Pharrell released his album GIRL in 2014, and while promoting the record months later, he referred to it as a 21st century take on feminism".
"If all the women in the world decide not to work it would shut down the economic systems. If women decided they didn't like what we were doing as a species, they could end the planet," he told the UK's Stylist magazine. "So when I hear people say 'power women,' it's not possible to empower women. It's just necessary for women to remember their power. Power is a perception and it's one that you guys [women] were raised to ignore and believe something that's false, like a male-dominated world."
Still, feminists were only cautiously optimistic, noting that "appreciating" women is not the same as truly doing the work to understand and dismantle misogyny.
