Episode Transcript
Hello, my name is Aziz and I'm the son of a divorced mother. She is my superhero. That's
why it's important for me to support women to share their uniqueness, their personalities,
perspectives and emotions about this world. In these difficult times in human history,
we need to bring the cultures of the world together. And when we listen to real people,
to real lives of women from other countries, we connect our humanity without our differences
or stereotypes, and we get inspired by their stories to live a better life. That's what this
podcast is all about. My guest today is Miruna Dumitru. Miruna lives in Craiova, Romania,
and studies biology, chemistry and physics. Miruna loves to cook, to read, and she really
adores fashion. Miruna wants to be an entrepreneur and to inspire other women to be themselves
and to grow their self-love. So she is every day working hard to become the best version
of herself. Miruna, how are you today? I'm really good today. Thank you for asking.
How are you today? I'm feeling positive. I'm feeling inspired and very curious about you.
So I'll begin with this nice question. If your friends could describe your personality,
what would they say about you? I think they would say that I'm funny, creative, enthusiastic,
and very excited about every day that comes into my life. That's so cool. And let's focus
on the part where you're excited about every day that comes into your life. Is this something you
always had? Or maybe the pandemic, the isolation, the difficulties that that experience gave you
made you appreciate every moment and want to go out more and explore and enjoy every day?
Well, I had a rough childhood when I was little. And that made me appreciate every minute and every
second that I have in my hand and to make the most out of them. So yes, and the pandemic too,
because when I was in lockdown, I thought to myself that if I weren't, I would do so many
things. And now that I'm locked down, that I was locked down, I couldn't. So because of my
childhood and the pandemic, I started to realize that that the life is short and we should
appreciate everything that God blesses us with. I love that attitude and I find that people who
had a difficult childhood or a difficult life become a lot more interesting and positive
actually compared to most other people. And to ask you, supporting women, inspiring women
is very important for you. Tell me your thoughts about this. How do you want to support women?
What should they be supported with? What's your passion and desire and perspective?
Oh, well, I think since the history times, women were discriminated in society. They were taught
how to be good housewives, how to cook, how to clean the house, and how to take care of their
babies. And I feel like we are in the 21st century and women should have more rights than they did
before. And I think feminism is one of the best things that happened into this world. And I want
to thank all the courageous women that wanted to participate in this project, because sometimes
it's hard to speak up for yourself, mostly as a woman or as a black person because of racism,
as a disabled person, as a gay person. It's really hard to speak up for yourself because
the society keeps us with such a mentality that you can't really express everything you want,
you know? And this is one of the reasons that I wanted to take part in this project, because
the idea was absolutely brilliant. And I thought to myself that I would be so disappointed not to
speak up at this opportunity and to just sit down and not do anything about this social problem.
Thank you. That's so wise and such important ideas, perspectives, and needs that you're
speaking about. And how do you feel or you think is the situation for teenage girls or younger women
in Romania in 2022 and 2023? Is the culture supportive of women? Is it more traditional?
What is missing? Can you speak about your own experiences and what you observe in your own
like city or town or country? Yes, of course. Romania, in Romania, people have a conservative
mindset in which they can, mostly women, can really express themselves because of misogyny.
In Romania, men are, they use male supremacy, white male supremacy here. And the culture of
the culture of Romania is based on misogyny. And it's based on treating women like
some washing machines, some baby makers, and some cooking, cooking wise. I don't know how to
how to really use that term. But mostly it's based on misogyny, as I said before.
And I feel like this country should evolve. And in Romania, Romania, a little bit back in the time,
I mean, we don't have really many opportunities here because, like, a few centuries ago,
a few decades ago, I'm sorry, a few decades ago, the communist regime was in Romania. And because
of that, people couldn't really grow their mindsets and couldn't really open up and speak
and see the problems because it's only the men, mostly the men actually could work, women couldn't
work. There was no food, there was no water. People would die of hunger, of thirst. And there
was no education. And also education is a really big problem in Romania because most people don't
really go to school. There are a lot of people who are living in villages and in the rural area
that don't go to school. They had never read a book in their life. And you don't really have
so many people to talk to about these social problems, because they don't even realize that
they exist. So yeah, that's the situation in Romania, unfortunately. Thank you. And thank you
and thank you, too, for trying and having the goal to change this, to make the path of women
more equal, more progressive. And I know one of your desires is to elevate the self-love
of women, maybe even Romania. Is it because of what you spoke about when it comes to society
that a lot of women have lower self-confidence and self-love? Or do you feel maybe social media,
when they every day see photoshopped photos of people living perfect lives in private jets,
looking amazing with their plastic surgery, that destroys their self-esteem and you want them to
love themselves in every way they are naturally? Or what's your perspective about women's self-love,
how to add more of it, and how is the situation of women's self-love in Romania? Well, in my
opinion, it is the both situations. One, social media, and two, society. Social media is fake,
and we almost all of us know that. But usually girls and women in general tend to be influenced
by all the girls that photoshop their photos and think, wow, she's such a pretty girl. Why
don't I look like her? Why am I fat? Why am I not skinny? Why am I not tall? And these type of
questions. And in society, body shaming is an unequal real thing as the social media problem.
Because in Romania, body shaming has been known since the start of the times. Girls here are
always body shamed. You should be tall, you should be skinny, you should have long hair,
you should have big lips. Because Eastern European standards of how a woman should look are really,
really high. And usually men here are used with girls to look like Bella Hadid or Gigi Hadid,
you know, all these supermodels that are creating their income and their success based on looks.
