Artist Conversations: Madame Gandhi on femininity, being a female creator, and discovering her superpowers

The first time I had the joy of experiencing Madame Gandhi, I was a young girl with a burgeoning passion for feminism who had just discovered a new genre of music I affectionately and somewhat accurately referred to as “feminist punk”. I came across her song, “The Future is Female” through the random selection of the Spotify algorithm and was immediately enticed by the closing refrain: “There’s power in what you say. Own your voice, don’t be afraid.” As I told her in our interview, that song went on to inspire me for years. 

Madame Gandhi is more than a fierce musical artist. She is also a trailblazing feminist. In 2015, she ran alongside 37,581 others in the London Marathon. The difference between her and the other 37,581 runners? She ran hers while free-bleeding. 

MG: “I mean I watched the landscape change so much for the better, and I think it’s really shaped what my core mission is as an activist. It’s not just about destigmatizing but really, what happens when any one of us bravely chooses to own our voice and bravely chooses to question something and say “Huh, why do we stigmatize this so much?” Because I’m out here bleeding and running a marathon and I’m so proud of myself. And instead of me feeling shameful while I’m trying to do this amazing thing, what if instead, I was like, “Wow, women are really out here bleeding and running, bleeding and being a journalist, bleeding and being a CEO, bleeding and being a mother. I mean, it’s such an amazing, powerful thing and yet we’re expected to hide it away in shame, and in speaking up and in celebrating from a place of joy, it really sparks this radical conversation around how and why we treat menstruation in different contexts. And now, to this day, you know, you have so many different entrepreneurial initiatives building better menstrual products, so many apps educating people on their cycles, you have Apple having built in a whole menstrual tracking integration, you have a lot more flexibility on Instagram as to what’s considered comfortable and appropriate information that ten years ago would’ve been considered inappropriate. And equality of care for the more vulnerable population like, those who are unhoused or people who are incarcerated. You know, that’s a whole conversation that didn’t exist ten years ago–on the mainstream. People have always been doing this work for much longer than my marathon story existed, but in terms of a more popular conversation, I’m really quite inspired by the landscape of what’s happened."

Her answer got me thinking about why periods been such a hush-hush topic. I recalled all the times I felt small and a tiny bit ashamed when I was seen shopping in the feminine care aisle, or how often I dreaded having to admit to someone that I was on my period. It’s not just me who has a strained relationship with her cycle; most women I know dance around the conversation as one to be avoided when really, the fact that so many of us endure the pain and discomfort and emotional turbulence of menstruation every month and still find ways to push through the everyday afflictions of life should be shouted about, not whispered. It’s our very own superpower. 

And speaking of superpowers, as a woman in the often predatory entertainment industry, her queerness is one of Madame Gandhi’s greatest ones. 

MG: “I understood from a young age that the music industry is quite predatory. And so a little bit of tomboy swag, masculine energy, identifying publicly as queer, or that I date women, that I’m interested in women, I understood it as a superpower. I understood it as a shield. And unfortunately to this day the industry is predatory on women’s naivete, women’s sexuality, we’re oftentimes objectified. And this is unfortunate, right? An ideal scenario is that we live in a music industry that is not exploitative or predatory and that all of us can express and emote ourselves authentically, and in my own way I feel like I’m most in my feminine sexual energy when I’m in nature. In the pandemic I spent a lot of time with plant medicine, in nature, meditating, healing, and that’s when I felt most comfortable in my nakedness, in my own skin to earth connection and when I felt in my highest sexual power and that’s because the context was different. The context was not in an overly sexed, nearly pornographic music industry that we currently live in. So when you ask me about my queerness it’s deep, it’s noticing how in the industry, if I was to be taken seriously, there needed to be a little bit of a protective mechanism so that I wouldn't be constantly hit on, not taken seriously, so that I wouldn’t be questioning people’s intentions, you know. A lot of times men help women because he wants something from her. Either he thinks she’s pretty or wants to date her, whatever, so it’s tough to trust the intentions with people in the music industry. So I knew that if I was leading with ‘I’m not interested in you’ you must be talking to me because you really want to do business and actually want to collaborate. I think it removes the distraction of romantic chemistry. Now that doesn’t mean that it’s not there, but when there’s an established boundary, I think it helps. So it’s a deep answer to your question. It feels like it’s a choice and it’s by design. And then of course I enjoy my–I’m deeply in love, I have a beautiful partner, she has kids, we’ve been together for a while now. So absolutely I’m very happy in my relationship, and in terms of when you ask about the music industry I definitely think it was a protective mechanism."

