Speaking to her 8.6 million Instagram followers, the progressive firebrand stressed that there is "no act too small" and prompted her viewers to search for ways to reclaim lost autonomy even when they feel "powerless." Ocasio-Cortez then explained how she was using her manicure as "a personal act of reclamation" and "bodily autonomy."
"Sometimes people will say, ‘There’s nothing I can do, I can’t do, I feel so powerless,'" she said in her Instagram story Friday. “There is no act too small that you can engage in, and even today, I have a personal errand. I need to redo my nails, and I’ve decided that I’m going to use my new manicure as almost like a personal act of reclamation for me and my story."
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Stressing her days as a young woman, Ocasio-Cortez described how she grew up in "a very religious environment" and was forbidden from painting her nails red because that could be indicative of being too much of a "loose" woman.
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"It was very socially conservative, again, like, to the point where I couldn't really even paint my nails red until I pretty much graduated and left the house because there was just a lot of discussion about how red nails, red lipstick — it just portrays a kind of a message about the kind of woman that you are. And I think a lot of times, that kind of woman which is ungovernable, it often gets translated to 'loose' — is seen as bad or negative," she said.
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Now that she has come of age, Ocasio-Cortez said she recognizes what it means: "powerful women, bold women who do what they deem is best."
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"That's how I'm choosing to reclaim it, and I kind of started stepping into that energy when I first started wearing red lipstick on the campaign," she said.
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"It too is a choice of bodily autonomy where no one else can tell me ... what I should be doing with my body."
She later contained an image of her red-clad nails, writing: "I’m gonna be a problem now, AS WE SHOULD BE. Now to get a local bite to eat."
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Ocasio-Cortez has expressed public rage over the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that scrapped the nationwide right to abortion access. She has also called for scrapping the filibuster in the Senate and packing the court to counter the decision.
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"Overturning Roe and outlawing abortions will never make them go away. It only makes them more dangerous, especially for the poor + marginalized," she tweeted when the decision came out. "People will die because of this decision. And we will never stop until abortion rights are restored in the United States of America."
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