And that's how we are expected to look like and to behave like supermodels, literally. And in the
Balkans and in Eastern Europe, this fat shaming, body shaming is a real big problem. I've seen
girls committing suicide because of this. I've seen one of my classmates that didn't go to school
for almost three months because she was fat and some guy told her, girl, you're fat, you should
get skinnier. And she got so depressed because of that, she didn't go to school for three months
straight. And I was also taught that I should be skinny, I should look like a model. And I've
got boys telling me, wow, but why don't you look like Bella Hadid? Why aren't you that tall?
Why aren't you skinny? And those types of questions. And I didn't really get bothered by them
because I'm not the type of person that really cares about others' opinions on them. But
unfortunately, there are people who just put emotions into what people say about them.
And I feel like this is such a big problem, mostly in Eastern Europe. I mean, not mostly,
but it's just what I've seen here. And body shaming is everywhere. And those standards
are everywhere. But I think the podcast or the project like yours could raise awareness
about these social problems and could make other girls feel better about themselves.
LR Thank you so much. That's such an important
thing to share and to raise awareness about. And to ask about your desire to be an entrepreneur,
how is that related to supporting women, to helping women gain their self-love,
to erasing discrimination, to raise inequality? Are you, for example, planning to be an entrepreneur
as in creating a brand on social media and YouTube and sharing your thoughts, or becoming
successful and rich because of your hard work and then inspiring women by saying,
if I can do it, you can too. How is that vision related to this deep goal?
AG Well, since I was a little kid, I wanted to be my own boss and I wanted to have control
over things. I wanted myself to be in charge of everything. But as I grew up, I thought to myself,
well, Miruna, since you want to influence other people and since you want to have control over
things, why shouldn't you influence other women into being more confident in themselves? And why
don't you influence other women to be more positive about their looks and about the people
around them? I want to create my own makeup brand and to have my own restaurants. And with that
makeup brand, I don't want to promote fake, I don't know how to say fake looks. I want to promote
I want to promote exactly natural beauty. And this is a really hard concept because makeup
and natural beauty don't really get on with each other. But I want through my advertisements,
through my popularity to share that makeup isn't really everything. I mean, yes, I want you to buy
from my company and I want you to increase my income, but I also want you to be yourself
and to not be influenced by all these Instagram models that use tons of makeup and tons of
Photoshop and they pay personal Photoshoppers to work on their pictures, you know? Yeah.
I understand that such visionary perspective as well as I encourage your goals and your success in
doing this, it's very important in this world. And to ask you, if you could live any place in
the world that will match your personality, your desires, where you believe women have more rights
and more abilities to love themselves and to be fully themselves, where would you choose to go?
Would it be like a place in the Amazon before society or a big metropolis where anybody can
wear anything and be anything like New York City or Los Angeles or where in the world do you feel
you could live and totally feel, yes, I am exactly in the place where I should be, where I will feel
completely satisfied with the culture, with the location, with the society? To be honest, nowadays,
I don't think anywhere matches all of my expectations, but where I would dream to live,
honestly, would be ancient Egypt because their women were praised, but it's not like I want
female supremacy because it's not right. I just want equality. But their female had rights.
They had goddesses who were women. They had, yeah, they could do everything they wanted.
And no man could come and tell them, no, you're a woman. You can't do that. It's exactly otherwise.
Men would come to them and tell them, you're a woman. You can do so many things. And yeah,
I think that's really where I would like to live. And also I like, I like really,
really much Middle Eastern culture, Egyptian culture. I like their music really much.
And I just appreciate all that Middle Eastern traditions. So yeah, that's where I would
like to live. Thank you. And I'm curious as well, because you have such unique perspective, even you
would like to live in a different time period in history, not even now, which is a very unique
answer. Tell me about fashion. How can women increase their self-love using fashion and how
can they express their powerful feminine nature using fashion? What's your perspective on it?
How can fashion be a positive tool for humanity to embrace and see the importance and power
of women, et cetera? Well, I think every woman should dress accordingly to her body type,
because this influences so much how a woman looks. I don't know, it does. I don't want it to sound
mean and stuff, because that's really the opposite of my intention. But clothes can really influence
how you look. And there are certain types of dressing accordingly to your body type. I mean,
hourglass body type, rectangle body type. There are a lot of body types. And to love yourself
more, you should really learn how to dress accordingly to that. Thank you. That's really
good tips. And currently you study biology, chemistry, and physics. What would be the next
step for you in your education that will help you with your goals and with your passions and
interests? Will you study even more of those STEM and science topics to support women in STEM or in
IT? Or do you want to study business to learn about entrepreneurship or study psychology and
communication in order to share your message for empowering women? Or what would be the most
interesting thing for you? Do you have a clear plan in mind or still debating what you want to
do next? Well, going back to science, biology, physics, and chemistry, when I got into high
school, those were my main achievements to be a good doctor. And I wanted to study medicine.
But as time passed, I realized that that was not my path. So yeah, I want to study business
administration or international business. And I want to learn how to do a really good business
plan. And with that business plan to build my future, but also to build another plan that would
help women increase their love for themselves. And I would also like to open my own platform
for feminism and for women and to inspire other females to just love themselves and to know their
worth because this is another problem. Women usually do not know their worth and they crave
male validation, which is something wrong in my opinion. So yeah, I wanted to study business.
Thank you so much, Miruna. This was my privilege, my honor. I encourage and support your vision and
goal for women empowerment, your future success. And I wish you every moment, new opportunities,
new possibilities for impact and great attitudes and great people that will help you on your way.
Thank you again for participating. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
And I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart that I really, really appreciate your work.
And I wish there were more people like you, so inspired, so creative and so courageous.
Thank you so much. And what this opportunity brought into my heart is unexplainable and
unbelievable. So thank you for this exceptional way of raising my self-confidence and self-love.
Thank you too.