I told Ms Gandhi that her identifying her queerness as a superpower really struck a chord with me. It’s not only about being authentic in your identity, it’s also about owning and wearing that, and taking control in an environment where there’s a very perceptible power imbalance between men and women. 

As we talked more about femininity and sexuality, I noticed how often the theme of power came up in her remarks. She talked about the different ways she realized her power; through queerness, through menstruation, and through the most prominent aspect of her artistic identity: her name. 

MG: "I think with ‘Madame Gandhi’, the name also is intentional because I'm very much in my feminine alpha power. Madame Gandhi to me is like a suiting up. Even when I'm getting ready for stage it feels very much like I’m suiting up. I’m getting ready, I’m putting on a yellow coat of some kind, you know, the whole outfit, and it’s my stage so I’m in charge and I can show up dressing how I want, and usually it’s some balance that is authentic to my very natural mix of masculine and feminine energy. Oversized suits but then maybe a bodysuit underneath and things like that. And with ‘Madame Gandhi’ I knew the name Madame, to me, represented this type of archetypal female power in your leadership and this sort of natural power that maybe a mother brings to a child, and I find that to be so out of balance in our world today. When I come into the venue with a feminine kindness or a feminine softness, but I’m not dressing in a way that’s sexually distracting, that’s where I feel like I kind of optimize for like the sweet spot. That way I can be authentic in my gentleness, in my femininity, in my kindness, without running the risk of being exploited."

We talked some more about how nature grounds her, how boxing makes her feel feminine, the relationship between music and the seven chakras, and how she is inspired by her partner. Toward the end of our conversation I asked her for some words of wisdom for young female creators. Her advice: before you can be yourself, you first have to know yourself. 

MG: "Really spend time knowing who you are and being honest about that. The sooner that you invest  in self study and identify who you are, and then go beyond to actually love who that person is, and then go beyond that which is to design a life and a career around who that person is, you essentially will optimize for your own joy. You will optimize your sense of meaning in the world. You’ll have your own authentic personality and then you’ll be matching it with a purpose that’s giving back. The sooner you can do that the better. I think so many of us are seeking answers and external stimuli from everybody else, but in my opinion and in my experience, the answer lies within. And, even as much as I know that, even being thirty-five, even though I’ve had milestones in my career that I’m so proud of, the days that I forget this fact, that I’m hanging to much on Instagram and whatever, I feel depressed, I feel like I’m not good enough, I feel like I wanna go and buy stuff. I immediately watch the matrix sort of have its hold on me. And so these algorithms and these systems are designed to be good at what they do. They’re designed to make you feel inadequate so that then you wanna go and purchase deliveries and food and you wanna go on a dating app or whatever, and all of that is okay. I’ve received a lot of positive connections from Instagram, beautiful friends and meetups and whatever, but it has to be balanced. It has to be balanced with the inward journey. The outward journey has to be balanced with the inward journey. So, this is my profound, deeper advice for the young people. The sooner you can understand who you are and design for that rather than trying to change, the more harmonious a life I think we all will live."

You can listen to Madame Gandhi’s wonderfully and carefully crafted music on all streaming platforms. Her most recent EP, Vibrations, was released in 2022 and is the third in a trilogy of perfectly spaced albums created in alignment with three of the main chakras. Her first EP, Voices, was created in the head chakra. The second, Visions, in the throat chakra. The third, Vibrations, was created in the heart chakra and in her words, is about love, compassion, empathy, and self awareness, which she thinks is what makes feminism more attractive. You can find her music here.