Simran Randhawa is a URL/IRL tour de force. A proud Indian-Malaysian woman, the writer and model has been a passionate advocate for diversity, intersectionality, self-care and wellbeing in the internet age across her writing and online. 

For the latest instalment of Dazed Texts, she reflects on the powerful, expansive thoughts and edicts of pioneering author bell hooks in the seminal book All About Love. The text highlights the vital context love and relationships have in a space cluttered with everyday obsessions, from capitalist consumerism to the way women have been socialised to give and receive love.

Randhawa’s rendition is part of Dazed’s partnership with #TOGETHERBAND, a campaign raising awareness for the UN’s crucial global goals, 17 targets that range from promoting gender equality to working toward greater sustainability, with the aim to make the world a better place by 2030. This edition of Dazed Texts focuses on ‘good health and well-being’, focused on ensuring that we all lead healthy lives and promote positive wellbeing, through initiatives that benefit healthcare or providing access to sexual and reproductive care, family-planning, and education.

Previous Dazed Texts have featured Tove Stryke reciting Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad to explore the vitality of earth and ocean, and JPEGMAFIA, who took on Ray Charles’ “Busted” to highlight the urgent issue of world poverty.

The intersectional feminist vision of bell hooks has expanded across issues of race and class in liberal movements, the treatment of black women, masculinity, and the fetid white-supremacist-capitalist patriarchy. In her vital 2000 book All About Love, she zones in on romantic love, and how gender stereotypes and gender roles, trust, and capitalist society shape the concept. She asserts that self-love and acceptance are necessary to giving and receiving love, and that letting go of materialism and obsession with power and domination in favour of community and respect must happen.

As Simran’s chosen extract says, we need to recognise that “being part of a loving community does not mean we will not face conflicts. Love allows us to confront these negative realities in a manner that is life-affirming and life-enhancing.” 

Next month we tackle the UN’s ‘peace, justice and strong institutions’ goal with activist, author, actor, and filmmaker Rose McGowan reading staggering, debate-provoking excerpts from Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to congress. Stay tuned.

Performed by Simran Randhawa

Original text by bell hooks

Directed and executive produced by Bec Evans