Music Festival, rapper and LGBTQ+ activist BigMama brought her message of equality, universal love, and a denunciation of bullying and body shaming to the UN General Assembly hall.
From the Ariston to the stage of the United Nations, where every year world leaders express themselves, Marianna Mannone, originally from Avellino, gave a speech in English in front of two thousand students from all over the world.
“I spent most of my life believing that I was completely flawed. My physical appearance influenced how others judged me as ‘not enough,’ before they even really knew me,” BigMama said.
“In the popular imagination, an overweight person is considered lazy, listless, unintelligent, with no desire to improve themselves. For a person like me, dreaming seemed useless,” continued the singer, sharing her experience with the young participants of the training program 'Gcmun talks' organized by United Network, an organization affiliated with the Department of Global Communications of the United Nations.
Excited and for the first time in the Big Apple (where she had previously been seen on a giant screen in Times Square in collaboration with Spotify), BigMama spoke at the UN after being introduced by architect Mario Cucinella. She retraced the stages of her personal history, coming from a small town with a limited mentality, where she had to face years of both verbal and physical bullying.
“I was afraid to speak, so I tried to bear the pain in silence. My first reaction was anger. At 13, I wrote my first song, 'Charlotte,' which is about suicide and self-harm, and I kept it to myself for three years. BigMama was born when I found the courage to share it on YouTube,” she said.
Marianna will turn 24 on March 10 and will release a new album titled “Sangue” on the occasion of Women's Day. She explained that this album will be characterized by less aggressive words, with the aim of reaching as many people as possible and telling every facet of her life.
She also talked about her experience in Milan, when she felt particularly beautiful but was still afraid of people, and about her battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma, which she faced with 12 chemotherapy sessions just as she was about to sign her first record deal.
“It was the darkest time of my life,” she admitted, “but music really saved me. I healed and that time finally taught me that I deserve to be first. That if I don’t love myself, no one else will. That if I don’t save myself, no one else will. As the saying goes, ‘Anger is not enough’: believing in your dreams saves.”
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