Begin of this year, very surprisingly, I was nominated as Best Power Woman of 2019. What an honor! That was my first thought.
But what is a Power Woman? Why that category? The same award organization had another category: Biggest Music Man. Only after protests, more than a week later, the organizers decided to create the category Best Power Woman.
In my eyes, all nominees did deserve the title of Best Power Woman. Only for myself I wasn’t that sure. In 2019 I was trying to avoid a burn-out. Therefore I had to work less than I was used to. You might have noticed the lack of new articles, the lack of newsletters in the last couple of months.
The strange thing with this nomination was, that it was a brand new award ceremony. No one knew the organization, no one knew the organizers. And to win the title, all nominees had to publish the nomination, trying to get as many votes as possible, more votes than the contestants.
The person most active on social media would win the title of Best Power Woman. Is one of the criteria of being a power woman that you are very active on social media? Last year I had to set priorities in order to avoid burn-out. Therefore I tried to spend less time on social media, to get less distracted from the more important work of booking shows, and from the important task of recovering.
Even when asking the organization for more information about the organization and the people behind it, all I got was some smooth blah-blah marketing talk. Very misty. And a very good marketing tool, because many people in the Dutch music industry started to speculate about it.
In the end we, the nominees for Best Power Woman, did get to know more about the people behind it. Very nice people. Though I stand for more openness and light in the business. It’s one of my core values. And this organization decided to stay behind the foggy wall. The clash with my values and the need to advertise the award while it’s still shrouded in mist, didn’t feel good.
Therefore I decided to withdraw my nomination. Even though I could have used the nomination for self-promotion, like the other nominees did, I decided to let that opportunity go. I decided that my core values are more important to me.
And at that moment I knew for sure that I have everything it takes to be a Power Woman!