She's one of the most successful actresses in the world so Sarah Jessica Parker knows a thing or two about what it means to have ambition. But the Sex and the City star has confessed she thinks the word has a negative connotation, and that women are wary of using it to describe themselves.Speaking at a Tribeca Film Festival event, SJP told The Cut: "I think for so long the word ambition had this blindness connected to it. It meant that you weren't aware of anything on either side of this drive.
Sarah Jessica Parker thinks the younger generation has a different perception of ambition
"It was this one-lane road and you had to be unpleasant and it didn't involve a conversation and it wasn't collaborative when it was applied to a woman. And I just think it's kind of an old fashioned, negative connotation. "Despite this, the mother-of-three thinks women, especially the younger generation, are still put off by the word.
The actress held a Q&A with the stars and creators of the short films
She continued: "It's almost a generational thing at this point: the word ambition, and what it means, and how careful you are about saying it, 'I'm ambitious or not ambitious'. Driven is a word, conviction, passion, energy, and direction: Those are all words that you hear more and ambition gets swallowed up, it's the word that houses all the other ones."
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SJP was at the Tribeca Film Festival to introduce #ActuallySheCan – three short films about women excelling in their fields of work. The subjects of the movies are a photojournalist, a successful chef and a fashion designer preparing for New York Fashion Week.
All three were directed by women, and after the screenings SJP held a Q&A with the stars and creators about the journeys that had led them up to that point.