To ensure women rise to their full potentials while rejecting false choices forced on them by society, Executive Branding Consultant and beauty queen, Princess Agunbiade, has launched her new book titled ‘Beauty, Brains and the Bag’ in Lagos recently.
The book unveiling tagged: ‘The BBB Woman Experience’, is very apt coming after the recent commemoration of International Women’s Day.
Speaking at the event, the author said society forced women to dim themselves and their potentials to seem acceptable and palatable for others.
She, however, noted that there is nothing more harmful to a woman than making her leave half of her potentials when she can live to her full potential.
Agunbiade said: “In my life, I refused everyone of the single false choices I was handed. I decided to be beautiful, smart and successful. I decided that it was my choice to make. And that whoever, somewhere, that decided that I had to stay small, I did not have to listen to them.”
She said she has made it her personal ambition to help women know that they don’t have to choose between these false dichotomies. “Women can be beautiful, be smart and successful. Women are expansive beings. We’re like kaleidoscopes. We have many facets to us and we don’t have to pick one side when we can actually bring all our wholeness to the world,” she added.
Explaining further, the author said the book is about a woman not choosing part of herself, but coming into the world with her full self, her beauty, intelligence and ambition. “We want women to not just be beautiful, but to also be successful and to be smart. It is to erase any false choice that women are made to choose from in their lives,” Agunbiade said.
The author, who revealed that it took her three years to write it, said she wanted it to be another self-help book, and an actual transformation guide that will take readers step by step on what they need to do to become a woman who does not edit herself to be palatable to the world.
“Beauty, Brains and the Bag is not just another self-help book. It is a thorough, well-researched, personal, unapologetic argument that you have been deliberately separated from your power and that you can reclaim it,” she said.
The author, who is behind the BBB Woman experience, said it inspired her to pen the book. “I have a community of women that are ambitious, have leadership potential and I’ve been mentoring them for years, helping them develop that within them. But I noticed that there were so many hesitations from those women. They think that they have to make these little compromises on how they show up in the world.”
She said she has taken it upon herself to give women the roadmap, resources, tools, support and mentorship to actually forge meaningful paths for themselves.
Announcing a book tour for 5,000 women to receive the book across six cities in three countries, Agunbiade stressed that every copy that lands in a woman’s hand is a small act of revolution. According to her, the BBB movement intends to create awareness using the social media and touring universities, schools and other places.
“We want women to start to see themselves as humans. And the whole idea is for women to see themselves as much more than objects. “Women are capable, leaders and can do fantastic things. We hope that with this mission, we can see less and maybe nothing like that anymore,” she said.
Former Director General, Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC), Mrs. Omotayo Omotosho, who doubled as the chairman of the event, commended the author and described her as a combination of brain, beauty, the bags, and a lady with audacity of purpose.
She urged participants to add value to the BBB Woman movement and complement the effort of the author by ensuring the book gets into the hand of Nigerians and other nationalities across the globe.
Omotosho stressed the need for modern women to comport themselves and shun taking shortcuts to get the rich bags they desire, warning that the shortcut don’t last.
Lead Pastor, Eden Centre, Dr. Akin Akinpelu, said the book came at a time when women are consciously rising and taking their place, not because it is a competition but because it is what they ought to have lived up to all these years.
A fashion designer, Miriam Elisha, said the movement and the book representing the generation of bold women who are not afraid to take up space, but ready to put in the work, not just beauty, but the brain and the bags
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